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PRESENTATION BY JOHN THOMPSON1 – PROSECUTORIAL IMMUNITY: DECONSTRUCTING CONNICK V. THOMPSON

In November 2011, the Journal hosted a symposium on Prosecutorial Immunity at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. The symposium included an in depth analysis of Connick v. Thompson. The following transcript consists of John Thompson’s presentation. The Journal has attempted to preserve the character and substance of the discussion. While this is not a traditional Article, the Journal felt that it would be fitting to include it in its Spring volume.

JOHN THOMPSON: Thank you, I wish I could say that I deserve that. Thank you for coming out tonight and hearing my side of the story. Everybody wants to know my side. I had a different seat in this whole ordeal. I had a unique seat, and I heard so many different things just from the few hours I’ve been here. I could imagine what [. . .] they were saying from their perspective. I feel like I’m sharing this because this is not John Thompson, it seems like it’s John Thompson right now, because this is my case, but it’s a lot of John Thompsons out there and I believe that’s what gets lost in this whole ordeal. How many more innocent men are in prison? I believe we never think about that. We never think about death row. They tried to kill me, you know. It’s not any malfeasance or nothing, it’s attempted , if you look at what the definition of murder is it is premeditated too, because they had a choice. Once they had a conviction, it became a choice to decide whether to go for the death penalty or not. So

1. John Thompson was convicted of armed robbery and murder and sentenced to death by a Louisiana court. His convictions were subsequently overturned after the discovery of that the District Attorney’s Office knowingly withheld. After his release from prision, John Thompson sued the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. Although he won at the district and appellate court levels, the Supreme Court reversed the award of $14 million. See Connick v. Thompson, 131 S. Ct. 1350 (2011). John Thompson founded and currently serves as director of Resurrection After Exoneration. See RESURRECTION AFTER EXONERATION, http://www.r-a-e.org/home (last visitied May 15, 2012).

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let’s break this down and let’s start breaking this down right, because I don’t know if I’m the only one who see things this way. You know, I dropped out of high school and I went to death row for crimes I didn’t do; or put in the system, and for whatever reason, look like I am the only one who could see something that you know, we crying about a system that is broke; but we know what is wrong with it. So how can something be broke if we know what’s wrong with it? I get confused at some of the things I hear and especially from our leaders; the people that we trust, judges, . We got to realize that what we put in their hands, our life and liberty, something that we claim [to] cherish, but yet you just stand by and allow behavior such as this to go, and say well this is an X problem or this is that problem, no, this is our problem and we got to learn how to address our problems. I’m going to show you what happened to me from my perspective. They got their stories, but to be honest with you, I believe all of them were involved. If you ask me, I think it was a conspiracy. I don’t think it was just the prosecutors. I believe everybody was involved, the judge and all, the way this turned out to me. So, let me just go through this lecture quickly. I do have a serious issue with why we are accepting this type of behavior from these people. Certain judges, I go back there and watch them in district court; the lawyers scared to death to open their mouths, because those judges sitting up there are playing God. How could you represent anyone, if that’s how you feel? If you’re going into a courtroom already defeated because you are afraid of what these judges are going to say or do, that’s ridiculous to me. Yet, we call ourselves professionals, so I’m not going to go there with y’all right now. Let’s try to go through this system. In 1984, the World’s Fair2 was here, you could imagine what all was going on here in the city; it was crazy at that time. We had the World’s Fair, and the Mardi Gras, [all occurring at the same time]. What they didn’t pay attention to was [how] high crime was this time in the city; crime went crazy.3 We had to call

2. Officially known as the Louisiana World Exhibition, the 1984 World’s Fair was hosted by New Orleans to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the 1884 New Orleans Cotton Exposition. Sadly, the 1984 event is best known as the only World’s Fair ever forced into bankruptcy during its operating season. It was the last World’s Fair held to date in the United States. Nonetheless, New Orleans was left with a new convention center, and many fairgoers remember the event with fondness. Bill Cotter, The 1984 World’s Fair: Louisiana World Exhibition (Mar. 14, 2011), http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/neworleans84/index.htm. 3. During 1984, major offenses reported to the increased by 6.4 percent TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

