Life Sentence

    June 4, 2007
    New Orleans CityBusiness
    By Richard A. Webster

    John Thompson was 40 years old when he walked out of the Angola State Penitentiary in 2003 after spending nearly 18 years on death row for the 1984 murder of Ray Liuzza.

    A jury acquitted him of all charges after a stunning disclosure from Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick’s office.

    In 1995, lead prosecutor Jerry Deagan told fellow prosecutor Mike Riehlmann he was dying of liver cancer and had a confession — he had concealed blood evidence that could possibly prove Thompson’s innocence.

    After Deagan died, Riehlmann said nothing of his friend’s confession for five years while Thompson sat in a cell waiting for his date with the electric chair.

    Riehlmann eventually went public with Deagan’s confession in 1999 and was briefly suspended by the Louisiana Supreme Court for his inaction.

    Thompson, 44, spent 14 of 18 years in Angola on death row and survived seven execution dates.

    Connick and Riehlmann did not respond to repeated calls for comment.

    In April, Thompson won a $14-million civil suit against the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office, which has appealed the verdict.

    Thompson left Angola with a small bag of possessions and $10 given to exiting inmates by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections for bus fare.

    “I went to prison normal but I’ll be damned if I came out normal,” Thompson said. “No way in the world you’re gonna tell me 18 years didn’t have some type of damage.”

    Echoing Green, a New York-based foundation that supports social entrepreneurs, invested more in Thompson than Louisiana did. It gave him a two-year, $60,000-grant to establish Resurrection After Exoneration, an organization designed to give wrongfully convicted victims the financial, emotional and job skills needed to live a successful post-prison life.

    “What we’re going through out here is all about what we went through in there,” Thompson said. “It’s hurt all of us. Don’t get me wrong, it hurt but it’s history. And until we put it to sleep, it’s gonna keep haunting us. So we have to deal with the effects of it and look for solutions.”
    ‘Broken human beings’

    In April, the 200th person in the United States was exonerated based on DNA evidence. Louisiana has the fourth-highest rate of DNA exonerations in the country, and 24 people since 1990, including non-DNA cases, have been released from state penitentiaries based on new evidence, according to the New Orleans Innocence Project.

    Rob Warden, executive director for Northwestern University’s Center for Wrongful Convictions in Chicago, said wrongfully convicted victims experience the same problems as the guilty upon release from prison, including high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, mental health difficulties and recidivism.

    Warden’s book, “A Promise of Justice,” detailed the case of four wrongfully convicted Chicago teenagers who spent nearly two decades in prison.

    “It took 17 years to exonerate them and when they emerged, they were absolutely broken human beings,” Warden said.

    An innocent man released from prison is not eligible for state probation and parole re-entry services such as education, counseling and job training — services meant for offenders only, not the wrongfully convicted, said Warden.

    “If you’re guilty, there are some government services. They’re usually inadequate but at least there are services,” Warden said. “But there’s nothing to aid the wrongfully convicted. It’s typically, ‘Bye. Get the hell out of here.’ There is a great reluctance to acknowledge a mistake. Let’s just ignore it and sweep it under the rug.”

    Thompson said the government needs to provide services because it is responsible for releasing human time bombs back into society.

    “I guarantee you if one of those guys was raped or molested in that prison, he’s going to bring that home,” Thompson said. “You get it so twisted in there that you develop hate toward the same people you got to come home to.”

    Services available

    State Sen. Joel Chaisson, D-Destrehan, said Louisiana provided more service to the wrongfully convicted through the Innocence Compensation Fund in 2005, which gives up to $150,000 to the exonerated and job training, counseling services and college tuition.

    Thompson said the wrongfully convicted have a hard time finding a place to live where they can be at peace. Most are forced to move in with family members, which can cause turmoil. Former inmates often have difficulties communicating because no one understands what they’ve been through and the effect it’s had on their psyche.

    “You can’t communicate with your family. You don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing,” Thompson said. “You’re supposed to get a job but because of your record or attitude you can’t. It’s not what we wanted to come home to but we have no choice. And that’s the worst — being a grown man having to depend on someone else for help. And it all goes back to that one thing — what I experienced in that prison but no one wants to recognize it.”

    Resurrection After Exoneration will offer the wrongfully convicted a place to live, jobs and courses in how to manage finances. Participants will be asked to set aside at least 25 percent of their paychecks in savings accounts. After a year, RAE will match the savings to help find independent housing.

    ‘Pride and joy’

    Thompson said it is difficult to shake the memory of 18 long years spent in a death row cell as a “dead man walking” for a crime he didn’t commit.

    He opens a 5-inch-thick, three-ring binder stuffed with legal papers and copied newspaper articles. Thompson points to a picture of a large white man standing behind an expensive mahogany desk. The man is attorney Jim Williams, the senior prosecutor who oversaw Thompson’s trial.

    The sleeves of Williams’ white button-down shirt are rolled up revealing a gold watch on his left wrist. He is wearing thin wire framed glasses. Williams’ lips are tightly pursed and his broad chest puffed outward.

    “Look at that picture,” Thompson said of the layout in Esquire magazine in the 1990s. “Look at it good.”

    Standing on the corner of Williams’ desk in the photo is a small model of an electric chair. Seated in the toy execution device are pictures of five African-American men spread out like a deck of cards. The largest picture, dead center, is of Thompson.

    “I was (Williams’) pride and joy,” Thompson said.

    Williams sent all five men to death row and had the model electric chair made as a trophy to celebrate his accomplishments.

    Of the five men in the miniature electric chair, none remain on death row. Two have been exonerated, one awaits a new trial and the other two had death sentences commuted to life.
    Williams, now a private attorney in Gretna, refused repeated calls for comment.

    “You done prosecute us, put us on death row, with lies you knew were lies,” Thompson said, standing and gesturing at the photo. “Every time we got an execution date, you was in front of the judge trying to push it. They try to straight up execute me when they know I didn’t commit the crime and yet they still trying to kill me. And this is not premeditated murder?

    “They call it malfeasance of office and get a slap on the wrist while I’m up at Angola on death row for 18 years. Somebody help me understand this.”



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