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Thread: Damon Thibodeaux - Louisiana

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    Damon Thibodeaux - Louisiana

    Facts of the Crime:

    Convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Crystal Champagne, 14, in 1996.

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    Louisiana death-row inmate Damon Thibodeaux exonerated with DNA evidence

    Louisiana death-row inmate Damon Thibodeaux exonerated with DNA evidence


    NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana death-row inmate convicted of the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step-cousin in 1996 on Friday became the 300th person exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence in the United States — and the 18th death-row inmate saved from execution by DNA.

    Damon Thibodeaux, now 38, confessed to the brutal attack on his cousin after a nine-hour interrogation in 1996 by detectives from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. He recanted a few hours later and has maintained since that his confession was coerced. Despite his recantation, Thibodeaux was indicted four days after his arrest. In 1997, a jury found him guilty of murder and rape, largely on the basis of his confession. He was sentenced to death

    Thibodeaux walked out of the death-row unit of Louisiana’s Angola prison farm on a rainy Friday afternoon, free for the first time after 15 years, during which he was kept in solitary confinement 23 hours per day.

    In an interview minutes after he left the prison, Thibodeaux said he struggled to control his emotions during the years he waited for exoneration.

    “For the first couple of years, it takes a lot of getting used to. Sometimes, it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. You think, they’re going to kill you and just accept it,” he said. “But as things started to accumulate, you start, you know, gaining hope.”

    He said the detectives who questioned him in 1996 took advantage of his exhaustion and fed him details of the crime to include in his confession.

    “They look for vulnerable points where they can manipulate you, and if you’re sleep-deprived or panicked, or you’re on something or drunk, it makes it that much easier to accomplish what they want to accomplish,” Thibodeaux said. “At that point, I was tired. I was hungry. All I wanted to do was sleep, and I was willing to tell them anything they wanted me to tell them if it would get me out of that interrogation room.”

    Thibodeaux said that he hoped his case could help lead police agencies to be more careful not to induce false confessions.

    The detectives involved in Thibodeaux’s interrogation could not be reached Friday. Earlier, a spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the agency’s handling of the case and said the investigators would not be made available.

    Thibodeaux’s exoneration came after an unusual five-year joint reinvestigation of the case by the office of Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick, which brought the charges, and a team of defense lawyers and investigators, including the New York-based Innocence Project.

    During the reexamination of the case, during which Thibodeaux put his formal appeals on hold, investigators concluded that his confession was riddled with glaring errors, such as the manner and time of death and the identification of the murder weapon, and did not match the crime scene and other evidence. Most remarkable, the investigation found that the sexual assault to which Thibodeaux also confessed — making him eligible under Louisiana law for the death penalty — never occurred.

    “The 300th exoneration is an extraordinary event, and it couldn’t be more fitting that it’s an innocent man on death row who gave a false confession,” said Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project and one of the lawyers who worked on the case. “People have a very hard time with the concept that an innocent person could confess to a crime that they didn’t commit. But it happens a lot. It’s the ultimate risk that an innocent man could be executed.”

    New DNA testing conducted during the inquiry on the clothing worn by Thibodeaux on the night of the murder and virtually every other piece of evidence collected by police established no links to the crime — so the absence of DNA became a powerful element of evidence itself. A DNA profile was also obtained from a tiny sample of blood on a piece of the wire used to strangle the victim. It did not match Thibodeaux.

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    The reinvestigation totaled more than $500,000, a cost shared by the defense and prosecution, according to lawyers involved in the case.

    The dismissal of Thibodeaux’s case comes amid a flurry of such exonerations across the country and at a time when doubts about the reliability of American courts in determining guilt and innocence appear to be growing.

    Early this week, John Edward Smith was released from a Los Angeles jail nearly two decades after being wrongly imprisoned for a 1993 gang-related drive-by shooting. Prosecutors in Chicago moved to dismiss murder charges against Alprentiss Nash in August, 17 years after he was convicted of a murder that new DNA analysis indicates he did not commit. In Texas last month, David Lee Wiggins was released after DNA testing cleared him of a rape conviction for which he had served 24 years.