2012] Thompson Transcript 403 on the National Guard during this time to try to slow down crime, because crime was so bad here. And just so happens that Mr. Liuzza was getting out his car and was gunned down five times while he was leaving his car.4 This made Crimestoppers5 go crazy; they started doing things that we never seen before; started putting posters up in the neighborhoods and grocery stores looking for anyone and everyone who had anything to do with this; I’m not saying that Crimestoppers never existed before; I’m just saying how far they went for this particular murder; this particular crime, because the family had money;6 they decided to go this route. There were combinations of things that were transpiring. Now you have a family that has money, forcing the police to do their job, telling them they [were] not doing it fast enough. The murder happened on Dec. 6th,7 and Jan. 17th they still had not made an arrest on the crime, so they raised the money.8 When they raised the money, they got a suspect; a suspect that they were looking for all the while. They were looking [for] one person: six-feet tall, medium built, and a bald head.9 They were looking for that individual and people started and arrests increased by 5.1 percent. In approximately 91 percent of the 6,200 cases accepted for prosecution, the defendant either pled guilty or was found guilty by a judge or jury. New crime prevention programs were created including 41 new neighborhood watch programs. S.P. Caroll & L. Marye, New Orleans Criminal Justice System, 1984, NEW ORLEANS OFFICE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE COORDINATION UNITED STATES, https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=107657 (last visited Mar. 30, 2012). 4. Mr. Raymond Liuzza Jr. was murdered during an armed robbery on December 6, 1984. Mr. Liuzza was the son of a prominent New Orleans business executive. Nina Totenberg, Man Wrongly Convicted: Are Prosecutors Liable? (Apr. 2, 2011), http://m.npr.org/news/front/135053529. 5. Crimestoppers is a non-profit, citizen-run organization that offers rewards and promises of anonymity to any person providing information regarding local . All fifty of the United States and nearly twenty-five countries throughout the world have a Crimestoppers organization. The New Orleans chapter was formed in 1981 and has helped solve more than 12,000 felony crimes with individual rewards exceeding $1,750,000. CRIMESTOPPERS GREATER NEW ORLEANS, http://www.crime stoppersgno.org/about.php (last visited Mar. 30, 2012). 6. “Because Liuzza was the son of a prominent executive, the murder received a lot of attention in the community.” Thompson v. Connick, 07–30443 (La. App. 5 Cir. 53 12/19/08); 578 F.3d 836, rev’d, 131 S. Ct. 1350 (2011). 7. Transcript of Record at 24, Thompson v. Connick, 07–30443 (La. App. 5 Cir. 53 12/19/08); 578 F.3d 836, rev’d, 131 S. Ct. 1350 (2011). 8. A public announcement was made that a reward of $15,000 would be paid for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer of Mr. Liuzza. Joint Appendix at 12B, Connick v. Thompson, 131 S.Ct. 1350 (2011). 9. An eyewitness described the perpetrator to police as 6 feet tall with close-cut hair, a description that was included in police reports. Id. at 12D. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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going to Crimestoppers. There were about sixty-six calls [that] went in to Crimestoppers. These calls were asking about who, when, or how; people saying that their brother did it or their old- man did it, all kinds of stuff. They had [. . .] maybe twenty something search warrants [. . .] to find out who, where, or what [was] related to this incident. Kevin Freeman was arrested Jan. 17, charged with 1st degree murder.10 Little did I know; my grandmother and my mother had called me that same morning and told me that the police had been to our house looking for me, and asking what I had done. I was a drug dealer, I was spooked. I was selling drugs; I wasn’t a child of God, I thought I was all that. I was the pretty boy and had the girls, and all the things that go with it. The first thing I thought was I just sold to an undercover police officer, that’s the first thing I thought. Although, I knew that wasn’t my game. I knew what the rules were and I never sold it to a person I hadn’t seen before. I highly thought that was it, but it was a possibility that one of my boys sold me out and brought me to the cops, [be]cause that’s what they were doing during that time, when Connick and them came with this new drug and trapping the things they put up in these different raids and dragnets during this period of time, so that’s what I thought it was, but it wasn’t. Come to find out, Mr. Freeman and the other person that went to Crimestoppers gave [me up]; so now they ain’t had one person, they had two. Although they were looking for one African American, medium built with a bald head, they got two.11 The only person that gave them two was the person that they arrested to begin with, Mr. Freeman. So from Jan. 18th, the next four months went crazy for me. From them trying to get me to confess to a crime I didn’t do; bringing me through central lockup, with homicide questioning me and playing a taped confession of Kevin Freeman saying that I did it. When I didn’t obey their rules, they put five counts of armed robbery on me.12 Going to court for one of the counts, I thought I was going to court March the 7th, for the murder to be arraigned, three kids jumped up in the court and identified me saying that I was the person that robbed them in an

