secret litigation, but this was my first case representing a criminal defendant. michael banks and gordon cooney were high powered corporate lawyers with an interest in pro bono cases. the case itself did not suggest innocence. there was nothing we read that caused us to say, wow! this guy didn t do it. i was skeptical of his innocence. but i remember feeling a very strong sense from reading john s file that things that happened in john s trial were just fundamentally unfair. banks and cooney went to meat their new client. the first time i met john thompson was at the louisiana state penitentiary at angola. frankly, we had a bit of a hard time communicating. they didn t know nothing about new orleans. we had a criminal justice system that locked up more people than our state pen tenry could hold. the first thing i asked them, do you really understand what you re up against? neither michael or i had any
failed, and he was going to die. the state set an execution date. we drove over to angola. john came into the room. we didn t tell him we had been coming but he knew why we were there. and he looked at us and he said, what is the date? we looked at him and said, john, it is may 20th which was basically a month off. i ve been around death row at that time long enough to understand what was going on. i was like, wow, it s my turn, may turn. i was trying to be strong. i was trying to understand what is getting ready to happen. i m getting ready to die for a crime i didn t commit. anxiety kicked in. i didn t know how to accept the reality that they re getting ready to kill me. and then john did a really remarkable thing. he said, my youngest son john
the d.a. s office. harry connick sr. had retired and the new d.a. had run for office on an anti-corruption campaign. now he wanted to make a deal. the district attorney s office was not really eager to go and try this case again based on the evidence as it then existed. john could plead to some lesser offense and be immediately released from prison. hell no! i m not pleading guilty to nothing. after all this stuff, they re still trying to make me plead guilty to something i did not do. the jury got it wrong twice before. there was some risk that a jury would get it wrong again no matter how strong the evidence was. much as we were convinced of john s innocence. we had to think about getting him out of jail as our first priority. john, we re not talking to you no more as attorneys. we re getting ready to talk to you as a friend.
first that car conviction had been used to keep john from being able to testify in his own defense in the murder case. and secondly we argued that all the evidence we had amassed had shown that john thompson was innocent of the liuzza murder. michael and gordon filed their appeal in february of 2002. five months later, they received the decision. i ll never forget it. a reporter called and said what do you think about this decision? and i asked her to read it to me. and i said skip to the end. skip to the end. the last line read, conviction and sentence reversed. i called gordon into my office. i could not get the words out. i remember it was july 17th, 4:30 in the afternoon. i was tongue tied. i couldn t he said new trial? i said yes. we hugged. we were ecstatic. as michael and gordon began preparing for the retrial, they got an unsolicited offer from
john thompson had been on death row at angola for 14 years. by 9319 they had proven he had not committed the carjacking. but they had yet to prove their client was new jersey of killing 34-year-old ray liuzza in cold blood. however, material michael and gordon received from the new orleans d.a. s office provided ample grounds for appeal. the daily police reports showed us that these witnesses, freeman and perkins, had told very, very different stories in 1985 before the trial as compared to what they said on the witness stand. and we began to see how their stories were contrived to secure a conviction of an innocent man. there were numerous pieces of evidence inconsistent with john s guilt, were consistent with freeman s guilt. and that showed that freeman had lied at trial in his testimony