Innocence Project New Orleans

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Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) is a nonprofit legal organization that represents innocent prisoners serving life sentences in Louisiana and southern 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 US.

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 southern 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 testifies 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[]

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, which the State had concealed, that confirmed Ford's testimony in 1983. Ford was neither present nor 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 along with Ford.

In 2012, 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 Ford, shot and killed Rozeman. Last week, both the State and 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 he could not give the police any details whatsoever about the crime. DNA testing later linked an unrelated man to the killing, and both Travis and Matthews were exonerated.^[6]

References[]

External links[]

• Official website