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I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I’d won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn’t mine.

Because of that, prosecutors are free to do the same thing to someone else today.

I was arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I remember the police coming to my grandmother’s house — we all knew it was the cops because of how hard they banged on the door before kicking it in. My grandmother and my mom were there, along with my little brother and sister, my two sons — John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6 — my girlfriend and me. The officers had guns drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought they were coming for a murderer. All the children were scared and crying. I was 22.

They took me to the homicide division, and played a cassette tape on which a man I knew named Kevin Freeman accused me of shooting a man. He had also been arrested as a suspect in the murder. A few weeks earlier he had sold me a ring and a gun; it turned out that the ring belonged to the victim and the gun was the murder weapon.

My picture was on the news, and a man called in to report that I looked like someone who had recently tried to rob his children. Suddenly I was accused of that crime, too. I was tried for the robbery first. My lawyers never knew there was blood evidence at the scene, and I was convicted based on the victims’ identification.

After that, my lawyers thought it was best if I didn’t testify at the murder trial. So I never defended myself, or got to explain that I got the ring and the gun from Kevin Freeman. And now that I officially had a history of violent crime because of the robbery conviction, the prosecutors used it to get the death penalty.

I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the first attempt didn’t kill me, he said, they’d put more volts in.

On Sept. 1, 1987, I arrived on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary — the infamous Angola prison. I was put in a dead man’s cell. His things were still there; he had been executed only a few days before. That past summer they had executed eight men at Angola. I received my first execution date right before I arrived. I would end up knowing 12 men who were executed there.

Over the years, I was given six execution dates, but all of them were delayed until finally my appeals were exhausted. The seventh — and last — date was set for May 20, 1999. My lawyers had been with me for 11 years by then; they flew in from Philadelphia to give me the news. They didn’t want me to hear it from the prison officials. They said it would take a miracle to avoid this execution. I told them it was fine — I was innocent, but it was time to give up.

But then I remembered something about May 20. I had just finished reading a letter from my younger son about how he wanted to go on his senior class trip. I’d been thinking about how I could find a way to pay for it by selling my typewriter and radio. “Oh, no, hold on,” I said, “that’s the day before John Jr. is graduating from high school.” I begged them to get it delayed; I knew it would hurt him.

To make things worse, the next day, when John Jr. was at school, his teacher read the whole class an article from the newspaper about my execution. She didn’t know I was John Jr.’s dad; she was just trying to teach them a lesson about making bad choices. So he learned that his father was going to be killed from his teacher, reading the newspaper aloud. I panicked. I needed to talk to him, reassure him.

--snip--

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
Yes, Rion, you are right. John Thompson is black. Very astute observation.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Maybe the defense didn't believe their client's story about having bought the gun and the ring, but this sounds like one of those cases Frem describes, where the defense deliberately takes a dive to help the prosecution.

They recommended their defendant to not give a defense in a murder case with a likely death penalty. In the very least, it's incompetence, at worst it's deliberate.

What I'd like to see is a world where if evidence is found to suggest that the leading suspect was not in fact the perpetrator and the trail goes cold, that cops and lawyers involved do not collude to go ahead and send the leading suspect to trial anyway. And that if it's found that they deliberately covered up evidence, fire the cops and disbar the lawyers. Maybe even charge the judge if it goes up that high.

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Originally posted by RionaEire:
I agree with Byte, this kind of shananniganry has to stop, people's lives are on the line.

I felt bad guessing at his ethnicity, I thought that people would be mad at me for guessing based on the info, mainly what it was was that New Orleans, as far as I know, has a near majority African American population, so statistically I thought I might be safe guessing. Glad you guys didn't get mad at me for guessing.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
Kwicko. Yep.

In other words, it is so much easier to frame/accuse an innocent person for the crime than to go out and find the real criminal.

Why earn real money when you can print fake ones?

The real criminals will go on hurting people, which will give you more incentive for a bigger budget and more power. With which to catch more innocent "criminals."

It's a sweet racket they've set up.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
...because at least that way somebody in the family would have a respectable job that a person could be proud of!

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
But hey, when you fire all the teachers and close the schools, there's a very, very, VERY good chance that you're going to need all those new police cruisers and helicopters...

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