By Dara Sharif A New Orleans man who has long maintained he was wrongly convicted of murder experienced freedom for the first time in 42 years after a virtual deal with the devil won him his liberty, if not true…
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By John Simerman A 62-year-old man who left New Orleans as a teenager for a life in prison on a murder conviction will be released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola under a deal offered last week by Orleans…
Organizations previously filed amicus brief highlighting those wrongfully convicted by non-unanimous juries October 7, 2019 – Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in Ramos v. Louisiana, in which the Court will decide whether the U.S. Constitution requires…
By Erin Moriarty When eyewitness testimony is wrong Eyewitness testimony, once considered the gold standard of evidence, can often result in wrongful convictions. Of those who have been exonerated by DNA evidence, it’s estimated that faulty eyewitness testimony is responsible…
By Adam Liptak WASHINGTON — “For 23 years, I was a jailhouse lawyer,” said Calvin Duncan, a former inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. “That was my assigned job.” He had a 10th-grade education, and he was serving…
By David Jacobs Recent legislation is changing how Louisiana’s legal system handles eyewitness testimony, the executive director of Innocence Project New Orleans said Monday. Jee Park told the Baton Rouge Press Club a law that went into effect this year…
By Emily Maw, Guest Columnist Those who regulate the legal profession would do well to observe the reaction of the Netflix-watching public to Ava DuVernay’s series, “When They See Us.” The series harrowingly chronicles the pain of five black and…
By Monique Judge In 1971, when Wilbert Jones was just 19 years old, he was arrested and charged with kidnapping a nurse at gunpoint from the parking lot of a hospital in Baton Rouge, La., and raping her behind a…
By Emily Lane Gov. John Bel Edwards on Wednesday (June 5) signed a new law that allows for experts to testify in criminal trials about the science behind problems with eyewitness identifications. Forty-eight other states and the federal court system already…
BY NANCY FRANKLIN Thanks to the efforts of organizations like Innocence Project New Orleans, Louisiana has the second highest rate of exonerations per capita in the country. Such a statistic gives the state something to be proud of. But what…
