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Law Have Mercy!
Law Have Mercy! isn’t just about the law anymore—it’s about life, business, health, and everything that sparks curiosity. Join Personal Injury Attorney Chaz Roberts as he dives into candid conversations that mix legal insights with lifestyle tips, entrepreneurial wisdom, and personal growth. From breaking down complex legal issues in simple terms to exploring the challenges and triumphs of health, business, and beyond, Chaz brings his unique perspective and passion to every episode.
Whether you're here to learn, laugh, or find inspiration, Law Have Mercy! has something for everyone. Just remember: the opinions of our guests are their own, and nothing on this podcast is legal advice or creates an attorney-client relationship—it’s all about entertainment, exploration, and empowerment. Let’s make it fun!
Law Have Mercy!
Fighting for Justice: Jee Park on Wrongful Convictions and Mass Incarceration in Louisiana
Join us for an insightful conversation with Jee Park, the executive director of the Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO), as we uncover the pressing issues surrounding mass incarceration and exoneration in Louisiana. We explore Jee's inspiring journey from the Orleans Public Defender's Office post-Hurricane Katrina to her current role at IPNO, revealing her deep-seated passion for New Orleans and its vibrant yet challenging environment. This episode highlights the relentless fight against wrongful convictions, emphasizing the organization’s mission to free those who are factually innocent or languishing under excessively harsh sentences.
Breaking down the complexities within the process of exoneration investigations, we discuss the resource-intensive nature of IPNO’s work. Jee discusses the significant hurdles faced, such as the lack of subpoena power and limited access to crucial documents, which necessitate a meticulous and prolonged effort to achieve justice. With cases often taking years to resolve, we examine the systemic imbalances in Louisiana's legal system that disproportionately affect defendants, underscoring the financial and moral costs borne by society when justice is not served.
Through real case studies, like those of Raymond Flanks and Jerry Davis, we shine a light on the systemic flaws that lead to wrongful convictions, including tunnel vision in law enforcement and the misuse of unreliable testimonies. Our discussion also tackles the broader issues of racial and economic disparities within the criminal justice system, where the scales are tipped by wealth and race rather than justice. The conversation serves as a call to action, encouraging listeners to support IPNO and similar organizations through donations, as we collectively strive for a more just and equitable system.
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This show is co-produced by Carter Simoneaux of AcadianaCasts Network, Chaz H. Roberts of Chaz Roberts Law and Kayli Guidry Bonin of Beau The Agency, and Laith Alferahin.
Unfortunately, louisiana leads the country in our rate of incarceration. In fact, you know, we lead the world because US is the leading incarceration in the world and because we are the leading incarcerator of United States. We lead the world in incarceration.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Chaz back again with another episode of Law have Mercy. I have a good friend of mine, G Park, that came all the way from New Orleans. She is the executive director of Innocence Project New Orleans. G, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:I'm super excited about this episode. I've been looking forward to this. Our calendar is finally lined up, but we're going to talk about the death penalty and we're going to talk about mass incarceration. We're going to talk about exoneration the good work you all have done and we're going to hit some hot topics, and so thank you for being here. This is awesome and I'm going to just get right into it, if you're okay with that Sounds great. Tell me a little bit about how you ended up with the organization.
Speaker 1:Sure. So I came to New Orleans back in 2008, post-katrina, to work at the Orleans Public Defender's Office. I had been a public defender in Washington DC and also in New York, and when the public defender office in Orleans Parish was reconstituting itself after Hurricane Katrina, I was asked to come down as a lawyer with a little bit of experience to kind of work with some of the newer lawyers that they were recruiting to that office.
Speaker 2:New Orleans in itself, culture shock, new Orleans post-Katrina. I mean, that's like you and Drew Brees were the only two people on the flight here. I mean, how does that work?
Speaker 1:I was pretty excited actually to come to New Orleans, I have to say. You know, I spent a couple of years after after college working for an organization called the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, alabama, and we used to do these little weekend trips to New Orleans from Montgomery and New Orleans was like the most amazing city if you're living in Montgomery Alabama.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and do you still enjoy living in New Orleans?
Speaker 1:I do. I mean, it's such a unique place.
Speaker 2:It grows on you, doesn't it it?
Speaker 1:really does. I really love it.
Speaker 2:It certainly has its problems with crime and roads and infrastructure and taxation, and water and flooding, and natural hurricanes. But it's one of the most charming cities in the country, if not the world.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with you, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And when you get there you really don't want to leave. Once you learn the system, once you learn the good parts and the bad parts and the food and everything else, it's really tough to leave, Right? And so how long have you been with IPNO?
Speaker 1:So I was at the Orleans Public Defenders until 2016, at the end of 2016, and then I transitioned over to IPNO in 2017.
Speaker 2:end of 2016. And then I transitioned over to IPNO in 2017. Okay, yeah, good. Well, I was a public defender for five years and then I ended up being on the public defender board, which is the body kind of oversees how money through indigent defense is distributed, and IPNO was one of the nonprofit organizations that we worked with, and that's when we first met.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And so that was how long ago do you think that you were you? Were you the executive director when we first met?
Speaker 1:I became the executive director in 2018. And so, depending on when you became a board member, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, so I was fascinated, and you get, that's one of the perks of being a board member.
Speaker 1:That's the only perk of being a board member is meeting cool people.
Speaker 2:you feel like when, when g walked in, she's like so when did you do this podcast? Well, how did this all happen? Is it because you have so much free time? Because you're not a board member anymore? I was like, uh, that's a great answer actually. Um, so I got to learn all these organizations and then, um, the work that IPNO does, and so I wanted to bring you on, because I don't think the average person understands a lot about wrongful convictions and the societal ills that it causes, and so let's just get into that, if you don't mind.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:What does IPNO do?
