For 45 years, 10 months and three days, Wilbert Jones languished behind bars for a crime he says he did not commit.
He was twice convicted of raping a nurse outside Baton Rouge General Hospital in 1971 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But in 2017, Jones was released after evidence surfaced of striking similarities to rapes committed by another man around the same time. This man matched the description of the alleged rapist in Jones’ case, and the man’s crimes against at least one other woman were eerily similar to the rape for which Jones was convicted.
Jones has yet to be fully exonerated, but he wants the state to grant him financial relief for the nearly 46 years he spent incarcerated for a crime he claims he did not commit.
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On Monday, the Louisiana Supreme Court heard arguments supporting Jones’ compensation claim during a hearing at the New Orleans courthouse.
“People like Wilbert Jones, who was wrongly imprisoned for 46 years — he went to prison at 19 and got out a week before his 64th birthday,” said Zachary Crawford, Jones’ attorney with the Innocence Project of New Orleans. “The lawmakers intended to compensate these people and help them rebuild their lives. Not being in a lawsuit for 3½ years.”
Jones petitioned the court for $330,000 in damages in October 2018, arguing he was wrongly found guilty in 1974.
A month after the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a judge’s decision denying Jones’ compensation claim in August, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Prosecutors argued that the appeals court misapplied the standard of review used in its decision because the 19th Circuit Court’s previous ruling was not “clearly erroneous or manifestly defective,” the state’s litmus test for wrongful conviction compensation.
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During Monday’s hearing, the attorney general’s office, Christopher Walters, told judges that Jones failed to meet the burden of proof for compensation.
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