John Thompson (Justice Victim)

John Thompson (born in 1962 in New Orleans , Louisiana ;. D 3. October 2017 ) was an American citizen as African Americans in the US state of Louisiana from 1985 to 2003 innocent 18 years in prison spent, of which 14 years isolated in the death row . Only shortly before his execution , which had previously been postponed six times at short notice, and after 13 previously rejected appeals, his attorneys Michael L. Banks and J. Gordon Cooney could prove his innocence, after which Thompson was released from custody.

The case of John Thompson is now considered to be one of the most significant judicial scandals in the modern United States and to this day contributes to criticism of its upholding the death penalty worldwide .

Origin and early years

John Thompson is the illegitimate son of Josephine Thompson and Charles Jackson. It was his mother's teenage pregnancy and his parents were never married. Thompson had little relation to his father, especially since he spent a lot of time in prison and also had almost constant drug problems. Thompson was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents. Even at a young age, Thompson quickly slipped into petty crime. At the time of his arrest, when he was 22, Thompson was already a father of two.

prehistory

In December 1984 in New Orleans, an influential businessman Ray Liuzza was murdered in front of his house with multiple shots in the back. The unknown perpetrator escaped with the victim's wallet and a signet ring .

A few weeks earlier, a man with a revolver of the same caliber had robbed a car with three teenagers and stole their vehicle. There were fistfights, with the perpetrator injured before he could escape with the young people's car. A sample of the offender's blood was then sent for laboratory testing.

After the murder of Liuzza , an informant approached the bereaved, who offered to provide further information about the murder, another witness and the name of the murderer against payment. The conversation, which included the payment of this informant, was recorded on tape. Based on this conversation, John Thompson was soon arrested.

John Thompson, who was 22 at the time, was particularly active as a petty criminal and drug dealer , was quickly and very seriously caught in the crosshairs of the investigators: Both the murder weapon and the seal ring stolen by the perpetrator were found on him. Because Thompson was also a stealer at the time , he had previously bought the revolver and signet ring from a man named Kevin Freeman .

When Thompson's photo now appeared in the newspapers, the three young people attacked also believed that they recognized him as the perpetrator of the robbery. Thompson protested his innocence. However, because he came from a poor background and had neither a valid alibi nor supporters, his chances in the upcoming court process were bad from the start.

Trial and sentencing

Thompson went to court in 1985. First of all, the robbery he was accused of was negotiated. This was followed by the trial of the murder of Ray Liuzza . For the robbery, Thompson initially received 49.5 years in prison with no early release. Due to his conviction in the trial of the robbery he was accused of, Thompson was unable to make a statement in his own defense in the subsequent murder trial, as the conviction that had already taken place for a serious crime would have undermined his credibility and the "increased propensity for violence" highlighted by the public prosecutor "would only have underpinned it further. In addition, the prosecution could now argue that, given the long prison sentence for the robbery, the murder itself could only be punished with the death penalty . Thompson was sentenced to death by the court following the prosecution.

From 1989, John Thompson served his sentence on death row at Angola Prison in solitary confinement . He was locked in his cell for 23.5 hours a day.

Banks and Cooney support and eventual discharge

From 1998, lawyers Michael L. Banks and J. Gordon Cooney of the major law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius in Philadelphia took over Thompson's case. The two initially viewed the case as a so-called pro bono case , as a service to the common good, which in the USA is considered good form among influential law firms . Over the years, however, the relationship between Thompson and his family on the one hand, and Banks and Cooney on the other, became very intimate. Banks and Cooney also regularly visited Thompson's family in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans.

Over the years, the lawyers have been able to postpone a planned execution six times. However, in April 1999, all legal resources were initially exhausted and Thompson's execution by lethal injection was scheduled for May 20, 1999. But only 5 weeks before this date, a private detective commissioned by Banks was able to secure a tiny note, which dealt with a blood sample that the police had found in the car that had been hijacked at the time in 1984 in the course of the robbery that preceded Liuzza's murder and which had been brought by the prosecution had been suppressed. In addition, it turned out that this blood, which had to be from the perpetrator, was not Thompson's blood: Thompson has blood group B, while the examined blood corresponded to blood group 0. The execution was postponed for the seventh time.

Building on this, Banks and Cooney were now able, step by step, to uncover the truth in the John Thompson case. Witnesses from the night of the murder were found who had never been questioned before, and Kevin Freeman , who at the time had sold the revolver and signet ring to Thompson in 1984, was identified as actually responsible for the robbery. But Kevin Freeman had since passed away, so that it could no longer be determined whether the murder of Liuzza was also on Freeman's account.