Speaker 1:just get into that, if you don't mind. Absolutely. What does IPNO do? So Innocence Project New Orleans. We free and exonerate factually innocent people who are currently in prison. We also free people who are serving incredibly excessive sentences draconian sentences, yeah.
Speaker 2:And how does one become a client of Innocence Project New Orleans?
Speaker 1:So the person in prison has to write to us, they have to write us a letter, they have to send us an email, they have to reach out to us directly. Oftentimes we have family members, loved ones, calling us, stopping by our office, telling us about a case, but we have found out that family members don't always know everything about a case, right, and so the person who's incarcerated, they have to want our assistance and to have to reach out.
Speaker 2:Now I'm picturing a bag of mail, like a Santa Claus sack of mail dropped off at the office every single day. How much mail or requests do you guys get?
Speaker 1:I mean. So we've been around for 23 years, so we were found in 2001. And since that time we have received, you know, over 9,000 requests for assistance from imprisoned people, and so we have a lot of people needing our assistance.
Speaker 2:How does one, how do you tell me the process of y'all parsing through this information and filtering it, and how do you find it's a legit claim? And I mean just talk through that. Oh, absolutely, I'm going to put my hands back behind my head and just tell me, because I'm fascinated by this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, I mean we. So we have a case manager who has been doing this work for many, many years. Once he gets a letter, he sends an application to that individual who. It's written to us and our application is fairly extensive, you know. We request them to give us a history of their case, a little bit about themselves, you know. And once we get that application back, we start looking at publicly available documents. So we start pulling the court of appeals decision on the case, we start pulling media reports about that case. So we try to look at information and documents that's publicly available that we can get our hands on pretty easily.
Speaker 2:And it's publicly available and easily. Because, one, it's a cost issue, because it's very, very costly to go and start pulling transcripts and that kind of thing. And two, you don't have the subpoena power, because you really don't have, you're not already representing them. So you only have limited power of what you can access.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 1:No, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And most of these people in prison their convictions are final, meaning they have gone through trial, obviously, and they've gone through the appeal process, and when their conviction is final, they have no right to an attorney anymore, because the area of law that we practice in is called post-conviction, and once you start doing public records requests, and once you start doing public records requests and once you start uncovering new information, there's only a specific timeframe by which you need to then bring that information into court.
Speaker 1:There's a statutory timeframe, it's called prescription. I think the lawyers would know it's a prescription and so we don't want to trigger any procedural bars or clocks by start investigating a case before we fully invested our resources and our support on a case. And so once we start looking at just publicly available information and get a better sense of the case, we go visit the person in prison, kind of get a sense of who they are and get a better sense of their story, and if we think there's something there, there's something really missing about this case, we decide to move it to our next stage, which is assigning an investigator and beginning to investigate the case.
Speaker 2:So give me a percentage of a hundred applications. All right, Are you willing to do this? If we have a hundred applications, how many of the inmates let's call? Them inmates will respond back and actually complete the application that you send.
Speaker 1:You know, I would say probably like 40%, yeah, and I think there are many impediments, I recognize, to completing our application. Many of in-prison people are illiterate, right, so they would have to find an inmate counsel specialist or a friend or someone who's willing to, you know, spend the time to complete the applications. I think, because we want to be pretty thorough and extensive. I mean, there could be a possibility where someone just stops, gives up in the middle of it, they don't have all the information, they don't have their court file, they don't have their defense file, so they don't have all of the information that is needed and required to fill this application and maybe they feel like they can't turn in an incomplete form to us.
Speaker 2:Interesting, and so up to 40%, you guys start, you know, review the application and then start looking to reviewing, doing a close review of all those applications that have been completed.
Speaker 1:So, for example, you know, we are an office of eight attorneys, right, including myself, and so I have five attorneys. It's their complete job is to be an attorney, to be a staff lawyer, right, we have three attorneys in my office, including the legal director myself and our deputy director, who has other responsibilities, other administrative, managerial responsibilities. So, in an office of eight lawyers, I think we right now have like 20, 21 cases in investigation and we have another 20, 25 actually in litigation, and so the number of cases we're able to handle it's pretty small, you know, and these cases, I have to say, it takes years for us to complete.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean an average. It takes anywhere between seven to eight years for us to from investigation to exoneration.
Speaker 2:What, yeah, I mean from from 9,000 applications, right, and let's just say let's cut that number in half for 4,500 applications in the last 10 years. Let's just make a number up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You had 20 cases.
Speaker 1:Right, no exactly.
Speaker 2:And those take years and years and years. And man hours, woman hours, it's just, it is so. And how many? And not just that, the resources, the actual cash, the money to hire experts, and can you talk about just the sheer amount of resources it takes to?
Speaker 1:prove someone. Yeah, I mean, we started talking about public records, right, and so once we decided to investigate a case, we actually put in a lot of public records requests to district attorney's offices, law enforcement agencies, crime lab.
Speaker 2:And they're very willing to just hand over everything, right.
Speaker 1:They're not. I wish they were more cooperative. And so there's a lot of back and forth with public records requests, but each agency charges either $1 a page or $2 a page for a copy of their public record, and sometimes these records are 200, 300 pages long right, or thousands of pages long, and so we in fact actually spent a lot of money just like paying for copies of records we need to have in order to begin to really learn about the case. Not only that, as you mentioned, we're based in New Orleans, but we take cases all across the state of Louisiana, and so we have two cases in North Louisiana right now, one in Shreveport, one in Bossier.
