Innocence Project New Orleans

Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) is a nonprofit legal organization that represents innocent prisoners serving life sentences in Louisiana and south Mississippi.[1] It is the first organization in the Innocence Network to be established in the Deep South. Based in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, it is staffed by students, volunteers, and attorneys.

Work

Innocence Project New Orleans states that its mission is to "free innocent prisoners, expose injustice and prevent future wrongful convictions." Its chapter devotes resources to freeing citizens whose socioeconomic background have placed them on the wrong side of the justice system. It is the second largest free-standing project of the Innocence Network in the country.

Funding

Chief sources of funding for the Innocence Project New Orleans include the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and The Louisiana Public Defender Board.[1][2] IPNO also holds a fundraiser gala annually in May and accept individual donations.[1][3]

Founding

In 1999, Emily Bolton was awarded an Equal Justice Fellowship and later a Soros Advocacy Fellowship to establish Innocence Project New Orleans. The two year fellowship was worth $72,000 and IPNO was officially recognized by the National Association of Public Interest Law (now Equal Justice Works) in 2001.

Emily Bolton

Born in England, Bolton graduated from Tulane University School Of Law and began studying wrongful convictions in the Greater New Orleans area. Under her leadership, IPNO grew from a staff of one to nine and had freed 27 innocent prisoners in a span of 4 years.

Common causes of wrongful convictions
  • Mistaken eyewitness identification
  • Lying / incentivized witness testimony
  • False confessions / admissions
  • Faulty or unreliable forensic techniques
  • "Bad lawyering"

How cases are chosen

Innocence Project New Orleans currently has 20 cases in active litigation and approximately 30 in Stage 2 investigation.

  • The person claims they are factually innocent of the crime for which they are in prison.
  • The individual was convicted in Louisiana or south Mississippi.
  • The individual is serving a life sentence.
  • The individual's direct appeal has been denied.
  • The individual can not afford an attorney.
  • The individual is not serving a sentence on another, unrelated charge that will mean he or she will not be released if the conviction at issue is overturned.

House Bill 305

In 2011, Louisiana passed a house bill that provides the reduction of a defendant’s sentence for substantial assistance in an investigation. IPNO was opposed to the bill but negotiated with lawmakers to help ensure when a snitch witness testify, they are protected by the court and the content of their deal and the substance of their testimony is disclosed to the defense.

Notable Cases

Glenn Ford
See also: Conviction and exoneration of Glenn Ford

Glenn Ford is Louisiana's longest-serving death row prisoner and one of the longest-serving death row prisoners in the United States. On November 5, 1983, Ford was charged with the murder of Isadore Rozeman, an elderly white man. Ford had done yard work for Rozeman, and after the murder, he gave police information about two potential male suspects. The girlfriend of one of those suspects later implicated Mr. Ford in the murder and he was indicted for first-degree murder along with the other two men. Mr. Ford was tried and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. The charges against the other two men were dropped.[4]

The court selected public defenders for Ford from an alphabetical list from the Louisiana Bar Association. Lead counsel was an corporate attorney who had never tried a case to a jury; co-counsel had been out of law school less than two years and was working at an insurance defense firm on slip-and-fall cases and had no experience in criminal law.[5]

New lawyers presented evidence that the State concealed that confirmed Ford's testimony in 1983. He was not present at or involved in the murder. The concealed file included information from an informant, a suppressed police report related to the time of the crime, and evidence of the murder weapon, which implicated the true perpetrator – one of the other two men originally charged with Ford.

In 2012, Mr. Ford filed a petition in federal court. In 2013, prosecutors told defense counsel that a confidential informant stated that one of the other men charged in the crime had admitted to him that he - not Mr. Ford - shot and killed Rozeman. Last week, both the State and Mr. Ford's lawyers filed motions to vacate his conviction and sentence. The prosecutors wrote in their motion: "[I]f the information had been within the knowledge of the State, Glenn Ford might not even have been arrested or indicted for this offense,” though they did not identify the information.

Ford was released in March 2015.

Travis Hayes

17 year old Hayes was under the influence of marijuana at the time of his interrogation for the murder of grocery-store owner Tommy Vanhoose. He was questioned through the night by at least three different police officers without an attorney or even a parent present. After eight hours of interrogation through which he and his co-assailant Ryan Matthews gave consistent accounts of their whereabouts that day, Hayes finally agreed to his interrogators' version of events. He placed himself at the scene of the crime, though could not give the police any details about the crime whatsoever. DNA testing later linked another, unrelated, man to the killing and both Travis and Matthews, were exonerated.[6]

References
  1. "Innocence Project of New Orleans celebrates its 10th anniversary". NOLA.com. Retrieved 2018-02-10.
  2. Postlethwaite & Netterville. "INNOCENCE PROJECT NEW ORLEANS FINANCIAL STATEMENTS DECEMBER 31, 2015". Retrieved February 10, 2018.
  3. "Innocence Project New Orleans honors five at 16th Anniversary Gala". NOLA.com. Retrieved 2018-02-10.
  4. "Louisiana man walks free after nearly three decades on death row". Reuters. 2014-03-12. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  5. Cohen, Andrew. "Freedom After 30 Years on Death Row". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
  6. Bragg, Rick (2003-04-22). "DNA Clears Louisiana Man On Death Row, Lawyer Says". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-24.
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