in front of judge quinlan. and quinlan vacated the death sentence but he refused to vacate guilt. judge quinlan refused to grant a new trial. we were devastated. yes, it was wonderful to have john thompson spared from execution, but we were still looking at a man in his 30s who was going to be facing the rest of his life in jail. so you re going to take the death penalty back and give me a life sentence? i was scared to death even more so now. you tell me i m never going home again? that didn t give me no relief, none whatsoever. i was doomed. michael and gordon appealed the judge s decision, they knew this would be thompson s last chance for a new trial. john s going to go free or spend the rest of his life in prison.
that. tole tell you what, if you can give us all this information, we ll be straight with you. i just need help, you know, period. our family s large, you know, and we been doin bad because my daddy s been gone. you give a tip. if it leads to a conviction, you get a chunk of money, and it s very enticing. perkins received over $10,000 in reward money immediately after the trial, and told by the police not to mention the payment of the reward to anybody. perkins saying he received $10,000 to receive this. the jury would have thought different about that. they wouldn t even count his testimony. gordon and michael filed their appeal in june of 1989, after 5 years of waiting, the court finally agreed to hear their case.
john thompson was sitting on death row at angola state penitentiary awaiting his execution when he got an unexpected call. j.t., we found you some attorneys. they re from philadelphia. loved one from philadelphia. they re coming down to see you. the call was from a non-profit group devoted to appealing death sentences. i m on death row. i got a date of execution. then you sending me some lawyers saying they re rest representing me. i m like, come on, get real. gordon and i normally represent big companies in employment litigation and trade secret litigation, but this was my first case representing a criminal defendant. michael banks and goorden gordon cooney were high corporate lawyers.
had happened. he wanted all the citizens of new orleans to see. at the hearing, attorneys questioned the key prosecutors involved with thompson s case, including jim williams, the man with the little electric chair on his desk. a colleague testified that williams was given the blood results, but williams denied it. williams story is that he never received it, he never saw it, and so at the end of the day, the choices between dishonesty and incompetence. they can either be the prosecutors who knew that evidence was being withheld in their case or they can be prosecutors who weren t in charge of their cases when a man s life was on the line. visibly upset, judge quinlan overturned thompson s carjacking conviction. he also ordered a stay of execution and ordered connick to turn over every file on record to michael and gordon. that was the first time we really got a full look into the
michael and gordon proposed an unorthodox solution. after freeman s testimony was read into the record they would cross examine the empty witness chair as if freeman was on the stand. we took the evidence of the lies and put them in the form of questions. you told the jury you didn t know that john thompson was going to rob someone. isn t it true, however, that you set out to rob someone? silence hung in the air after each question was posed, giving the jury time to imagine freeman s response. you suggested in your testimony that you stole nothing from mr. liuzza at all, but you admitted you stole all of mr. liuzza s property, didn t you? we asked a series of questions like that, culminating in the final one, which was isn t it true, mr. freeman that you, and you, alone, murdered ray luizza? the jury knew where we were coming from, they were able to see the lies in kevin freeman s