Speaker 1:We actually have a case here in Lafayette. We have a case in Lake Charles. So just the travel expenses for investigators to come out to Lafayette or go out to Lake Charles and spend a week right looking for witnesses, interviewing witnesses, picking up records, doing everything that you need to do, you know, in a place to fully investigate a case. And you also mentioned experts. You know we retest DNA, we have fingerprint experts, we have pathologists we consult with. I mean there's there's a whole host of experts that you can consult with, given the particular set of facts of a case, and so yeah, reinvestigating and relitigating these cases can be quite costly.
Speaker 2:Where do y'all meet most of the inmates? Where are they incarcerated?
Speaker 1:They're mostly incarcerated at Angola or Hunt. Actually those are the two primary locations. I mean, obviously for women they're at the women's prison, the LCIW, but yeah, for men it's mostly Angola or Hunt.
Speaker 2:And then when, I guess, guess a lawyer meets with them, and what type of information are they trying to get from the inmate?
Speaker 1:You know, I mean we try to get information about their initial arrest, you know, because most of our clients are proclaiming innocence to actually don't know anything about the facts of the case, right. And when we represent someone, we're not representing someone who was at the scene, but? And when we represent someone, we're not representing someone who was at the scene but didn't commit the crime, like. That's not the scenario that we're going for. We're looking to represent someone who's, in fact, factually innocent, who didn't know anything about the crime leading up to it or afterwards, or during, right. And so, I mean, most of the time our clients cannot tell us information about what happened, right. But they tell us about what they were doing at the time they were arrested, how that arrest went down, if they were interrogated you know how they were interrogated. They talk to us about what they've heard in the neighborhood, what others are saying about what happened, right.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, those are typically the stuff we learn Were most of these men and women who were originally convicted and we believe are innocent. Were they represented by public defenders initially in their first trial?
Speaker 1:You know, I think many of them are represented by public defenders, but not all Right. But I think I think we looked at our cases several years ago and I want to say, like it was like, I think it was like almost 40 or 50% were represented by public defenders. Yeah, it was not. I said it would be, I said it would be higher actually, but it actually wasn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's surprising, but you know you don't need to have a public. I was a public defender.
Speaker 2:I thought I was a darn good lawyer and there are some amazing public defenders, but it's still limited resources the same lack of resources that you're talking about, or the same cost that you're talking about. Those public defenders, or even private lawyers, were facing the same constraints in the initial trial, which is a problem with the criminal justice system. Right, you have a state or a federal government with unlimited resources and you have mostly an indigent person on the other side who can't hire the best of the best experts to defend themselves, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, with our clients who were able to hire an attorney for trial, that's all they could hire. I mean, they didn't have the money to pay for an expert, they didn't have the money to pay for an investigator, so all they were able to do is hire that lawyer. But a lawyer needs more support to actually truly you know, challenge the state's case, particularly if the states are using an expert. Like you know, challenge the state's case, particularly if the states are using an expert. Like you. You, you want an expert to challenge their expert, right? You definitely need an investigator to look at the facts of the case that you know, the entire law enforcement agency has been spending years looking at, right? So, yeah, no, it's definitely an imbalance, for sure.
Speaker 2:Well we're. I mean, I do only civil work now but even in civil work and we're just arguing about money we have three or four experts on our side. They have three or four experts on their side. Now you talk about a man's life and liberty and potentially a death sentence, and you have no money to hire a single expert to defend you. That's sad.
Speaker 1:No, it's really tragic, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Before we get too far in and I'm going to kind of jump back and forth on some of this, why should the average person care about the work that the Innocence Project does, innocence Project New Orleans? Why should someone say some people are listening at home and saying, well, I'm not going to commit a crime, my family's not going to commit a crime, we're not on death row. Why should I care about the work that these people do?
Speaker 1:You know we talked a little bit about this before starting. You know I think people don't realize how much the state spends on our criminal legal system, right, the judicial system, the law enforcement, the police sheriff's office, the prosecution, like attorney general's office, the district attorney, the public defender system and the department of corrections that houses incarcerated folks. It is a huge, huge, if not one of the biggest budgetary items in our state, right. So each and every one of us, every single person in Louisiana, is contributing to that system through your tax dollars.
Speaker 2:Isn't it like $30,000 a year to house a person?
Speaker 1:I think it's something like that. Yeah, it is not cheap, right, and so I think everyone should care about how that legal system is functioning, right? Is it a fair system? Is it a just system? Are we getting what we're putting into it? And I would say we are not, because there are factually innocent, wrongfully convicted people who are serving not just a year in prison but doing a life sentence, who is going to be in prison for the rest of their life and will die either at Angola or a Hunt Correctional Center. Right, and the premise of our legal system is beyond a reasonable doubt, particularly in our criminal legal system, and our founding fathers thought that it was more important to let 10 guilty people go than let one innocent person suffer in prison. Right, that's the principle, that is our founding, you know, cornerstone of our criminal legal system. And the fact that we have so many wrongfully convicted people in our legal system, it should make every citizen pause and wonder like are we using our resources appropriately, right?
Speaker 2:Right, and you know I've had this conversation with people and I mentioned one time and this is just to be provocative I was like Jesus Christ, right, right, he was condemned to death. Right, he was accused of something that he didn't do. Right, and if they can do it to Jesus Christ, chaz Roberts doesn't stand much of a chance, does he Right? And I say it to be provocative, but it awakens people.
Speaker 2:It's like okay, well, who's to say that your outspoken beliefs or you picking the wrong political side can't make you a target to the wrong government right, and then all of a sudden you're framed, or something like that? You need checks and balances. You have to protect your constitutional rights. I tell that to people all the time. I bring a lot of criminal defense lawyers on, and I was a criminal defense lawyer for many, many years. It's like, okay, you have to protect the rights of the innocent by defending the guilty right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Because, yes, that person did have drugs in their car, but what was the reason for the stop? And if we don't push back as lawyers against the state, next thing you know they're going to be rummaging through your belongings in your home.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right. No a due process until it's taken away from you. It's really really important.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and you feel when someone is on the opposite side of the law and then their due process is basically avoided, you feel very helpless and you have no faith in anything else.