    In July, a D.C. judge declared Kirk L. Odom innocent of a 1981 rape and robbery for which he had served more than 22 years in prison. The same week, the Justice Department and FBI announced they would reexamine thousands of cases after The Washington Post reported widespread problems in its forensic examination of hair fibers over several decades. That came on the heels of a conclusion by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan that five people convicted in the 1995 murder of a taxi driver and imprisoned since are innocent.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...f_story_1.html
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    Former Death Row inmate Damon Thibodeaux's attorneys argue compensation from state is due

    By Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

    Just days before they're expected to appear before a Jefferson Parish judge, attorneys for a former Marrero resident who spent 15 years on Death Row based on a confession that's since been deemed false continued Tuesday accusing the state of erecting unrealistic barriers in his attempt for compensation.

    Damon Thibodeaux, 40, was released from prison in September 2012, after Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick Jr. conceded he could not rely on the primary evidence in the case: Thibodeaux's confession that he raped and killed 14-year-old Crystal Champagne in 1996.

    A day after she left her Westwego apartment for a trip to the grocery, Champagne's body was found under the Mississippi River batture, under the Huey P. Long Bridge in Bridge City. She was beaten and then strangled to death.

    Thibodeaux, who knew the child and her family, was under interrogation by Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives when the body was located. He confessed during an all-night, nine-hour interrogation that played a large role in his conviction of first-degree murder.

    After a five-year investigation sought by Thibodeaux's attorneys in 2007, Connick based his conclusion on findings by renowned forensic psychiatrist, Michael Welner, who found that the man falsely confessed. Prosecutors and defense attorneys asked then-Judge Patrick McCabe to toss out the conviction and order Thibodeaux's release. Thibodeaux was released from Angola within hours.

    Thibodeaux since has applied for compensation from the state. But Attorney General Buddy Caldwell's office, which responds to all wrongful conviction compensation requests, says Thibodeaux has to prove he is, in fact, innocent, as he asserts. That has led to a six-month legal dispute over matters such as whether certain testimony is admissible.

    In the latest salvo of court filings Tuesday, Thibodeaux's attorneys insist he is innocent, and the mere fact that his conviction was tossed should be sufficient evidence to support his getting compensation.

    "This hearing is about determining whether Damon Thibodeaux is entitled to compensation, which is reserved for those who have had their convictions vacated or reversed because they are innocent -- which is the category that Damon Thibodeaux falls into," attorneys Herbert Larson and Sara Johnson wrote.

    "Surely the attorney general does not believe that Paul Connick, the district attorney for Jefferson Parish, knowingly and intentionally joined in a motion to vacate the conviction for a guilty person; or that Judge Patrick McCabe, as the district judge responsible for determining the merits of that joint motion knowingly and intentionally granted a motion to vacate the conviction and sentence of a guilty person -- and to order his immediate release from Death Row," they wrote.

    At issue are the witnesses Thibodeaux's attorneys plan to present at a hearing to address questions such as false confessions, the unreliability of witnesses and allegations that the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office misused a polygraph examination. Thibodeaux failed a polygraph exam, and two women testified they saw him nervously walking on the river levee before Champagne's body was found.

    State prosecutors want Judge Lee Faulkner of the 24th Judicial District Court to evaluate the witnesses Thibodeaux's attorneys would present to the judge in support of his compensation request.

    Judges decide whether certain witnesses are experts and as such can offer testimony based on their opinions rather than facts, or whether their basing their opinions on what courts have called "junk science."

    Thibodeaux's attorneys say the actions by McCabe and Connick, in vacating the conviction and dismissing the case, should be enough evidence to entitle their client to be compensated. But the assistant attorneys general say that proving his "factual innocence" requires more than merely proving that his conviction was vacated.

    A hearing is scheduled for Friday. A hearing on the compensation question itself has not been set. Thibodeaux is entitled to up to $250,000 for wrongful conviction, and up to $80,000 for educational and medical expenses. Since his release, he has moved to Minnesota and has become a long-haul truck driver, his attorneys have said in court documents.

    http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/...ate_damon.html

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    For compensation, former Death Row inmate Damon Thibodeaux must prove innocence, state reiterates

    By Paul Purpura, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

    The Louisiana attorney general's office Friday continued putting the onus on Damon Thibodeaux to prove his innocence if he wants to be compensated for his 15 years on Death Row. It's not enough, they said, that Jefferson Parish dropped its prosecution of Thibodeaux.