10. On January 17, 1985, the District Attorney’s Office sought and received indictments of Kevin Freeman and John Thompson for the first-degree murder of Raymond T. Liuzza, Jr. Id. at 12E. 11. The eyewitness saw one perpetrator, with gun in hand, run by moments after the shooting of Mr. Liuzza. Id. 12. Id. at 13G. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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armed robbery. When the picture appeared in the newspaper, that picture with the big bush, that picture described the person much similar to the person that robbed these three [little] kids. It was a 5 feet tall man with a bush. Perfect description that fit me, the only one thing wrong, at the night of this crime; they took blood sample from the crime because the individual and these individuals got into a struggle, a fight, and with that there was blood left on the tennis shoes and pants leg.13 When police officers came to the scene of the crime, they confiscated that evidence from that particular crime. Mind you now, I had this big bush but by the time I got arrested, they cut all my hair off. I’m a bald head man walking in front of the courtroom now. So these three little kids just identified a man with a big bush; but all of a sudden now they jumped in front of the court and identified me a man with a bald head. I don’t know if all black men look black, but I don’t know if big bushes and small bushes make them look black too, but that’s what you just described. Because they had identified the man that robbed them with a big bush, right now I’m before the court and he tried to make me look like the murder criminal, so they cut all my hair off; now I’m portrayed as looking like a bald head, like the murder description. What happened [. . .] from there I was [. . .] charged and [. . .] the DA rearranged the trial set. At that time, my lawyers were going crazy because they thinking I’m being identified in a murder, but I’m being identified in a robbery. And so, when they called about the murder, they didn’t hear the other DA, Jim Williams, asking the judge to have my blood withdrawn at that same time. It was a conflict because there was too much arguing going on at that time, because once they decided that I wasn’t being identified in the murder, they decided he didn’t want to represent me anymore. Then they decided that they wanted to get off the case [. . .]. Patrick Fanning14 said that he had another murder case in St. John’s parish. He did have another case, and he tried to use that case to get off [my] case, but Mr. Quinlan15 wouldn’t let him.

13. The police cut a bloody swatch from the armed robbery victim’s pant leg containing the perpetrator’s blood. Id. at 12. 14. Patrick N. Fanning is a prominent defense attorney in the New Orleans area. He received his Juris Doctor from Tulane University in 1973 and was admitted to practice by the Louisiana Bar Association. 15. The Honorable Patrick Quinlan was the presiding judge over the trial. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of New Orleans in 1972. He then went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Louisiana State University School of Law in 1974. After practicing law as the Assistant District Attorney for Orleans Parish and later serving as Chief of the Organized Crime and TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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Quinlan told him that he was the only lawyer with experience, so he had to represent me in [this] criminal case because he had criminal experience. I also had Rob Cooley, at that time he was a civil attorney, he had never prosecuted a criminal case in his life; he was a civil attorney, so he was representing me as well as Mr. Fanning. When Mr. Fanning wanted to move off of the case, what they did is switched them around, put Mr. Fanning in the capital case in the sentencing phase and put Mr. Cooley in the criminal phase. Mr. Cooley declared that he did not have any experience at that, and they said they were going to let Cooley ride [and] Fanning ride [. . .]. So that’s how that was set, and before I knew it, within 120 days I had went to trial and was found guilty and sentenced.16 I had eight people testifying that I was at work with them, and these three kids were saying no, you robbed me. The jury was so confused that they came back with attempted armed robbery; they didn’t know who to believe. It was kind of crazy; because the judge was [. . .] saying that any breaks you [are] gonna get, you just got from the jury; so they gave me 49 and a half years, the maximum.17 My first time out, the first time I [had] ever been convicted for anything, I get the maximum, 49 and a half years. The next thing I know, I’m back in trial for 1st degree murder. [N]ext thing I know, they got Kevin Freeman testifying against me saying that I did it. [N]ext thing I know, I’m convicted and sentenced to death. Within 120 days, I’m sentenced to death. During the course of me waiting for the death sentence [. . .] Jim Williams had the nerve to come in the back of the court and told me that “I’m going to kill you, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna kill you.” He and I really went off; I went to saying some crazy things back to him that probably wasn’t nice. I never felt so let down in my life, when I heard him [. . .] really say that he was gonna kill me. Later, [seeing] this picture [. . .] come out, and to come home and get a glance at this and get a glance at what Mr. Williams really had in his mind; the type of behavior he had in his mind, the mentality. What does this represent to us, to