Speaker 1:Right, certainly not the government, oh my goodness. No, absolutely not yeah.
Speaker 2:Tell me a story about one of the guys who you've been able to, and your organization has been able to exonerate.
Speaker 1:Sure. So Raymond Flanks. Raymond came home and was exonerated November of 2022. And Raymond did 38 years 38 years for a robbery murder that he did not commit. Raymond was just 20 years old back in 1983 when he was falsely accused of committing a robbery that resulted in a death. So what happened was there was an elderly couple the woman the wife was in the car about to go someplace with her husband. As the husband was coming out of his home, a young black man comes up to the couple, demands the money and, during that interaction, ends up killing the husband and drives away in a blue car. The wife calls the police and they're both elderly, in the sense that they're in their 60s, I believe. She calls the police, she provides a description of the perpetrator.
Speaker 1:A few weeks later, Raymond's arrested on an unrelated incident. He happens to be driving a blue car, and so they put him into a lineup for this potential armed robbery murder and the wife identifies him positively. Identifies him as the person who killed her husband, and so that's the state's case right. As the person who killed her husband, and so that's the state's case, right. Raymond was charged capitally and he was actually going to face a death penalty. What happened in his case was that the jury found him guilty, but they refused to sentence him to death, and so he was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. We began to look at Raymond's case.
Speaker 2:Did he fill out an application in the same way that we described earlier?
Speaker 1:Yes, no, raymond reached out and by the time we got to his case he's already done well over 30 years right. And so Raymond reached out and we began to look at his case and we were able to get our hands on the grand jury transcript and what we saw was that the wife's testimony at trial was very, very different from what she testified to at the grand jury. Starting with a description of the perpetrator, she described the perpetrator as having a white blotch. Now, the man accused, you know described to be the perpetrator, was a black man. Right, she described the perpetrator as having a white blotch, like a very, very recognizable something that she saw immediately a white blotch on his face. Right when she was, when the police was conducting an eyewitness identification procedure with her, she said I'm looking for a guy with a white blotch essentially right, because she remembered this from the incident. And when she was looking at Raymond's photo, the detective said that's him. And she said give me a flashlight, let me take a closer look at this guy. And she couldn't see a white blotch. But what she decided was that the photo must not be showing the white blotch. But this must be the guy, because the detective's telling me that I have the right person.
Speaker 1:And so not only did he not match, not only did Raymond not match the description of the perpetrator, because there's no white blotches anywhere in Raymond's face, he didn't match the age description the perpetrator was described as being in his 30s. Raymond was 20 years old and he looked very much like a young 20-year-old. The wife described the car that the perpetrator got away in as an older model blue, baby blue car. Raymond had a blue car, but he had just gotten it a year before. It was not an older model blue car, it was actually a brand new car, right.
Speaker 1:And so there were these critical discrepancies from her initial description that she provided and that she testified to at the grand jury. That, for some one reason or the other, what was changed actually by the time she testified at trial, and I think what happened was that I think the detective massaged her testimony to fit Raymond. I think he somehow got her convinced that some of the important facts that she testified to at the grand jury was not as important during the trial testimony, trial testimony, and her testimony at trial began to match Raymond much more closely than what it actually was at the initial police report and at the grand jury. Not only that, you know this incident happened in December of 1983.
Speaker 1:There were five other similar robberies that happened in the same neighborhood, targeting older people, other, getting into a car, getting out of a car in front of their homes or a parking lot, um and the and the perpetrator was described very, very similarly in all of those crimes, and none of those descriptions fit Raymond and so, um, it looked as though there is a crime spree happening, right, and Raymond was not committing it, but he somehow was fingered for this one particular crime that looked like it was part of a spree actually committed by another person.
Speaker 2:And so there's a couple issues there is like and we could talk about for an hour eyewitness testimony and it's very unreliable. I don't think people at home probably realize how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be and how your memory can change and how you can have this confirmation bias and then how police and look, I don't want to rag on police, they do a very important job but they want to solve the crime and whenever there is a suspect, oftentimes all things lead to that road and then they're.
Speaker 2:They don't open up the whole canvas of other potential suspects right that even some of them can become obvious because they have a suspect and they want to solve that crime and close that case and give these people closure and move on down the road.
Speaker 1:Right? No, absolutely. I think there's been studies done about tunnel vision. I think all of us do it, not just law enforcement officers. I think we probably all do it in our own individual way and many different things. Right? Yeah, I know, enforcement officers. I think we probably all do it in our own individual way and many different things, right? Yeah, I know, absolutely. I think. In Raymond's case, I think what stood out was that when there is conflicting information, when law enforcement or the prosecutor receives conflicting information or information that could be impeachment material or information that could be favorable to the defense, to have an obligation you know, due process obligation to turn that information over to the defense. And I think what was wrong with Raymond's case was that the prosecution failed to turn over the favorable information that a good defense attorney, you know, armed with that evidence, could have really used it at trial. Right.
Speaker 2:Brady, yes.
Speaker 1:Brady evidence.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I appreciate how you try not to get too legal and technical for us, but we'll talk about Brady. So, um the, we've all seen Shawshank Redemption right? Do you need to find out who the real killer is in order to prove the innocence of your client?