    Thibodeaux, 40, was released from prison in 2012 after District Attorney Paul Connick Jr. conceded he could not have faith in the former Marrero resident's confession to raping and killing Chrystal Champagne, 14. Thibodeaux has been convicted of killing the girl in Bridge City in 1996.

    The teenager left her Westwego apartment to walk to a nearby grocery and never returned. Her beaten and partially nude body was found the next day in the wooded Mississippi River batture under the Huey P. Long Bridge.


    Crystal Champagne, 14 was killed July 19, 1996.
    Her death is unresolved. (Archives)


    Thibodeaux, who was related to the teen, confessed after an all-night, nine-hour interrogation to killing her. That led to his 1997 conviction of first-degree murder and the death sentence.

    Louisiana law allows people wrongly convicted of crimes to receive $25,000 per year for up to 10 years of incarceration. The state caps the award at $250,000. The state also allows as much as $80,000 for educational and medical expenses after release from prison.

    Thibodeaux would be entitled to the full amount, if a judge agrees with his request for compensation. He petitioned the court last year for compensation. The attorney general's office by law responds to all compensation requests, and it is challenging Thibodeaux's petition.

    Attorney General Buddy Caldwell's office agrees with Connick's assessment of Thibodeaux's confession: As evidence, it does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. That's the burden prosecutors need to meet in proving someone is guilty of a crime.

    But assistant attorneys general Colin Clark and Emma Devillier argued Friday that Connick's actions do not mean that Thibodeaux was exonerated, or factually cleared of involvement in Champagne's death, either. "We don't know that he's factually innocent," Devillier told Judge Lee Faulkner during a 24th Judicial District Court hearing.

    Thibodeaux's attorneys, Herbert Larson and Sara Johnson, say the mere fact that Connick asked to have the conviction and sentence tossed out, and that a judge did so and ordered his immediate release from Angola, shows their client's innocence. Larson said the evidence "was so overwhelming" in favor of Thibodeaux's innocence.

    "This was no rubber stamp," Larson argued. "This was after 15 years of investigation by the best experts you can find in the United States."

    On the day Thibodeaux was released, Connick said he relied on experts such as forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, who concluded that while the interrogation was "unremarkable," Thibodeaux falsely confessed. As such, Connick said he found the confession, the primary trial evidence against Thibodeaux, was "unreliable."

    Now 40 and living in Minnesota, Thibodeaux appeared in court Friday for a hearing that the state sought in to limit the evidence his attorneys want to present in support of his request for compensation. Larson said one expert would opine on coercive interrogation tactics that detectives might use and that might result in false confessions. Another would address the unreliability of eyewitnesses, he said, as two women testified during Thibodeaux's trial that they saw him acting nervously on the Mississippi River levee near where Champagne's body was found. And yet another expert would discuss how polygraph examination results could be misused, the attorneys say.

    The assistant attorneys general want limits on such evidence. They say they're entitled to a hearing at which they can test whether such expert witnesses' opinions would be based on "junk science." Faulkner said he would issue a ruling "next week" on whether the assistant attorneys general are entitled to a hearing.

    A hearing to address the ultimate question -- whether Thibodeaux is entitled to wrongful conviction compensation -- would be held at a later date. Thibodeaux said nothing in court Friday. He quietly shook his head in disagreement, as an assistant attorney general accused him of wrongdoing in confessing.

    His attorneys accuse the Sheriff's Office detectives of using unethical and coercive tactics to extract a confession from an intellectually vulnerable man. The Sheriff's Office has not publicly responded to the accusations, and Sheriff Newell

    Normand would not comment on the case in the hours after Thibodeaux was released from prison in 2012. However, court records suggest the Sheriff's Office stands by its case and denies that the deputies did anything wrong during the Champagne murder investigation.

    In addition to his petition for compensation, Thibodeaux in January sued the Sheriff's Office in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, accusing detectives of violating his constitutional rights. A jury trial is set for December in Judge Jay Zainey's court.

    http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/...l#incart_river
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    - Rev. Richard Hawke

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Remembering Damon Thibodeaux, Who Survived Death Row

    I first met Damon Thibodeaux early in 1998, on death row at Angola Prison in Louisiana. I was his lawyer for the next 15 years, while he successfully fought for and won his exoneration and freedom in 2012. I was his friend until he died, on August 31, of COVID-19.

