Fund to help people wrongly convicted of crimes in Louisiana might be abolished

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - It is a fate most people could never imagine: Locked up for decades for a crime you didn’t commit.

Now, some state lawmakers - supported by Louisiana’s Attorney General - want to abolish a fund that helps to rebuild the lives of freed exonerated prisoners.

Reginald Adams remembers his first moments of freedom.

“The day I had a chance to actually hug my mother, without being behind closed doors,” Adams recalled.

Thirty-four years had been taken from them.

Adams said, “You can only imagine what I’ve been through. And I don’t want to share my burden with you. So, I take it with me, put a little smile on my face to hide the way I really feel, and get on about my business. You be lucky you come out.”

Adams was found guilty of murdering a New Orleans police officer’s wife in 1980 and sentenced to hard labor at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He said he witnessed things there he cannot bring himself to repeat.

“We got a little rule about that. It’s almost like Las Vegas. ‘What goes on at Angola stays in there,’” Adams said.

Adams was freed in 2014 after the Innocence Project New Orleans presented evidence to then-Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro. Innocence Project attorneys found an NOPD report at the DA’s office that detailed how officers had actually arrested someone else for the crime right after the murder and tied the murder weapon to that person. Yet, Adams was prosecuted and convicted by former DA Harry Connick’s office.

Fast forward 34 years. When presented with the findings, Cannizzaro agreed to help vacate Adam’s conviction, saying he was wrongfully incarcerated for more than three decades.

“It is clear to me that Adams did not receive a fair trial. And if his attorneys would have been in possession of this information three decades ago … he would have been acquitted,” Cannizzaro said at the time.

Walking out of prison at age 61, Adams had nothing but the clothes on his back. Louisiana law says because he was wrongly sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he’s entitled to money from the state’s Innocence Compensation Fund - $40,000 a year, for 10 years.

“I don’t have really high hopes, big, big hopes,” Adams said. “Like, like, like just small stuff. I ain’t trying to buy no house, I ain’t trying to live in Beverly Hills, I ain’t trying to do none of that.”

He has received some of his payments from the fund, but he still is owed four more.

But now, a bill authored by State Rep. Nicholas Muscarello, Jr. (R-Hammond) seeks to repeal the law that established the compensation fund.

Speaking before the Criminal Justice Committee at the state legislature last week, Attorney General Liz Murrill backed the effort.

“The financial responsibility for that conviction should reside with the parties or the parish where those elected officials or those particular officials - if it’s the police or DA or the sheriff, it doesn’t matter. Those are local officials, and the financial responsibility should reside there,” Murrill said.

Instead of getting money from the state’s Innocence Compensation Fund, Murrill believes exonerees should seek money from their local parishes instead.

“I think this ought to align the financial responsibility with the parish officials who make the decisions that create the underlying conduct that is being complained about,” Murrill said.

Murrill said she believes exonerees should get their money by filing lawsuits under Section 1983, a federal statute concerning the violation of civil rights, in hopes of being awarded damages for wrongful convictions.

But Jee Park, executive director of Innocence Project New Orleans, said that process is expensive for taxpayers and the exonerees, and not everyone who has been exonerated would be eligible to file under the law.

“It is so hard. What they’re asking them to do is to file a 1983 civil rights action,” Park said. “So, the only claims that are eligible are claims against a local official who acted, who created misconduct … and their misconduct cost the wrongful conviction.

“Let’s say a local official, like a prosecutor, had exculpatory evidence, or during the course of an interrogation, the police officer used excessive force, stuff like that. Those are the type of civil rights claims (that) can be alleged in a civil rights lawsuit.”

But Park said even if exonerees have been proven innocent because of DNA evidence, they would not be eligible for money under Section 1983.

“If you are exonerated by DNA evidence, that would not qualify,” she said. “If you are exonerated because your attorney was ineffective, those would not qualify.”

In fact, Park said a very small fraction of exonerees have ever been able to successfully apply the federal statute.

“These are incredibly hard cases to win,” she said. “There have been 87 individuals exonerated in the state of Louisiana, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. And to date, there’s only been seven in successful lawsuits (since 1989).”

Even if they get a ruling in their favor, Park said the exonerees still might not see compensation.

“It is incredibly difficult to collect on those civil judgments,” Park said.

Park said the current system already presents exonerees with an uphill battle trying to get paid from the state’s Innocence Compensation Fund. Before he became governor, Murrill’s predecessor, Gov. Jeff Landry, filed oppositions as attorney general in nearly 85 percent of exonerated inmates’ compensation claims.

Jarvis Ballard falls in that number. He has been trying for years to get his compensation.

Imprisoned for 32 years, Ballard said he missed out on, “Everything. No sports, no watching my family, no watching them transition from kids to young adults, none of that. I was 18, I missed everything. No trades, no work skills.”

Ballard said he was convicted of a rape he didn’t commit.

“I’m 18 years old,” he recalled. “I’ve never been arrested before, for no aggravated rape or anything of any sort. So, now I’m in handcuffs and being accused of raping an elderly woman. I’m like, ‘Oh no, not me.’”

Instead of graduating high school, Ballard landed at Angola, doing hard labor.

“You get four cents an hour,” he said. “Two cents go into your savings, two cents go into your (commissary) account. So, at the end of the week, you made what, 80 cents?”

Once Innocence Project New Orleans took up his case in 2017, attorneys discovered Ballard did not commit the rape. Not only did DNA evidence clear him, but it was discovered that prosecutors had withheld evidence during his trial.

He applied for the state’s Innocence Compensation Fund for people wrongfully convicted. Despite being granted the money, Ballard said the state is still fighting his claim, appealing to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

The AG’s office said it would not publicly discuss the specifics of a case.

With Ballard’s case still in litigation, he’s not sure if he’ll ever see a dollar from the state compensation fund, especially now that some lawmakers want to do away with it.

“If we repeal that statute, we would be the first state in the nation to do that,” said IPNO deputy director Meredith Angelson.

Murrill said, “The statute itself was really designed for people who can prove they are factually innocent, not just had a conviction reversed for some error of law.”

But Ballard was cleared by DNA evidence. Innocence Project attorneys say he settled a lawsuit with St. Bernard Parish, where he was convicted, for a sum of money that pales in comparison to the decades he spent behind bars. That is why he is counting on money from the state compensation fund.

Park said abolishing the compensation fund would not save the state money. It paid out $1.4 million last fiscal year, according to the fiscal note attached to Muscarello’s bill. That is the highest annual amount it has ever handed out.

Park said forcing exonerees to go to their local parishes would cost the state more money.

“The litigation costs alone,” she said. “I mean, we’re talking $40,000 per year for these individuals. The litigation cost of 1983 civil rights actions is tremendous. So, it would cost the state a lot more money, collectively.”

Murrill’s office said in a statement, “Taxpayers in North Louisiana shouldn’t have to pay for the wrongful convictions of a local elected official in South Louisiana or vice versa. This current system has misaligned the responsibility and put it on the backs of the taxpayers all over the state for the conduct of some individual elected official.”

Adams said the money he receives from the state might not be much but, “It’s something that gets my life started back again. ... Thirty, 40 years ago, who knows what I might have been? See what I mean? I was never given an opportunity, because it was taken away.”

Muscarello said in a statement to Fox 8 that his bill “has been amended substantially.”

“I am working with stakeholders to make a law that brings fairness to those who were wrongly convicted, while protecting the interests of the state,” he said.

A spokesperson for Murrill said someone like Adams would continue to receive money from the state, even if the compensation fund is abolished. It remains to be seen what would happen with Ballard, as he has not received compensation yet.

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