the reward to anybody. soon, perkins saying he received $10,000 to do this. the jury would have thought different about that. wasn t even count as his testimony. gordon and michael file their appeal in june of 1989. after five years of waiting, the court finally agreed to hear their case. we were able to prove beyond any doubt that, in fact, we wpes was promised to get paid. there was enough other evidence of john s guilt that the reward issue would not have made a difference. michael and gordon appealed the decision. to the u.s. district court, the fifth circuit court of appeals and finally, the u.s. supreme court. they all denied the appeal. matters became desperate. now we had no more appeals or
in april of 2003, john thompson faced the decision whether to plead guilty and walk away from prison or stand trial and risk the rest of his life behind bars. i didn t kill nobody. i m not pleading guilty to nothing. i got on the phone, my mom said, i want you home. i don t care what those people say, i know you didn t do it, i want you home. i called the attorneys and said, come on, let s do it, it s time for me to be with my family. gordon and i went down to new orleans to be there when john got out of jail to have our big celebration. i was figuring out where john was going to go after he was released from prison and a criminal defense lawyer walked into the conference room where i
skip to the end. the last line read, conviction and sentence reversed. i called gordon into my office. i couldn t get the words out. i remember it was july 17th, 4:30 in the afternoon, i i was tongue tied i said, 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 the d.a. s office, harry connick senior had retired and the new d.a. ran for office on an anti-corruption campaign. now, he wanted to make a deal. the district attorney s office was not 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. i m like, hell no. i m not pleading guilty to nothing. after all this stuff we proved, these people are still trying to make me plead guilty to something i didn t do. the jury got it wrong twice
challenges. on april 19th of 1999, the final death warrant was issued. we had struck out, failed. he was going to die. the state set an execution date. we drove to angola. john came into the room. we didn t tell him we were coming but he knew why we were there and he looked at us and said, what s the date? we looked at him and said, john, it s 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 time. it s my time. i was trying to be strong. i was trying to, like, understand what was ready to happen. i m getting ready to die for a crime i did not commit. anxiety kicked in. i didn t know how to accept the
so that revealed quite a bit about the prosecutors who had been handling thompson s case. my next move is to go to the crime lab and kind of tip off people for the police department you re on to something naughty. i just go in and go, i need to see this old report, please. i didn t get the crime lab report which tells me the blood type is blood b. we were incredibly excited because we now knew the perpetrator had type b blood but we didn t know john s blood type. what we did was call john. blood type? he said, i don t know. he said, you don t know your own blood type? i said, i don t know. does your mama know? i said, i don t know, call and ask. i m racking my brain. i ve asked john, did you ever have surgery in your life?