Thompson was subsequently found not guilty of the robbery. The trial of Liuzza's murder in 2003 was then reopened. At the end of that trial, Thompson was found not guilty. On May 7, 2003, he left prison a free man.

After Thompson left prison, he first found work in organizations that campaign for the abolition of the death penalty.

About six months after his release from prison married his childhood sweetheart Johnson and operational henceforth with her a sandwich - selling at a hotel in downtown New Orleans . They lived together in a house which, like his sandwich sale, was destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina .

John Thompson was co-founder and chairman of the organization Resurrection after Exoneration , which has set itself the task of supporting former long-term prisoners and their reintegration into society as well as the media-effective denunciation of wrong judgments.

Judicial scandal

After Thompson's release, it emerged that the four accusers at the time deliberately put the robbery trial before the Liuzza trial , in order, on the one hand, to permanently deny Thompson the opportunity to exercise his constitutionally based right in the subsequent murder trial to testify in his own defense and, on the other hand, to seek the death penalty in the course of a conviction of Thompson as Liuzza's murderer .

As it also turned out in the course of the reopened trial of John Thompson, the prosecution at the time, although they received the results of the blood tests two days before the start of the robbery trial, withheld them from the defense, even though Thompson's defense had already been officially and beforehand had requested participation in "all scientific test results". In this regard, the United States Constitution requires "fair negotiations" and that evidence, especially exculpatory evidence, must be brought to the appropriate court under all circumstances.

Two days before the start of the robbery trial, the blood-stained sample of Thompson apparently relieving evidence from the evidence room of the police disappeared without a trace and "never to be seen again" when they were asked to hand over all relevant evidence to the competent court. In addition, the tape, which would have proven that the informant only released his knowledge against payment, disappeared or was never made available to the defense.

When the murder trial began, the perpetrator was relatively uniformly described by witnesses as being African American, about six feet tall, and with very short hair, while Thompson was clearly shorter and was wearing a handsome "Afro" at the time of the murder.

The additional witness , who had been provided by the informant, who had turned to his bereaved shortly after the murder of Liuzza and who represented the key witness for the prosecution, was, on the other hand, an approximately six feet tall African-American with very short hair, because of the latter he was nicknamed "Kojak". In addition, the prosecution failed to present the tape on which the conversation between the informant and Liuzza 's family had been recorded, thus concealing from the defense the fact that the informant's incriminating statements had been made against payment.

In 1994, one of Thompson's then chief prosecutors was diagnosed with terminal cancer, whereupon he revealed himself to another of the then chief prosecutors and admitted that he had been involved in the holding of the blood-stained swatch as evidence in 1984 . The other prosecutor initially kept this knowledge to himself until it was only discovered in 1999 by the private detective hired by Banks .

Claim for compensation

Upon his release, Thompson sued the state of Louisiana for compensation. In March 2007, a voice Federal Court Thompson financial compensation of 14 million US dollars to. The state of Louisiana appealed, however, so that Thompson's lawsuit dragged on and ultimately came before the United States Supreme Court . In March 2011, the Supreme Court ruled against Thompson with a voting ratio of 5: 4, so that he did not receive the sued 14 million US dollars in compensation because the accusers at the time could not prove any willful misconduct against the defendant.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jarvis DeBerry: John Thompson wasn't executed, but he still died too soon | Opinion . In: NOLA.com . (English, nola.com [accessed on May 6, 2018]).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Die Welt (2007) - 18 years innocent on death row.Retrieved September 28, 2012.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} The Moderate Voice (2011) - Sweete, E .: The False Imprisonment Of John Thompson, (Connick v. Thompson) Retrieved September 28, 2012.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Motherjones.com (2011) Supreme Court Rules Against Exonerated Death Row Prisoner Who Sued Prosecutors Retrieved September 28, 2012.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Washington Post (2011) Supreme Court rules against exonerated death row inmate who sued prosecutors Retrieved September 28, 2012.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Celeste Lofton-Bagert (2010): Legal Exoneration: A Case Study through the Life History of John Thompson Retrieved September 28, 2012.
7. ↑ Innocenceproject.org (2011): Holding Prosecutors Accountable - A recent Supreme Court decision begs the question of what, if anything, prosecutors can be held accountable for. ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 28, 2012.  
8. ↑ CNN (April 5, 2014): Life after death row: Helping break the 'jailhouse mentality'. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
9. ^ Resurrection after Exoneration official website . Retrieved September 28, 2012.