Racketeering Division of the Attorney General’s Office, Quinlan was elected to the bench in 1984 at the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. He was re-elected twice after his initial appointment in 1984 and sat on the bench until his death on June 7, 2003. In Memoriam LOUISIANA SUPREME COURT, http://www.lasc.org/community _outreach/in_memoriam/quinlan_patrick.asp (last visited Mar. 30, 2012). 16. Mr. Thompson was indicted for the first-degree murder of Ray Liuzza in January 1985. On May 8, 1985, a jury found him guilty as charged and recommended sentencing him to death, which the trial court imposed on June 25 1985. State v. Thompson, 516 So.2d 348 (5th Cir. 2002). 17. Id. at 355. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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our society? How many more [like] Mr. Williams are out there prosecuting? The Supreme Court made a decision saying that we [are] suppose[d] to just ignore that.18 That’s what society wanted us to do too; how can we? All of them are off death row, none of them [were] executed, but he still practices law.19 Not only do he practice law, he tearing them up over in Jefferson Parish, I’m hearing. That might be part of the good boy clique too, because he was a district attorney, all them ran over to JP when Connick left office. So all of them was over there, so that his boys . . . y’all with me? I don’t want to lose nobody, because in case y’all don’t know, most [District Attorneys] became judges. Harry Connick bragged about that in that 5th circuit opinion when he testified in my civil case.20 He said twelve judges came from his office. Twelve former [District Attorneys] became judges, can you imagine that? Now we understand why our prison system was built so fast here from [1972 to 2003]21 when [Connick] left office. Then, we went from 800 to 5,000; you should pay attention to these kinds of things. Now, district attorneys becomes judges; [. . .] how this not a conflict when we have a former district attorney raising a former DA hand up to say judge? Man, no wonder there’s no break; you should be scared to death. Well, that’s how our system was designed and it started being created once you get to file an appeal, once these appeals are denied; they review each other’s cases. They’re reviewing cases, how can you get any type of relief? It wasn’t designed for us to get relief; it was designed for them to start that plantation or to fill that plantation. Foti couldn’t even keep up with them; Foti went to building jails so fast to try to keep up with them. Nobody is saying nothing, because it’s African Americans they putting over there. That is why nobody is not saying nothing, because it’s African Americans. So we got to realize what really is twisted into our system, and then to see this. This is not me saying nothing; not no trick words, not me playing with no computers, I don’t know that. That’s coming out of his mouth; coming out his mouth. And me, sitting on death row, the thing you fear the most. I’m trying to convince everybody

18. Connick v. Thompson, 131 S.Ct. 1350, 1367 (2011). 19. Mr. Williams, former Orleans Parish Assistant District Attorney, now works as a defense attorney in his own firm, James A. Williams, L.L.C. in Jefferson Parish. 20. Transcript of Record at 8, Thompson v. Connick, 2007 WL 7592241 (E.D. La.). 21. See INNOCENCE PROJECT NEW ORLEANS, http://www.ipno.org/sites/default /files/docs/Press_Release_Report.pdf (last visited Mar. 30, 2012) (noting that 36 individuals were sentenced to death during Harry Connick Sr.’s tenure as District Attorney of Orleans Parish). TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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that I’m innocent of not just one charge, but two. Denny22 didn’t tell y’all half of this stuff that we know. When I got to death row, they had just finished executing about eight people in a row. They had hit from May ‘87 to August 29. August 29th was the last one-eight in ten weeks. Then, they call me out of Parish Prison and tell me to go to death row! I was scared to death, I thought I was being killed right then and there; I thought they were bringing me out there to execute me right then and there. But, we [are] suppose[d] to forget about that; we [are] supposed to not have [a] conscious [sic] about that, we [are] not supposed to say that this is cruel and unusual. To me they [are] fighting the wrong fight; it’s cruel and unusual punishment just to sit on death row and watch that [expletive]. I don’t know how y’all look at it, but watching 12 men being executed wasn’t funny. [There] wasn’t nothing funny about that to me, wasn’t nothing funny about knowing a few of them was innocent. [There] wasn’t anything funny about that and me being innocent, what you think, how I feel, did I have a chance, I thought they were going to kill me. I had exhausted all of my appeals. When they brought that warrant to me right there, I thought it was over with, but I had a little hope. I had a little hope that even though I was going to be executed, that something was going to come about; that something was going to happen that would change everything, everybody. I’m going to mention, Antonio James,23 [who] was

