the police charged freeman and thompson with murder. the local prosecutor wanted the death penalty for thompson, but knew it would be an uphill battle because thompson had never been convicted of a violent crime. that was about to change. on december 28, 1984, 19-year-old jay lagard, and his sister, meemy, who was 16, and his brother went to the superdome for a college basketball tournament. after the game as they were getting in the car, an african-american man jumped into the backseat, pulled out a .357 magnum and said i m taking your car, i want all your valuables. jay deliberately caused a car accident. the carjacker then leapt forward
by a man named john thompson. john thompson was a low level drug dealer and fence. he grew up in the projects in new orleans, was raised mostly by his grandmother. his father was a career criminal. ritchie perkins confronted mr. thompson after the fact and got mr. thompson to confess that he was the one that killed mr. liuzza. perkins said thompson had an accomplice named kevin freeman. police arrested freeman and thompson. the story that kevin freeman told police was that he and john thompson had been driving home together and the car had run out of gas. ray liuzza drove past them, parked and began to walk across the street to his apartment. at that point he said i m going to hit that guy and pulled a gun out of his pocket. and then mr. freeman got cold feet, if you will and decided he didn t want any part of it. and as he was running away, freeman said he heard the shots. the police charged freeman and thompson with murder.
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the police charged freeman and thompson with murder. the local prosecutor wanted the death penalty for thompson but knew it would be an up-hill battle because thompson had never been convicted of a violent crime. that was about to change. on december 28th, 1984, 19-year-old jay, his sister who was 16, and their younger brother who was 12, went to the super dome for a college basketball tournament. after the game, as they were getting in the car, an african-american man jumped into the back seat, pulled out a . .357 magnum and said i ll taking your car, i want your valuables. jay was instructed on drive away from the super dome. rather than did that he did something that was either very brave or very stupid and deliberately caused a car accident. the carjacker then left forward
corridor, we turned around and looked back. and there was john with his head in his hands. we thought he was getting out of jail the next day. and now we found out that he had to stand trial with a risk of spending the rest of his life in prison. on the morning of may 7th, 2003, john thompson stood before the same judge in the same courtroom where he had been sentenced to death 18 years earlier. but michael and gordon had a problem. they couldn t attack the damaging testimony of kevin freeman. the man they believed murdered ray liuzza. freeman was shot dead in 1995 while committing a robbery. with freeman dead, his previous testimony stood as evidence that thompson had committed the liuzza murder. we had all this evidence that freeman had lied in his original