NEW ORLEANS — A Black man wrongfully convicted as a teenager for a New Orleans rape greater than 36 years in the past was ordered freed Thursday after a choose threw out his conviction.
Sullivan Walter, now 53, used a handkerchief to wipe away tears as a state district choose formally vacated his conviction for a home-invasion rape. Judge Darryl Derbigny expressed anger that blood and semen proof that might have cleared him by no means made it to to the jury.
“To say this was unconscionable is an understatement,” Derbigny informed Walter.
After showing in courtroom in New Orleans, Walter was pushed to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, the place he was formally launched.
District Attorney Jason Williams’ workplace joined with protection attorneys working with Innocence Project New Orleans, a legal justice advocacy group, to have the conviction vacated.
Walter was 17 when he was arrested in reference to the New Orleans rape. The rapist had entered the house of the sufferer, recognized within the report as L.S., in May 1986, held a knife to her throat and threatened to hurt her 8-year-old son, who slept by way of the incident.
Emily Maw, an legal professional with Williams’ workplace, outlined the issues within the case in courtroom, noting there have been causes to imagine the sufferer, the one witness, had mistakenly recognized Walter.
“There were some red flags that the eyewitness testimony could well have been unreliable,” Maw informed Derbigny.
Those “red flags” had been spelled out in a joint submitting by the protection and prosecutors forward of Thursday’s listening to.
“In this case, L.S. was being asked to make a cross-racial identification of someone who at all the times that she could observe him was either masked, in an unlit room at night, and/or threatening her not to look at him. In addition, L.S. was not shown a photo array containing Mr. Walter until over six weeks after the crime,” the movement stated.
More considerably, no proof was introduced about Walter’s blood traits that didn’t match the semen collected from the sufferer after the rape.
The submitting additionally recounts years of errors by Walter’s earlier attorneys, together with failing to level out conflicting statements by a police officer who labored on the case and missteps through the attraction course of relating to the blood and semen proof.
When he was cleared Thursday, Walter had been serving a whole sentence of 39 years — 4 for a housebreaking cost unrelated to the rape case, and 35 years for a number of expenses within the rape case.
Attorneys stated the sufferer within the rape is now deceased. Maw stated in courtroom that authorities had reached out to the sufferer’s son, who was not current, and that he had expressed remorse on behalf of his mom concerning the wrongful conviction.
Innocence Project New Orleans Legal Director Richard Davis stated Walter’s race was a issue within the wrongful conviction.
“The lawyers and law enforcement involved acted as if they believed that they could do what they chose to a Black teenager from a poor family and would never be scrutinized or held to account,” Davis stated in a written assertion. “This is not just about individuals and their choices, but the systems that let them happen.”