22. Denise LeBoeuf is a capital defender with a private practice in New Orleans, Louisiana; she was the founding Director of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana and is currently of counsel to that defender organization. She represents persons facing death at trial and in post-conviction in state and federal courts, teaches and consults with capital defense teams nationally. She is particularly interested in the litigation of mental health cases and in the ways in which race and poverty increase the traumatic burden carried by many clients. She was a member of the 2003 Committee that formulated the ABA Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases, and Chair of the post- Katrina Orleans Parish Indigent Defender Board 2006-2007. She holds a B.A. from Hunter College and a J.D. from Tulane University. JOHN ADAMS PROJECT-LAWYER’S BIOGRAPHIES, http://www.aclu.org/national-security/john-adams-project-lawyer-biogr aphies#leboeuf (last visited May 14, 2012). Denise LeBoeuf participated in the Journal’s 2011 symposium. 23. Inmate is Executed after 13 Reprieves, NEW YORK TIMES, Mar. 2, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/02/us/inmate-is-executed-after-13-reprieves.html (noting that Antonio James was convicted of first-degree murder of Henry Silver in December 1981 and remained on death row in Angola Prison for fourteen years). During Antonio’s stay on death row, his defense council exhausted all appeals asserting . On March 1, 1996, Antonio James was executed. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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executed, and the scene in the parking lot. The way death row is, you could see outside to the parking lot from where I was. My cell was right on the parking lot, so I could see all these people out in the parking lot during his execution. I [could] see the people all on this side that’s burning the candles, praying and hoping that some peace [would] come about this, and then there were the people on this side wishing that this execution [would] take place. So, I see Antonio; the news media just focus[ed] in on Antonio James’s son because he was upset because of these people on the other side that don’t even know his father and wanted his father dead; was wishing his father be executed. That stuck with me so hard, because about two weeks after that, Antonio James’ son was killed. I have two sons myself. I was trying to figure a way out of this. I was trying to figure out how not to let this happen to my sons because this is what we witnessed. It was crazy trying to prepare to die; to prepare your children for this. Me and my lawyers were going through all kinds of angles at how might be best to tell my son that it’s over. Before I could do that, when he came and told me about this date, it’s the same day they found the blood evidence in my case. They came to tell me about it was over and how we were going to go about during this. This had done made it to the media already, and the media had already put it in the newspaper and on the news. The teacher at McDonogh 35, where my youngest son was due to graduate, read this news article to her classroom. My son’s name is John Thompson too. My son is in her classroom as she reads about a killer getting ready to face his maker. She was telling them this because she was telling about the important decisions you make. How we make decisions in life; how other people[’s] decisions can be your fault; how you can pay for another person’s decision. Everybody was after her, everybody wanted her fired; you know I was kind [of] like crazy about this. I was like – “timeout, that was legit; what is y’all doing?” My son was upset because that was his first time hearing about how I was about to be killed. He thought that I should have been the one telling him, not someone like that to be telling him. But, what happened was, it was portrayed like that and it went out like that. It was what it was. He broke out the class and ran. My lawyers were able to get to him. When the lawyer left Angola, he left with the thinking of coming back the next day with my two sons. That was the plan; they needed to come back with my two sons to tell me what happened. But, they came back before they could really get gone good. [T]hey so crazy about Denny and them, y’all, because Denny TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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and them save lives.24 Y’all don’t know what lives is; when we say we ain’t had no help on death row; no help, they were killing like crazy, that’s who we looked to, that’s who saved our lives— Denny, Nick, Liola, Gary, we were fish out of water, they were just killing us like it was legal. We had to have some good people step up to the plate and really save our lives. So, I don’t feel like it’s mandatory, I feel like I’m obligated to be here to say and tell this story to the public about what happened, because of all the people we left behind and all the lives we left behind on death row. Then, through all this litigation and backwards and forth, y’all heard the issues, we had the Batson issues,25 I had them too, we made claims of Batson issues. [As a] [M]atter of fact, the judge in the 5th Circuit said, “if this ain’t a Batson issue, then I don’t know what is.” It was before Batson was even put out. Some things were done well in my criminal case, some things were done well. Batson [challenges were not] argued; it was being argued in front of the Supreme Court at the time I was going to trial.26 And Patrick Fanning knowing that it would be coming out of the federal office, knowing that that issue was before the court, [. . .] and they didn’t pay attention to what was going on, they made them explain themselves on record [. . .]. Come to find out, we had blacks that was excused from the jury the same as the whites that they allowed to stay on the jury. [. . .] The Louisiana Supreme Court did another thing too [. . .] Crimestoppers, y’all know about Crimestoppers; y’all know Crimestoppers isn’t legal [. . .] crazy. Y’all know that? You do know that, right? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have the right to remain anonymous and [I would] not have a right to face my accuser. You can’t have it both ways. Somebody got to be lying here, especially if you going to kill me for that information. You going to seek to kill my life, but yet and still, let Crimestoppers get away with this. [They are] talking about, you have the right

