Louisiana Slow to Clear Imprisoned Innocents

    May 25, 2007
    The Journal of Jefferson Parish
    By Richard A. Webster

    In 2003 the Innocence Project of New Orleans received a letter from former 24th Judicial District Court Judge Alan Green now serving a 51-month sentence for corruption.

    Green wrote that he may have sent an innocent man to prison in 1989.

    "I would like to do everything in my power to correct such a miscarriage of justice," he said.

    Seven years earlier, two brothers, flanked by armed prison guards, walked across the grass of a New Orleans cemetery.

    The older brother, Willie Jackson, 35 at the time, had been in prison for seven years after receiving a 40-year sentence for first-degree robbery and attempted aggravated rape in Jefferson Parish.

    His younger brother, 34-year-old Milton, was less than a week into a life sentence, also for rape.

    They had been granted a temporary release to attend the burial of their 21-year-old brother, Floyd, who had been murdered.

    The modern-day Cain and Abel watched as the ruined life of yet another Jackson was lowered into the earth.

    Shortly after the first shovels of dirt bounced off their baby brother's coffin, the surviving Jackson brothers were returned to the their respective cells, Willie to Washington Correctional Institution in Angie and Milton to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

    In one cell sat a two-time rapist, in the other an innocent man suffering for the sins of his brother and the failings of a justice system that proved to be blind to the evidence before it.

    On Aug. 24, 2005, Willie Jackson was released on bond after DNA evidence proved his innocence.

    As of April, 200 prisoners in the United States have been freed on the basis of DNA evidence.

    But Jackson's case is uniquely tragic.

    "My brother's involvement in the situation ... " Jackson said before falling silent, still struggling with the betrayal. "Milton sat back and kept quiet until the jury found me guilty. He came forward two days later and told the district attorney's office that he was the guy, but they thought he was making it up and didn't do nothin' about it. "

    Broken system

    Louisiana has one of the highest per-capita wrongful conviction rates in the country at 2.1 per 1 million people. Only West Virginia at 3.3, Montana, 3, and Oklahoma, 2.6, have higher rates.

    Emily Maw, Innocence Project director, says this is largely because of the state boasting the highest incarceration rate in the world as well as a broken indigent defense system.

    The unwillingness of prosecutors to reconsider a conviction even in the face of a mountain of contrary evidence is also a leading factor, she said.

    Despite a confession from the guilty party, witnesses who backed Willie Jackson's claim that he was in Mississippi at the time of the crime, handwriting and medical experts who testified to his innocence, it wasn't until the introduction of DNA evidence that the courts and the DA's office relented.

    On Dec. 12, 1986, an unknown assailant allegedly raped, beat and robbed Beverly Short. At the scene of the crime, Jefferson Parish deputies found a note to the woman written on a bank receipt belonging to Willie Jackson, who was living with his wife in Natchez, Miss., at the time.

    On Jan. 16, 1987, police knocked on Willie Jackson's door at 1:30 a.m. Four days later he was standing in a lineup in Jefferson Parish.

    "I told my wife not to worry. She knew I wasn't in New Orleans when it happened. I said this would be nothing but a day or two. I'd go do a lineup and be back at work the next day. "

    The victim described her rapist as clean cut with a military-style buzz cut. Willie Jackson had a beard and Jheri curls down to his shoulder. Despite the discrepancy, when he repeated words spoken by the attacker, the victim pointed at Jackson and said, "That's him. I'll never forget that voice. "

    The trial lasted a week and all the evidence pointed to Willie Jackson's innocence until a dental expert testified that bite marks found on the victim were an exact match to Jackson's.

    "I couldn't wait for the dentist to testify," he said. "I thought his testimony would put the nail in the coffin, which it did but not the way I figured. "

    It took the jury all of 45 minutes to find him guilty.

    Lost time

    Nearly 16 years after he entered prison, Jackson was released Aug. 24, 2005. During that time his wife left him, his brother was murdered and his daughter, Ciara, had grown into a woman, largely without the influence of her father.

    His brother, Milton, who confessed to the crime, was later found guilty of another rape and sentenced to life in Angola. Though Willie's attorneys discovered DNA on Short's pantyhose that proved conclusively that Milton, not Willie, was the guilty party, Milton has never been charged with the crime.

    Former Judge Green, who was the lead prosecutor on the case is now imprisoned for, among other things, the "deprivation of honest services to the citizens of Jefferson Parish. "

    Since his release, Jackson has remarried and found work at Bollinger Shipyard.

    He is now 46 years old, having spent his 30s behind bars.

    A 2005 state law allows for those wrongfully imprisoned to be eligible for a maximum amount of $150,000 in compensation. That amounts to less than $10,000 for each year Willie Jackson spent in prison.

    And there is no guarantee the state will grant Jackson any of it in the near future. The statute requires a full hearing and the presentation of evidence to prove to the courts the individual is innocent.

    "It will probably take them as long as it took me to get out as it will to give me this chump change. "



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