Speaker 1:You know. So, not necessarily to get them out of prison, to get them a new trial and get them out of prison. But many of our clients then go back into court to seek wrongful conviction compensation. Right, it's a separate process, right? Once their conviction has been vacated, once their charges or indictment has been dismissed, they have an opportunity to go back into court, file a separate petition for wrongful conviction compensation, and the standard for that is you have to show by clear and convincing evidence that you're innocent, Right, and so being able to point to an actual perpetrator is always helpful. I think in those situations, being able to point to an actual perpetrator is always helpful. I think in those situations I mean, it's not required, obviously, but I think that's probably a very, very strong piece of evidence. But we've had clients who have effectively shown that they did not commit the crime. They don't know who committed the crime, but certainly they did not commit the crime.
Speaker 2:So, from the time Mr Flanks contacted you, how long did it take for him to be exonerated and released from prison?
Speaker 1:So you know, for Raymond Flanks' case it was unusual in the sense that this was one of those cases that the DA agreed to join us in working toward getting his conviction vacated, because they realized that there were critical Brady information that they should have turned over to Mr Flank's defense attorney, you know back in 1985 when the trial happened Right, and so they kind of admitted to violating his due process violations and kind of worked with us to overturn his conviction.
Speaker 2:That's excellent. And what's Mr Fl um what's it? What's Mr Flanks up to now?
Speaker 1:So Raymond's been home since 2022. Um, he has a fiance. Uh, he has a longtime partner who's been with him, who was with him when he was in prison and who's been supporting him since he's come home. Um, raymond has a job. He did a green core job program when he came home, and so he's working with a nonprofit organization that promotes green infrastructure. Right, and so he's planting trees around the city. He's doing green infrastructure work in terms of putting this electronic panels on rooftops. Right, raymond, when he was at Angola, he got his bachelor's in Christian ministry and so he also does a lot of speaking to youth organizations, to churches, so he's actually doing quite well.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think anytime you spend 38 years in prison, I think it's a real challenge. I think what's really remarkable about Raymond is that he has a real supportive family network, right, that's really been helpful to him since he's been home. Obviously, his partner, cassandra, has been amazing, right standing by him. But also, raymond, if you met him, you would never know that he spent 38 years wrongfully imprisoned. Like he is the most kind and peaceful person, like he's come to terms with what had happened to him and he would say that if you are angry in prison. If you held a grudge against anybody in prison like you, you wouldn't survive. Like you would, you would have died in prison. Right, you have to reach a place of forgiveness, and I think Raymond did that long time ago in prison, um, and so he's quite remarkable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is Raymond's experience common with other men and women that have?
Speaker 1:It really is. Yeah, many of our clients have, um, have really forgiven right the system for of what has happened to them and I think for many of them, you really, and I think it's true. I mean, prisons are incredibly violent places and I think if you're angry at yourself, or at someone else or at the system, I think that anger will show through and you'll become either a victim right in prison or you'll just get yourself into a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2:I think one way or the other. That's amazing. You have to reach a level of peace in prison to survive.
Speaker 1:Right, no, I think you really do, you really do.
Speaker 2:It's probably because people don't want to hear how you're innocent every day, right, there's. There's another scene from Shawshank Redemption. It's like, well, I'm innocent, everybody's innocent, right, only guilty man in Shawshank, right. And it's like, no, like you have, we're all here, regardless of the circumstances, and this is our society and our ecosystem and we have to survive together.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Tell me about another one.
Speaker 1:Tell Right, right, right, Absolutely. Tell me about another one, Tell me about another guy. So our most recent exoneree, his name is Jerry Davis. And what's you know? What's kind of interesting about Jerry Davis and Raymond Flanks is that they're both Brady cases and the prosecutor who held withheld information from Jerry and Raymond is the same prosecutor.
Speaker 2:Do you think it's malicious when prosecutors withhold information?
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know if it's malicious. I mean, one thing that really stands out about this one particular guy is that he has been single-handedly involved in 12 wrongful conviction cases in the 1980s and so-.
Speaker 2:Is this New Orleans?
Speaker 1:It's New Orleans, yeah. So I don't know if it was the culture of the office that allowed him to do this and he felt like this is what he was supposed to do to win cases. So I don't want to impute any sort of intent on him, but it is a fact that he handled very, very serious cases. So I don't want to like impute any sort of intent on him, but it is a fact that he handled very, very serious cases and 12 of those guys there were wrongful convictions, you know. And one of them was John Thompson. You know it's one of the well-known cases in Louisiana and New Orleans. You know he came within weeks of being killed right Until new evidence was uncovered. New scientific evidence was uncovered right, and it was the same prosecutor in John Thompson's case, jerry Davis's case and Raymond Flank. So he had pretty critical pieces of information that would have been very, very helpful for the defense to have right In challenging the state's case. So Jerry Davis.
Speaker 1:So Jerry Davis was convicted of also armed robbery, murder, and what happened in Jerry Davis's case is that there was a co -defendant right, a co-defendant in the case who essentially implicated Jerry, but Jerry said I was never involved, and this co-defendant's name was Weyer that's implicated Jerry but Jerry said I was never involved. And this co-defendant's name was Ware. That's his last name. But Jerry has always said I would never have committed this crime with Ware.
Speaker 1:I was not there, and one of the state's key witnesses his name was Johnson, and he actually was Ware's actual co-defendant, but he became the state's primary witness, and the way it happened is that this man named Johnson, he was arrested and awaiting sentencing on his fifth burglary case, and so he was facing a pretty steep sentencing. And because he was facing such a steep sentence, he told the officers that he had some information about a murder that was currently unsolved, and so he gave them information, telling them that Davis confessed to him to having killed. It was a robbery of a couple. The husband is killed, the wife survives. He tells them that Davis Jerry Davis confessed to him of committing this crime when in fact it was him who committed the crime.
Speaker 2:And he the jailhouse snitch.