    The Damon I met that day at Angola was beaten down and almost defeated by injustice and hardship. His childhood had been tough: He was raised by an impoverished single mother who loved him but could not protect him from abuse. At 21, he was arrested for a murder he did not commit. A year later he was convicted at a farce of a trial and sentenced to death. I’d come to ask him to let me represent him on appeal; he answered that he didn’t see the point. If he gave up his appeals, he reasoned, the hell of wrongful imprisonment and solitary confinement would be ended sooner, by his execution.

    Death penalty lawyers call this “volunteering” for death. We try to offer hope in a dark place, without denying the reality of injustice and oppression. Damon agreed not to volunteer, and to let me be his lawyer. He had one memory of how I talked him into it, and I have another — but we laughed about it afterwards, more than once. He let me write a brief for him on appeal that was all about how false confessions happen, particularly when the police use the discredited “Reid technique” in interrogation, and then ignore the proof that the confession, like Damon’s, just doesn’t match reality.

    We lost the appeal. And we lost most rounds of the post-conviction lawyering. Other lawyers did much of the heavy lifting at this point. The American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project found us a hero firm to join the fight, and that got us advocates who became some of Damon’s closest friends, Steve Kaplan and Pam Wandzel. They had the resources to get Jen Vitry, a private investigator and mitigation specialist, to investigate, and she became a part of his “family” too. When I went to work for the ACLU, Damon became a client of the Capital Punishment Project. When Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project came aboard, we believed we would win soon. It wasn’t soon enough, but in 2012, Damon was exonerated and released.

    The thing I remember about Damon is how much he changed, and yet how he was always himself. The day we first met he was a slight 23 year old, eyes wary behind enormous glasses (the prison is obliged to correct your vision, not fit your face). He was so depressed I had to strain to hear him. During the years his legal team fought and lost round after round, he became stronger in body and more confident in who he was. The day he walked off death row and out into the sunshine, he was fit and healthy, and I clearly heard him say “See ya never” as he rode away from Angola.

    After the press conferences and celebratory dinners, Damon and Steve drove him to his next home, Minneapolis. (They had to drive because Damon didn’t have any ID that would let him fly.) He got a small apartment and a part-time job in the mailroom at the law firm. He used to awaken most nights, heart pounding, and have to get up and open the door into the hall to reassure himself that he could leave whenever he wanted. (When I called that apartment “small,” he said, “You’ve been in the cells on the row.”)

    The job wasn’t for him — “Too much time indoors,” he said, and I wondered if it might not be a little too much time around the law as well. But thanks to an Innocence Project donor, he found one that was: driving a truck. He became a long-distance big rig driver, and he loved it. He loved being outside, he loved seeing the country. When I got a campervan a few years ago, Damon gave me tips “from the pros” for my road trips, and called to check on me once I embarked, because that’s what a pal does.

    Damon kept changing, allowing himself to grow. When he first got out, he said he was distressed by crowds. But Jen asked him to go to a Pride march with her, and he went and had a blast. Years later we danced at her wedding, and grinned when her wife asked the crowd to raise a fist of solidarity for prisoners everywhere.

    He told me early on that speaking in public was something he didn’t think he could do, but he became one of the best speakers for Witness to Innocence, an organization for and by death row exonerees. He gave many talks and interviews and appeared in several documentaries to get the word out about the cruelty of the death penalty, and the reality of solitary confinement and wrongful convictions.

    Being one of Damon’s lawyers — and being his friend — was one of the greatest gifts of my life. He is the best example I can imagine of transformation in response to oppression and injustice. He never — really, never — again let himself be overcome by bitterness or despair. He had a full, beautiful life, and he said he had no time to spare for resentment or anger. Damon got vaccinated against COVID-19, but too late. He fell ill before his immune system, shredded by 16 years of traumatic and wrongful imprisonment on death row, could rebound. He hesitated because he didn’t trust the government. He had more reason than most.

    Once his brother thanked me for helping Damon when we first met, when Damon was so low. I told him the truth — I had very little to do with it. Damon found his own strength. I never saw a more remarkable inner journey, and I have seen many an incarcerated person grow spiritually and mentally, despite the horrors this country routinely inflicts on them. But there was no one like Damon Thibodeaux. May he rest in power.

    (source: einnews.com)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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