A New Orleans man was ordered immediately released from prison after 36 years of incarceration for a home invasion-rape he did not commit.
On Thursday, the Innocence Project New Orleans and the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office’s motion to have Sullivan Walter’s conviction vacated due to withheld physical evidence and poor testimony was accepted by state district judge Darryl Derbigny.
Walter, now 53, was 17 when officers arrested him in connection to the rape, that happened back in May of 1986. Walter was prosecuted as an adult for the crime.
A statement released on Thursday said, “Testing on seminal fluids recovered from the victim proved that Walter did not commit the crime, but the jury that convicted Mr. Walter did not learn of this and it has never before been fully presented to a court.”
“To say this was unconscionable is an understatement,” Derbigny told Walter Thursday.
After Walter appeared in a New Orleans court, he was taken back to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel where he was officially released, free for the first time since he was a teenager.
Walter’s incarceration stands as the longest wrongful incarceration of a minor in Louisiana state history and the fifth longest in U.S. history.
Judge Derbigny was presented with evidence that was not presented at Walter’s original trial or motions for new hearings.
This happened due to a combination of his trial attorney’s failure to effectively elicit this evidence from relevant witnesses and due to misrepresentations made by the police officer analyst who examined the seminal fluid in this case.
Walter was originally represented by an attorney with a troubled history of disciplinary findings and his original trial lasted just one day, including jury selection.
While the motion states the victim, identified only as L.S., believed she could identify the perpetrator at the time, all the times that she could observe him was either masked, in an unlit room at night, and/or threatening her not to look at him.
When Walter was arrested for an unrelated burglary nearly six weeks after the rape, he was subsequently arrested for the rape based on the victim’s identification and the fact that Walter was wearing a blue baseball cap similar to the perpetrator’s.
“What is unusual about this case is how little effort was made to hide the injustice being done to Mr. Walter,” IPNO legal director Richard Davis said in a statement. “The lawyers and law enforcement involved acted as if they believed that they could do what they chose to a Black teenager from a poor family and would never be scrutinized or held to account. This is not just about individuals and their choices, but the systems that let them happen.”
“I’m just ready to live,” Walter said after his release Thursday. “I just want to live an honest, free life.”
The victim in the rape has since died, according to the motion. The victim’s son expressed regret on behalf of his mother about the wrongful conviction, when authorities reached out to him.
IPNO began investigating Walter’s case in October 2021. “This is horrible,” Derbigny said on Thursday. “I’m at a loss of words to express the sorrow and the anger I have at the treatment you’ve been dealt by the system.”
He should sue the CRAP out of everyone involved. That man’s life has been destroyed because of the SCREWED UP LEGAL SYSTEM.
….ABSOLUTELY !!!
I hope that dead woman burns in hell for this.
She lived a life of hell. She too was a victim of the evil police and prosecutors who hid the evidence that this man did not rape her. Remember, their dirty deeds let a rapist walk among us for much longer than he should have victimizing who knows how many other women.
I hope he is given the financial means to live the rest of his life in peace.