Speaker 1:Yes, and he was actually, we believe, the person who actually committed the crime with a wear you know. And so they proceeded to prosecute Jerry, and Jerry was convicted and sentenced to life, and Jerry did 40 years. He did 40 years before we were able to bring him home.
Speaker 2:Wow. So we're covering all of the usual suspects, we're covering eyewitnesses.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We're covering tunnel vision biased police, brady violations and now snitch testimony, which is super unreliable and police rely on this all the time.
Speaker 1:All the time Right, we need to have more safety measures. When we use snitch testimony, you notice they obviously are biased and they're motivated deeply motivated by self-interest.
Speaker 2:Now Innocence Project New Orleans works within a network of other Innocence Project organizations throughout the country and, if I'm not mistaken, was it Brian Williams, Was it who was the original founder?
Speaker 1:Oh, barry Sheck, Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld.
Speaker 2:And Peter Neufeld and a lot of it came on the scene when DNA testing became available, right, right. So a lot of the exonerations were based on DNA evidence right and that was not available till.
Speaker 1:I mean, the first DNA exoneration was 1989. 89, right and that was not available till. I mean the first DNA exoneration was 1989. 89, right.
Speaker 2:And so that's not that long ago, right.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, it's in my lifetime. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Right, and so what I'm curious about is have wrongful convictions, and so these are 40-year-old cases. 30-year-old cases, have wrongful convictions gone down, or is there no statistical data available? Are we getting better in the criminal justice system?
Speaker 1:Right, no, that's a really good question. And so, in terms of DNA, I would have to say, because we're using DNA at the front end of the system right, whenever there's physical evidence collected from a scene, I think more often than not law enforcement is putting that through the state labs to get tested, right, and so I think that's really, really important.
Speaker 2:And DNA will continue to get cheaper, yeah, cheaper and better.
Speaker 1:More sensitive in the sense that smaller and smaller amounts of physical evidence is needed right to get a profile. And you know, when DNA was first used back in 1989 and early 90s, you could only use like saliva or seminal fluids, right, you had to be bodily fluid blood, something like that. But nowadays there's touch DNA, meaning like anything that you touch where in which you leave skin cells, it could be DNA tested and it could be very, very minutiae, like very, very tiny, tiny amount of skin cell. The DNA testing kits are so sensitive now and it's continuing to be improved right, and so in some of our cases DNA testing may have happened back in 1990s but the results were inconclusive. Let's say we are beginning to retest those physical evidence with better testing to get to see whether or not we can get a conclusive test.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing. I remember I was in law school and I read the Innocent man have you read it, John Grisham nonfiction yes, yes, yes, I have, yeah. And it was like the who's who, the what's what of botched junk science right Hair follicle total junk science.
Speaker 1:Right bite marks, bite marks junk science.
Speaker 2:Right the forced confessions.
Speaker 1:Right. Junk science right Right right.
Speaker 2:Interrogating someone over a 24-hour period. It's amazing. I don't think people realize like if you put somebody in a room and deprive them from sleep and food and drink, they will tell you in vivid detail how they killed a person and they weren't even there.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right, isn't that? I mean, it's fascinating. Most people will say if I didn't commit the crime, I would never, never, ever, no way, ever, ever say that I did it. But you're right. When you're placed into an environment where there are multiple police officers, right, interrogating you for a number of hours, depriving you of water, you know, depriving you of a phone call, I think we're just human beings.
Speaker 2:I think you break at some point, and then the cops start feeding you the information like right and then you went to her house, right? Yeah yeah, yeah, I went to her house. No, say it, I went to her house. It was like it's crazy, right, the first 48 I was a big fan of that and you could see you know things that they would do in the confession room, and then you have a prisoner's dilemma where they bring you both in in a separate room and they're forcing you to confess or rat out your buddy, and it's, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Right, right. Or telling you like he, he already said that you did it, or some whatever yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you, uh, how does your organization um? How does your organization raise funds to support your endeavors?
Speaker 1:So there's probably three ways we raise funds. One is through individual donors. So donations Giving Tuesday Give NOLA Day, like individual donors giving us $10, $100, $10,000, what have you right? That's a primary source of raising funds. Another source is private foundations family foundations, private foundations, regional foundations, sometimes national foundations giving us money, grant money. And the third is government, and so we have currently a federal grant right to look at wrongful conviction cases from DOJ, the Bureau of Justice, and then we also have a contract with the state public defender board. I guess it's not called the state public defender board anymore, but like we have a contract with the state, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's been some big names recently in Hollywood that have come forward and supported innocent projects right.
Speaker 1:Was it was.
Speaker 2:Kim Kardashian one or.
Speaker 1:Kanye West maybe? No, I think Kim Kardashian comes out often right on behalf of particular cases and individuals.
Speaker 2:yes, and it's something that once you get, just like when we met, just when you start hearing some of the stories, it's like can you imagine a worse or a worse or a worse thing to happen than come in contact with someone and get to know someone and know that they're wrongfully accused of a crime? I don't. Maybe that's why I'm a lawyer, is it's a, it's a deep sense of justice. I can be cute, I can be accused of of anything, but if I'm accused of something that I didn't say or do, it just lights me up it, because I'm just so for justice right right and when you come in contact with some of these people and you hear their story, you want, you've dedicated your life to it and I think that's a very worthwhile endeavor.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. You know, I think we take our freedom for granted. You know, I think we right, I think we your life to it and I think that's a very worthwhile endeavor.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:You know, I think we take our freedom for granted you know, I think we right, I think we take our freedom and our liberties for granted and once it's taken away, um, it's part of your humanity that's stripped from you. You know, and particularly for someone who did not commit the crime to have all of your life's opportunities and life dreams taken away from you. You know, like Raymond, he was 20 when he was incarcerated. He lost 38 years. Like he never got a chance to get married, have children right, he never got a chance to finish his schooling. Like he never got a chance to do many things like travel. He's trying to catch up for lost time now, but life's opportunities completely taken away from him. That, and he'll never get back those hours, those days.