24. See supra note 22. 25. A “Batson” challenge refers to an objection to the validity of a peremptory challenge, on grounds that the other party used it to exclude a potential juror based on race, ethnicity, or sex. The name comes from a 1986 case, Batson v. Kentucky 476 U.S. 79 (1986). 26. Batson, 476 U.S. 79 (holding that a prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges, namely the dismissal of jurors without stating a valid cause for doing so, may not be used to exclude potential jurors based solely on their race). The Court also ruled that this practice violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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to remain anonymous. [So you are] going to kill me without me knowing why you [are] killing me, is that what you’re saying? But the worst thing about all [of this] is, we [are] looking at perjury, murder, and conspiracy, when I was throwing all that stuff out there to y’all. If you really think about it, Crimestoppers [has] a right to remain anonymous,27 but they [are] paying the individuals for information. That information is being used to testify on the stand, so therefore, you got a right to face your accuser; you got a right to know that that individual got paid to testify.28 But, they got a law that says you can’t pay nobody for their testimony,29 so all of this [expletive] is twisted. Something is wrong with all of this. You can’t promise nobody you can’t give nobody nothing for their testimony, but we got snitches [and] you got deals being cut. We got to really smell the gravy, you know the gravy is really thick and really boiling and it’s time for us to do something. We know the issues; we know the problems before us. What can we do about it, what could we do to help it? Then the trick[y] part about that, after all that litigation and me busting them and finally catching their hand in the cookie jar, with them throwing the evidence away the day of my trial.30 Oh it was slick, the day of my trial, they go and get the physical evidence to bring to my trial, but they throw it away, it was never presented at trial.31 Never hear of it again. We got some problems with all that. We got a police department that has a crime lab, an evidence room. You got a procedure there that every piece of evidence that is checked out of that room need to be signed and signed back in. Why [then] was [it] not reported when it was taken out? It wasn’t returned. This is not just about a District Attorney; looks like it’s about a DA with some power, because how can you keep this man from not telling that you didn’t return the evidence, what was up with that? Who was so powerful about that? How did that happen? In my civil case, when we get to the 5th Circuit, ruled three in my favor.32 All

27. See CRIMESTOPPERS.ORG, http://www.crimestoppersgno.org (last visited Mar. 30, 2012) (indicating that Crimestoppers never records the name or address of a tipster). 28. Once an indictment is made, Crimestoppers pays out a cash reward for providing the information. Law enforcement is never involved in reward payments. Id. 29. 18 U.S.C. § 201(c)(2) (2006). 30. Connick v. Thompson, 131 S. Ct. 1350, 1356 (2011). 31. Id. 32. Thompson v. Connick, 578 F.3d 293, 314 (5th Cir. 2009). TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

412 Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law [Vol. 13 three of them agreed to uphold the money, but they called a hearing.33 Who are you trying to overturn, your own selves? Three of you in agreement, and now somebody on the sidelines decided to say oh no, you can’t get away with that. What kind of relationship is that? That’s the people governing over us; governing over our lives, that’s the people that have lifetime appointments, and you are talking about appointing them to do what, to oversee who? Oversee a district attorney that they were once too? That is not the answer, I could tell you that. Allowing a judge to be the person that [. . .], most of them came from that background, why would they adjust to it? That went too fast, I hope you [have] seen all of that; that’s where it got funny to me; where it became turned into a joke, because Harry Connick [came] out this shell with his slick self, that was slick move. The blood evidence [came] up; we got clear convincing evidence that he signed for this evidence and he threw it away. So what [could] he do, so that the Attorney General don’t come back at him? “Hold on, I’m going to call for an investigation; I’m going to investigate myself” until somebody slapped him and said you can’t be serious. I know you are not going to investigate yourself. But before he could say that, this young investigator that he put on went in there with the grand jury for his hearing and came out with four powerful that he thought he had enough to indict all this. So he [probably] came back to Harry Connick again and said “I got enough to go, I want to shoot on it.” Harry Connick [probably] said, “hell no, what [are] you talking about you want to shoot on this, no it can’t happen.” He [probably] said, “this is not your call, it should be the people[’s] call, let the people [decide].” Harry mentioned about the statute of limitations, blah, blah, blah, the next thing you know, the young [investigator] quit. He cited my case as the reason why he quit. That should have jumped off everything; everybody should have just gone crazy in this city at that time. If there was going to be a time to stand up, it was then, because here was a man who don’t have nothing to gain; he was not on anybody’s side, as a matter of fact, he was hurt. If you read his testimony in my civil case, he was hurt. He was a bonafide prosecutor, he dreamed of being a prosecutor, he dreamed of putting bad guys away; and guess what, he wasn’t limited, he wasn’t saying it had to be just the bad guys on that side; he said, we got them in our office; they bad, I want them too;

