Those wrongfully sentenced to life, IPNO’s efforts to free them

Since its founding in 2001, Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) has been working to help innocent people who’ve been unjustly sentenced in Louisiana, and has freed 68 people who were wrongfully sentenced to life in prison.

Louisiana has one of the highest incarceration rates in the U.S., only recently losing its first place spot to Mississippi. The U.S. itself has the highest number of prisoners in the world, with nearly 2 million people behind bars. Roughly 25% of the world’s prison population is in America.

Wrongful and unjust convictions, whether that be sentencing someone who didn’t commit any crimes, or issuing a sentence that isn’t appropriate for the crime, are what IPNO looks to resolve through post-conviction work.

IPNO receives requests for assistance from prisoners in Louisiana who fill out a written application for help, at no cost to them. IPNO’s team of legal experts, attorneys and investigators then look at the case to determine if the client is indeed innocent. They then have to bring the case back to the court that originally convicted their client and present the new evidence to them.

Larry Moses is one of the people that IPNO has freed and exonerated. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but IPNO’s investigation revealed that this conviction was based on a false testimony from a witness who’d seen Moses with his ex-girlfriend and wanted to get back at him. 

Moses, however, was out-of-town and had multiple alibi witnesses, while the witness “provided inconsistent accounts of the crime and admitted to others that he was setting Mr. Moses up,” according to IPNO.

Evidence was hidden by the prosecutors, and Moses was spared the death penalty only by one vote. He served 29 years in prison before he was finally exonerated.

This takes a lot of time and work as Susan Simon, a retired attorney and new member of IPNO’s board of directors, shared.

“If you’ve committed a crime and you’re in prison for life, it’s a very tough road. But if you’re in prison for something you didn’t do and you spend 29 years like Mr. Moses… To never give up hope is just a strength of fortitude and character that I am honestly in awe of,” Simon said.

The difficulties often don’t end once they get their freedom, however, as they leave prison to a world that’s changed and may have become completely alien to them. Their families may no longer be around, or they may have to adjust to technology, such as cell phones, that wasn’t around before they started their sentence. IPNO continues to support its clients after their release, and attempts to get them readjusted as best they can.

IPNO’s belief is that wrongful sentences and convictions could end with a smaller, more focused, more accurate and more accountable criminal justice system. Their work carries over to trying to tackle some of the root, systemic issues underlying the criminal justice system.

“One of the things they try to do is also to work toward changing the laws and policies and cultures that end up where you’re in prison because you’re poor, and in Louisiana, often a person of color. Our rates of incarceration are so disproportionate to our population rates,” Simon said.

She added that much of our population is not fairly and properly represented.

“We have a huge population of people of color. And yet if you look at our sheriffs, our district attorneys, it’s a very small amount of people that are elected that are people of color, and that needs to change. So it’s changing laws, it’s political, it’s getting out and working to make these changes,” Simon said.

Currently, Louisiana’s legislature is in a special session regarding bills targeting criminal justice. Among these are bills that would add further restrictions to parole that effectively abolish it, harsher sentences for various crimes, increased immunity to liability for law enforcement, removing oversight from the public defender system and putting absolute power in one person that answers to the governor and limitations on post-conviction appeals.

House Bill 4, one that would heavily affect IPNO’s work, would make a post-conviction appeal impossible if more than two years have passed since the conviction, and you had pled guilty to the crime. Oftentimes, people make plea bargains where, despite innocence, they plead guilty under the belief that it would be better for them.

“Their attorney, the judge, says ‘You need to plead guilty, it’ll go better for you, you’ll be able to get out of prison.’ And they end up with these sheer sentences that they’ve actually pled to when they’re actually innocent,” Simon said.

IPNO’s 4th Annual Stand for Justice, which has sold out tickets, seeks to bring further awareness to IPNO’s work and the faults in the criminal justice system. Moses and Barney Holt, both freed from life sentences with IPNO’s help, will be in attendance to speak on their personal stories, and Senator Gerald Boudreaux is being honored with the 2024 IPNO Justice Award for his work for justice and equity. It will be held on March 5 at the Downtown Convention Centre in Lafayette.

Speaking on Louisiana’s prison system in particular, Simon attributed our high incarceration rate to, chiefly, systemic racism and economic disparity.

“When you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, when you are subject to different rules based upon the color of your skin, I think that is how you account for it,” Simon said. “If you go to Angola to visit, you might see a number of Black men working in a plantation field being guarded by white men on horses. It looks awful familiar to the history books.”

Simon said that the best thing people can do is to be informed and read about what’s happening around them, what laws are being proposed.

“And then realize that it’s their responsibility to take a stand for things they believe in. They can write, they can call, they can contact the people that are in power now and say ‘We don’t want this.’ They can help elect people that are for criminal justice changes and to make sure our justice system is just. I think that is how people can help,” Simon said. “They can vote, they can support, they can give money to IPNO who’s representing innocent people. I think there’s a lot of ways you can get involved.”