Speaker 2:Tell me about Louisiana. Why tell me some of the stats of incarcerated people in Louisiana and the U? S as a whole?
Speaker 1:You know. So, unfortunately, louisiana leads the country in our rate of incarceration. In fact, you know, we lead the world because US is the leading incarceration in the world and because we are the leading incarcerator of United States, we lead the world in incarceration. It's not a fact that we should be proud of about, you know, because when you look at all of the other factors, like health care, economic development, education, we are in the bottom fifth. And yet here we are leading the world, number one in incarceration and mass incarceration.
Speaker 1:You know, when you look at the criminal legal system, you begin to see that it is not guilt or innocence that necessarily dictates the outcome, but it's wealth and it's race.
Speaker 1:Right, if you have the means to put on a defense, to put on a fight, you may win your case right.
Speaker 1:And I say race because when you look at our prison population, you know one third of Louisiana is black African Americans, right.
Speaker 1:But when you look at our prison population, two thirds are African American. And when you look at who's serving the most severe excessive, you know sentences, life in prison without the possibility of parole, that percentage of individuals serving that extreme sentence I think it's like 78% are African American, right. And when you look at who's sentenced to death, who's sentenced to die here in Louisiana, I believe it's 68% are black right, and so there's a real wealth disparity in the criminal legal system and there's a real racial disparity in the criminal legal system. You know, I have to tell you, I've never met a client and I was a public defender and obviously as a public defender you represent poor people, but even as a public defender in the court system, I never rarely would I see someone with means and money come through the criminal legal system right, and certainly every client that we have touched and we have worked with who are actually innocent, all of them have been poor right.
Speaker 2:How did this start? How did we become the leader of imprisonment?
Speaker 1:You know, I mean, I think we can probably point to several things. You know, I mean we're also a very, very poor state, right, I think poverty probably leads to crime. And when there is other actual crime or appearance of crime, you know, the legislators want to take action and want to talk about public safety. And so there is the habitual offender law. Right, we have one of the most harsh habitual offender law. It's the law that they're, you know, third strike and then you're out right.
Speaker 2:Everybody in court knew I'm a third time loser man. That's what they would say I don't want to be a third time loser.
Speaker 1:Right 20 to life right If you're a third time, if you're a triple offender, as you're called, or a quad offender, you're facing 20 to life right or maybe a life sentence because of your prior convictions. Right.
Speaker 2:And some people at home are thinking well, you should have gotten it right by the second time. Well, you're two in two strikes in overnight like minor, smaller type violations and before you know it it stacks up on you. Second offense of marijuana was a felony. And so that could be strike one. And now marijuana is completely decriminalized, almost completely decriminalized.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think in 35 or 36 states it is a lucrative business. I would argue that in Louisiana it's a lucrative business. Right, exactly, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:The local pharmacy is now going to build a superstore of a pharmacy in town. It's huge.
Speaker 1:And people have been serving decades in prison for that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in fact, you know, back in 2020, innocence Project, new Orleans we started a project, a program called the Unjust Punishment Project, because what we were seeing was like there were individuals who were serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes.
Speaker 1:And so one of our first clients was Fate Winslow. Fate Winslow had two prior cocaine convictions and his third felony was a possession with intent to distribute marijuana. He was a go-between a police officer and a seller and he got $5 for his efforts for running the marijuana between an undercover police officer and the actual distributor of drug and he got a life sentence for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and so, and he did, you know, 12 years before we were able to get him out. But he had no violence in his past, he had an addiction and he was poor and he never got treatment for his addiction, you know. And yet we decided the best thing for him was to lock him up for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2:Well, and and look, you don't even have to get locked up for the rest of your life. You get three years, four years. You come out and you have no opportunity. Now you have a felony on your record, you have no opportunity, and what's what's appealing? Well, I'm gonna go back to the streets and take the risk again.
Speaker 1:And then.
Speaker 2:And then everybody, every cop in town, knows that you know you have a rap sheet and so they're looking closer to you than they are to Carter or I. Right, and so the bail system that's another issue, right? So somebody gets arrested, they're held on a bail that they cannot afford $20,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000. They finally get to court six months later, a year later, and the public defender brings them a plea offer and says hey, if you plead guilty to this felony second offense marijuana, possession of a crack rock, whatever whether you did it or didn't, you get to go home today once you get processed. If you plead guilty to it, bam, conviction. Right, right, right. That's the problem with the bail system.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Indigent people who get picked up.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Cannot afford to bail out, so they're stuck. Yes, the only way out is to plead guilty.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:Will we see bail reform?
Speaker 1:Oh God, I hope so.
Speaker 2:Will we see it in our?
Speaker 1:lifetime. I really hope so, but, as you said, it really impacts poor people because if you had resources, you would not be sitting in prison right Pre-trial, you would be fighting from the outside and you probably will win.
Speaker 2:A person with means bails out immediately. Yeah, before they get processed, they take their picture, they're out on bail, the bondsman's there waiting and they're out, and it could be a $20,000 bond, $50,000. So you could pledge property.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you have property, free and clear, if your parents have property, your aunts, your uncles, somebody can can pledge property instead of even cash and you're out, right. Well, when you're out, you can hire a lawyer. You have no urgency, you can just go to court in a normal manner. You can bump the court date four or five, six times, two or three years later people lose motivation and you can get a deal done that doesn't involve a felony or you can try your case or you could do rehabilitative things on the front end to avoid a type of felony.