33. Id. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

2012] Thompson Transcript 413 that’s what he said. He tried to stand up for it, and he quit because they wouldn’t allow him to do what he thought was technically right for him to do. All this crazy stuff that happened in my civil case; y’all know about it and heard about it. And, day to day the different things how my lawyers really thought was the right way of doing it; I didn’t think so, by right, I thought they should have been criminally charged; I thought all of them . . . everything I read about RICO34 and all these different laws, and I’m trying to figure out why these laws don’t fit them; why attempted murder don’t fit them; why kidnapping don’t fit them, oh, they did that to me, I didn’t go willingly; they came and took me out of my house at gunpoint. This was in front of my grandmother, my children [were] there; they took me by force. This a conspiracy . . . one of the high court judges mentioned that during the course when they were arguing up there in the United States Supreme Court, but they didn’t pursue it; they didn’t go deeper into it. If you look at, [the] Judge, they asked him did Crimestoppers pay a reward; he’s looking clear at this information saying that Crimestoppers paid a reward before and after that person testified. He said he didn’t believe that made a difference; he said the jury already knew that these people received the reward money, so he made a fact-finding on the bench. Louisiana Supreme Court gave that decision back and acted like they never did send it back to them. They put Crimestoppers on the stand; Crimestoppers said what they paid the man. He got on the stand and said that he was promised and got the reward money; I don’t know what else I had to prove. When it got back to the United States Supreme Court, they didn’t even hear it, they did not even write an opinion; they just denied it and sent it on, even though they sent it there. You’ll know what the last final decision said; what the Supreme Court decided what the answer was. Right here, I don’t know if those numbers are always accurate or not, you’ll can (inaudible). . .on them if they are not, but I remember a lot of us going on death row at one time out of Orleans Parish. I remember a lot of guys were getting their cases overturned before they even got to Angola. To me, this is a disgrace. Our taxpayers’ money; asking for money for the teachers, and for schools; that’s just in Orleans Parish, this is not Louisiana; Orleans parish, one parish, Harry Connick by himself.

34. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal law that imposes civil and criminal penalties on individuals involved in ongoing criminal organizations. 18 U.S.C. § 1961 (2012). TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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This is from 1976 when the death penalty came back into play, one man, one office and he got nerve to tell us that he hasn’t opened a law book since 1973. Is he not obligated to us, as citizens? He shouldn’t be brought back to trial; he shouldn’t be tried. We look at what they claim some of these leaders did, I’m looking at what he did to our black community; he destroyed it. I told y’all how many prisons were built during this period of time. So, this just didn’t happen to me. He enforced and created laws that were just giving average junkies life sentences; men that just had a heroin problem . . . life sentence for being a junkie, get real. When I look at this and I really try to put it all together; and I think about what all happened to me; what the system did to me, I almost want to cry, because I say, why don’t nobody look at all these charges as serious as this? I believe that is what will put more things back into play. We are failing to address these issues head-on. If this was a citizen, if he was a citizen, would he be charged like this? If I call home and tell someone that I want to kill my wife, he could charge me with attempted murder and they could prosecute me for; and, I could get forty-nine and a half years for it, that easy. So, why can he premeditate it and plan it out, and we can find out later that he had clear evidence to prove that this man was innocent . . . clear evidence. I’m going to throw out a hot case to y’all, I don’t care. . .we going to say Mike Ranson, we understand what happened in Mike Ranson’s case, everybody knows he was convicted; everybody understands that he was sentenced to death, but we also understood that he got it reversed the very next month; and why, because the prosecutor had videotape of what happened; of this lady saying that she didn’t see anything, it was too early in the morning. But, we sentenced this man to death, and he had this information in their possession, so you don’t think this was attempted murder, you don’t think that they were trying to kill an innocent man? They had information to reveal, that this lady said she couldn’t see [expletive] and she still testified. In Shareef Cousin’s case,35 they had physical evidence that this woman couldn’t see, yet they let her testify that she can see, and pointed him out as being the robber, and they were going to kill him. So, we have cases and we got situations where you could actually catch the DA’s hands in the cookie jar; it’s the idea of what we are going to do with them

