| Featured Guest John Hollway Author of Killing Time | | Print | |
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Guest: John Hollway According to Harry Connick Sr, the former New Orleans District Attorney for 30 years, Angola's death row isn't such a bad place for an innocent man to spend 14 years, according to the New Orleans DA's office. Connick stated that John Thompson did not deserve the $14 million a jury awarded him, because nobody raped him and he got to play chess and watch TV. He wasn't denied medical treatment and made several pals in prison, prosecutors argued in an appeal brief. Thompson was railroaded in 1983, when Harry Connick was DA. In 2007, Thompson, who was wrongfully convicted of murder by Connick's DA office due to evidence withholding, was awarded a $14 million verdict by a federal court jury. The jury found "that Thompson's 18 years behind bars (14 of which he spent in solitary confinement on death row) were caused by Connick's deliberate failure to train his prosecutors on their obligations to turn over exculpatory evidence" "Killing Time-an 18 Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom" is a sobering look at our justice system, told with journalistic precision by our Guest John Hollway and his writing partner Ronald Gauthier. Told in careful timeline fashion, it details the story of John Thompson, an African American who was, in 1984, wrongfully convicted of the brutal murder of a New Orleans Hotelier, and sent, under a death sentence to Angola Prison to await execution. Thompson adamantly and unceasingly proclaimed his innocence. After Philadelphia lawyers Michael Banks and Gordon Cooney take on his case, they struggle to find areas of misconduct in his previous trials while grappling with their questions about Thompson's innocence. John Hollway and Ronald M. Gauthier have interviewed Thompson and the lawyers, and paint a realistic and compelling portrait of life on death row and the corruption in the Louisiana police and DA's office. / John Hollway turns this carefully timelined story into both a suspenseful tale, and an analytic view of the dark areas of our criminal justice system, thanks to his skills both as a writer and as an attorney. He has practiced law in a variety of settings, including working both in a federal prosecutor's office and as a defense attorney in state and federal courts, and has grown several public and private healthcare companies in different parts of the healthcare spectrum. John Thompson, having been exonerated and freed thanks to the work of Attorneys Banks and Cooney is now deeply involved in the organization Resurrection After Exoneration or REA. He, once again, lives in Louisiana. The Orleans Parish DA's office appealed and the case, Connick v. Thompson, was orally argued before the U.S. Supreme Court during the October 2010 term. By a 5-4 vote split along ideological lines,[6] the Supreme Court overturned the $14 million award in a decision issued on March 29, 2011. The majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas construed the series of admitted violations to not amount to a pattern of similar violations of Brady v. Maryland (1963), and such a pattern was necessary to hold Connick liable for the incompetence of his employees. The dissenting opinion, read from the bench by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noted that Connick's office had in fact committed a pattern of violations, to wit:
• Failing to disclose exculpatory blood-type evidence, Ginsburg also noted that the office had employee turnover so high a young attorney could advance to a senior supervisory position within four years, the office offered little training in ongoing developments in criminal procedure law despite its large number of inexperienced attorneys, and even at his 2007 trial, Connick admitted that he still did not completely understand Brady's holding. There are other allegations of systemic misconduct by Connick and his prosecutors. "According to the Innocence Project, a national organization that represents incarcerated criminals claiming innocence, 36 men convicted in Orleans Parish during Connick's 30-year tenure as DA have made allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and 19 have had their sentences overturned or reduced as a result."
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Guest: John Hollway
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