Louisiana Voice

Depending on the year that figures are compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice, either Louisiana or Oklahoma has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

Broken down further, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration and one of those two state routinely swap the title from year to year for the highest rate among the 50 states, thus the highest rate in the world. Higher than China, higher than Russia, higher any of the states in the Mid East. Highest in the world.

In 2018, for example, Oklahoma had an incarceration rate of 1,079 per 100,000 population, followed closely by Louisiana’s rate of 1,052 per 100,000. The NEXT FOUR were all from the South: Mississippi (1,039), Georgia (970), Alabama (946), and Arkansas (900).

Louisiana had held onto the highest rate for years until Gov. John Bel Edwards pushed through sweeping prison reform that resulted in early releases for a number of prisoners but by 2021, it had regained the unwelcome number-one position with an incarceration rate of 1,094 per 100,000 population (Oklahoma, meanwhile, had fallen to a rate of 993 while Mississippi had moved into second place at 1,031.

The national incarceration rate for 2021 was 664 per 100,000, a rate that was only 60.7 percent of Louisiana’s.

But there is one statistic that is indisputable: Louisiana had the second-highest rate of wrongful convictions per capita in the nation from 1989 to 2015, according to the NATIONAL REGISTRY OF EXONERATIONS.

In pure numbers, Louisiana, a relatively small state, population-wise, had “only” 45 exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals during that same time, ninth-highest in the U.S. The eight states with higher numbers were, in order: Texas (205), New York (189), California (153), Illinois (151), Michigan (55), Florida (54), Ohio (53), and Pennsylvania (52).

But when population was factored in, Louisiana was second highest in the rate of exonerations per capita (1.93 times the national rate) only to Illinois (2.34).

But a more disheartening statistic showed that of the nation’s 3,143 counties/parishes, two Louisiana Parishes ranked in the top four in the rate of exonerations per capita – meaning those two parishes ranked highly in convicting the wrong person of crimes.

Orleans Parish, with 18 wrongful convictions from 2012 to 2015, had the highest rate of all 3,143 counties at 9.33 times the national rate, according to the National Registry report.

Jefferson Parish was fourth in the nation at 5.03 times the national rate of exonerations, a dismal showing for both parishes. Though neither parish ranked in the top ten in the number of exonerations, their rates eclipsed the rates of the Bronx, the District of Columbia, Cook County (Chicago), Illinois, Dallas, Kings County (Brooklyn), NY, and Harris County (Houston), Texas.

The advent of DNA testing, of course, has been instrumental in many of the exonerations but local district attorneys who obtained the convictions in the first place – and often even their successors – have been inexplicably reluctant to have evidence tested for DNA, even often at the defense’s expense.

Even when DNA evidence proves a person was wrongfully convicted, prosecutors often dig in their heels in incomprehensible efforts to keep the individual in jail.

In Jefferson Parish, two black youths were convicted in the 1997 robbery/murder of a store owner in Westwego.

One person drove the getaway car while a second entered the store. Hearing the gunshots, the driver was pulling away when the shooter came running out, threw down his ski mask and dove into the car through the open passenger window.

Soon afterwards, TRAVIS HAYES was spotted driving a similar car and RYAN MATTHEWS was with him. The pair was arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced to death. Matthews spent five years on death row because the jury never learned that the ski mask DNA did not match either Matthews or Hayes. Nor were jurors ever told that Hayes’s car’s electric window on the front passenger side was stuck in the up, or closed, position.

The Innocence Project took the case and won Matthews’s release with the newly-discovered evidence. Prosecutors were told at the same time that since Matthews had been shown to be innocent, Hayes should be released as well.

No, said prosecutors, Hayes was a different case. It was curious logic that stretched credulity to the breaking point, but nevertheless, Hayes languished another 30 months on death row before he was eventually exonerated.

Harry Connick, Sr. was district attorney for Orleans Parish for 30 years and his office was notorious for withholding exculpatory evidence which resulted in the wrongful convictions of several defendants, among them one JOHN THOMPSON, convicted of murder in a carjacking gone bad and sentenced to death on May 8, 1985.

Thompson remained on death row for 14 years and in April 1999, just 30 days before his scheduled execution, an investigator for the Innocence Project discovered there was a blood stain from the killer that prosecutors had tested – in fact, the test had been rushed by prosecutors – only to find that the blood type was not Thompson’s. The DA’s office never revealed this evidence to the defense as required by law.

When Thomson was finally exonerated, he sued the DA’s office and won a $14 million judgement, which was appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court where Clarence Thomas was the deciding vote that overturned the award.

He did finally receive $330,000 in state compensation, a paltry amount for 14 years of his life that was taken away by a DA’s office that valued a conviction – any conviction – more than an innocent man’s life, more than apprehending the real killer who, as far as anyone knows, is still out there.

Only 32 when he was wrongfully convicted, Thompson died of a heart attack in 2017 at age 55.