Speaker 2:You don't have those resources. If you're indigent, your only option is to plead guilty to get out.
Speaker 1:No, I think you hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah hit the nail on the head. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, um, how okay? So we talked about how can we support what's your website? It's wwwip-noorg.
Speaker 2:All right, we're going to put that in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Let's talk real quick. Marcellus Williams. Yes, that's the latest one. My social media feed was blowing up and I think it made national media. When was the last? Time what's the last time Louisiana um executed someone?
Speaker 1:you know, last time Louisiana executed someone I think was early two thousands. Yeah, it's been. Did you realize that?
Speaker 2:that it's been over probably 20 years since. Louisiana executed someone. It's been a while yeah, and so I guess Marcellus Williams, it was such a hot topic because people the executions are pretty rare nowadays. Right how many do we have across the country a year.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know how many across the country.
Speaker 2:I know I'm asking really tough questions.
Speaker 1:I didn't bring my stats with me.
Speaker 2:No, but it's less than probably a dozen right.
Speaker 1:No, it's gone down. I think different states are different, you know. I think Texas probably leads in the number of executions these days. I think Alabama and yeah, maybe Florida, but definitely Alabama and yeah, maybe Florida, but definitely Alabama and Texas have seen executions this year for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so Marcellus Williams. What state was that?
Speaker 1:It was Missouri, missouri, yeah, missouri, that's right.
Speaker 2:And he was a guy who had always proclaimed his innocence, who had always proclaimed his innocence, which is rare right that someone would continue to proclaim their innocence, and he had some favorable facts right. That made people question whether he was actually guilty.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, I think what stands out about Marcellus Williams' case is that the local district attorney, right Wanted, believed in his innocence and wanted to overturn his conviction and grant him a new trial. Wow, stands out about Marcellus.
Speaker 1:Williams' case is that the local district attorney, right wanted, believed in his innocence and wanted to overturn his conviction and grant him a new trial. Wow Right, I think the governor was on the same page with him, but the attorney general of Missouri was not on the same page with them and he was fighting them to maintain his conviction.
Speaker 2:That is nuts, it is nuts, it is absolutely nuts. Is that a political play?
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously some politics must be involved, right?
Speaker 2:The people who prosecuted him said you know what we think that he's maybe innocent.
Speaker 1:Right right, and yet the state government steps in Right, the state government steps in, and I think what's worrying about Marcella Williams' case and other cases like him I think there's one, robert Robertson, that's currently happening in Texas where he's also claiming innocence and his execution day was just delayed last week. There's a guy named Glossop in Oklahoma where he's claiming innocence and his case is before the US Supreme Court right now. I think what's worrisome about those cases is that when there's new evidence, like any new evidence tending to support their claim of innocence or tending to support that a grave injustice occurred in their trials, I think the whole entire system should stop and ask themselves like are we actually going to kill someone, right? Not just like lock them up for the rest of their life I mean, that's also death by incarceration but like are we really going to kill someone when clearly there are stakeholders in the system who have doubts about whether or not this person is in fact guilty, right? I mean, death is such an extreme, extreme punishment.
Speaker 2:Draconian right.
Speaker 1:Draconian. I mean I recently, just last week, I went to see a documentary called Rebel Nun, sister Helen Prejean. It's a documentary about her Rebel Nun. It just came out and one of the first scenes in that documentary is her talking about the first execution that she witnessed and how it just made her so sick. And the person that was executed was someone who never claimed innocence. He was in fact guilty of a pretty heinous crime. But she saw the humanity of him and then she, as a spiritual advisor, was with him when he was executed and she just thought this is the most horrific thing that we can do to each other. And so her point was like, if someone is claiming factual innocence, if there are any doubts about that person's case, I mean it is inhumane for us to go forward with that execution. It indignifies all of us.
Speaker 2:Do you have a favorite movie about the type of work you do? There's been several. I'm thinking of the Life of David Gale is one of them. Have you seen that one? I haven't. Kevin Spacey oh wow, it was a really good movie, oh really no, I've not seen that one.
Speaker 1:Haven't Kevin Spacey? Oh wow, it was a really good movie. Oh really no, I've not seen that one.
Speaker 2:Shawshank Redemption is like an all time favorite I know Shawshank Redemption is very good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, obviously. Oh god, why am I blanking?
Speaker 2:on Sister Helen. Yeah, what was that movie? Death man Walking, death man Walking yeah, death man Walking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's, I think I saw that one as a teenager. That was phenomenal.
Speaker 2:It left an impact. And what's the Jamie Foxx movie? Oh I recommend everyone watch that one Does it have mercy.
Speaker 1:Just Mercy, just Mercy, just Mercy.
Speaker 2:I should know. The name of the podcast is Law have Mercy, just Mercy. I went and watched it at the theaters with the MNO group?
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, that's right, and that was an awesome experience.
Speaker 2:But I would recommend everyone check out Just Mercy with Jamie Foxx. He's excellent in it. Gee, thank you for coming all this way and the meaningful work you do for so many people who deserve it. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.
Speaker 2:We're going to put your contact information, the website, on the show notes so people can go out and donate some money. Five bucks helps Ten, bucks helps Ten grand helps a lot. Thank you G.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Hey, it would mean the world to me if you subscribe to the podcast and leave us a five-star review. It helps keep the show free and it helps us book better guests to provide more valuable content to you, and it helps us book better guests to provide more valuable content to you. None of the opinions expressed by my guests are that of my own, and nothing we talked about creates an attorney-client relationship or could be construed as legal advice. Hope you enjoy the show. This podcast is powered by Acadiana Cast Network. Go to acadianacastcom for more South Louisiana-sourced content.