35. Cousin v. Small, 325 F.3d 627 (5th Cir. 2003), cert. denied (holding that the prosecutors were entitled to absolute immunity). Cousin, only 16 years old when convicted, was one of the youngest people sentenced to death row. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

2012] Thompson Transcript 415

once we find their hands in the cookie jar, and I think we have to take that step now. We have to take that step back from the courts; the courts didn’t allow them to kill us. We don’t have a choice on who to go for the death penalty for, so the courts are just giving them the freedom to kill us with no questions asked. I don’t care how much evidence you could prove that they knew, right now they can get away with murder. We are the victims. What do we do-what we need to do in this whole ordeal? Why are we letting the simplest thing get away? The most common, simplest thing is that police officer lying on the stand. Let’s just deal with the facts; the common simplest thing is that police officer lying on the stand. If we just deal with that; start right there. He’s never been held for perjury, never been prosecuted for perjury. What constitutes perjury by a police officer on the stand? We just now heard him say in the Telly Hankton case,36 that he was going after perjury—the witnesses. Damn, the police officers perjure themselves 24 hours a day on the stand. When are we going to deal with that? Something as simple as that could break down our system. If a police officer now on the stand, the DA already have the police report, or he should have had it, if he didn’t have it. Therefore, both of them should be held liable from that moment on because our liberties are at stake. They are playing with our liberties every time they lie. I’m saying that if we could pull these two pieces of information together, this police report that clearly states that police officer was lying on the stand, and we have this other piece of evidence that the DA had this information in his hand and he allowed that police officer to lie and get a conviction.37 Ten years later, we found that out because the DA or the public defender didn’t have that police report.38 I’m saying let’s prosecute them right now. They took ten years off of someone’s freedom based upon lies. I’m saying we could make the system simple, let’s deal with them, we’re not asking them to lie—we pay their taxes. Our taxpayers pay their salaries. No one is asking them to lie. I’m asking them what we need to do about it. It is something simple. It is something that attorneys need to wake up and figure out how we could strategize this, because this is the beginning, it’s where it all starts; where

36. John Simerman, Telly Hankton Found Guilty of 2008 Murder, THE TIMES- PICAYUNE. Sept. 23, 2011, http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/09/jury_finds_ telly_hankton_xxxx.html. Telly Hankton was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. 37. Connick v. Thompson, 131 S. Ct. 1350 (2011). 38. Id. TRANSCRIPT-THOMPSON.FORMATTED (DO NOT DELETE) 5/16/2012 1:37 PM

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[the police officer] writes his report. When he goes out to the crime scene, we’re not asking them to lie, he’s just getting the information. All we ask him to do is to take this information down. We [are] seeking the truth, they are seeking to win; that’s the big difference. They [are] seeking to win at all costs, even our life, but we don’t have no way to fight for our life; no way to fight back, they have taken it all from us. We have to find out when we are going to stand up; we have to find out where we [are] going to make the stand for freedom; for justice and equality. I don’t ask for much. Right now I deal with 27 guys that [have] been in and out of prison for crimes they didn’t do trying to put their lives back together.39 I see the destruction and I see the hurt. It’s hard when Mr. Charles comes home; [when] Mr. James comes home. It’s hard to try to tell them what we need to do to survive. I [have] been through this [expletive] myself, but, nothing is there to even try to begin to heal some of the wounds that’s been inflicted, but they don’t want to pay for inflicting those wounds. What [are] we going to put $2 million dollars up there? No number is going to justify what they have done to me. I don’t know anything about money. I could spend that in two days. I don’t have any training on how to hold money. Most of them got compensation and they broke right now. That’s the reality, because they never had experience with money and they still need help. I’m just asking that you don’t be an individual that sit by and watch and don’t do anything. I’m not much of nothing, but I’m trying to make something out of nothing. I’m trying to bring some guys words; trying to bring y’all voices of other guys like me; voice of innocence.40 We got an advocacy program right now, where we go out and tell our story.41 We go to different parts of the state, around the country lately, sharing our stories and trying to bring about something; trying to bring about a change. Our voices mean a lot, but if they are just going to fall upon deaf ears, it’s just like nothing; y’all could just go read a book for a story. We need some action; we need to wake up and say we are tired of tolerating this, because this could easily [be] our children, grandchildren, brother[s] or sister[s]. Thank you for having me, and I appreciate this opportunity.

39. See RESURRECTION AFTER EXONERATION, http://www.r-a-e.org/voices-innoc-en ce-0 (last visited Mar. 30, 2012). 40. Id. 41. Id.