Speaker 1: It was July one, the start of the July fourth weekend,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, in New Orleans in the then predominantly
Speaker 1: white working class ninth Ward and two black men approached
Speaker 1: the welcome in bar requesting two beers to go, and
Speaker 1: the owner obliged, believing that she had recognized the shorter
Speaker 1: of the pair from the neighborhood. They grabbed the cans
Speaker 1: of beer and then forced their way in a gunpoint,
Speaker 1: demanding money from the register as well as from the
Speaker 1: intoxicated patrons, one of whom Cecil Lloyd, was fatally shot.
Speaker 1: The assailants set their beer cans down on the bar,
Speaker 1: leaving their fingerprints behind. The police began their investigation, casting
Speaker 1: a white net, considering all the local black men as
Speaker 1: potential suspects, including a young man named Elvis Brooks, who
Speaker 1: had previously been wrongfully arrested for a nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: robbery and attempted murder. When three of the surviving witnesses
Speaker 1: identified Elvis from a photo array and again in court,
Speaker 1: it must have seemed to the jury that his parade
Speaker 1: of thirteen alibi witnesses were perjuring themselves to save Elvins
Speaker 1: from prison. But this is wrongful conviction. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back after this. Welcome back to Ronal conviction. Today, I
Speaker 1: have a case out of New Orleans and it's a
Speaker 1: case of cross racial misidentification, which, as you know and
Speaker 1: study after study has been found and proven to be
Speaker 1: even less accurate than guessing. And with us to discuss
Speaker 1: the case is the man himself, Elvis Brooks, who did
Speaker 1: over four decades and then Gold Up Penitentiary. Elvis, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Ronthal Conviction. Thank you, Mrs Jason, and joining Elvis
Speaker 1: is one of his post conviction attorneys. She's the supervising
Speaker 1: attorney for Case Development innis Is Project New Orleans, also
Speaker 1: known as hypno Cherrelle Arnold. Welcome to rawful conviction. Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. So. This is Orleans Parish in
Speaker 1: n seventies. We've covered several other cases from this era,
Speaker 1: both in Orleans Parish and elsewhere and surrounding areas Bobby
Speaker 1: Jean Johnson, Vincent Simmons, Malcolm Alexander, where it seems like
Speaker 1: the state was running more of a kidnapping racket than
Speaker 1: anything resembling justice or public safety. Orleans Parish has been
Speaker 1: really challenged for a long time in terms of the
Speaker 1: administration of the criminal legal system, how Orleans Parish has
Speaker 1: treated people of color and particularly it's black residents. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seven, Mr Brooks lived in an area that was
Speaker 1: primarily white. His family was one of the only black
Speaker 1: families who lived there. Honestly, that was part of the
Speaker 1: reason that he was targeted for this crime. This was
Speaker 1: an area that was very like white working class back then.
Speaker 1: The Lower ninth Ward, of course, would become an area
Speaker 1: that was largely black area. Obviously by the time Hurricane
Speaker 1: Katrina came, So this was an area that was really
Speaker 1: kind of on the cusp of Frankly, I think many
Speaker 1: white residents believed something dangerous, but in actuality was an
Speaker 1: area where black families would eventually become homeowners and grow
Speaker 1: a really vibrant neighborhood. So many of the witnesses I
Speaker 1: imagined in this case, or people who lived around there,
Speaker 1: would later be part of the white flight of white
Speaker 1: residents of Orleans Parish who left to the suburbs. And
Speaker 1: this is a phenomenon we saw all over the country
Speaker 1: in this era, with white residents fleeing to suburbia talking Brooklyn, Detroit,
Speaker 1: and of course New Orleans and Elvis. You grew up
Speaker 1: in that fraud time. Can you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about your childhood. I was one of twelve kids,
Speaker 1: five boy, the seven girls, oh, the Miller boy. You
Speaker 1: know I hate a normal kid life. You know, I
Speaker 1: went to school and I had two of the best
Speaker 1: parents in the world. Yeah, they'd have to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: twelve kids is no small feat. I can't even imagine
Speaker 1: that's in some superhero category. And it must have been
Speaker 1: hard for them to keep you all in line. That
Speaker 1: was the bed the key. No, my daddy, he said,
Speaker 1: had to come to school quite a bit for me
Speaker 1: and my better young teenagers, you know, acting crazy, you're
Speaker 1: no fighting Joe ride, you know, shooting hook and all that.
Speaker 1: We never heard anyone, you know. Now. Joy riding was
Speaker 1: a bit of a raucous teenage trend back then, where
Speaker 1: you'd steal a car for a short period of time
Speaker 1: with the attention of returning it or abandon it unnoticed.
Speaker 1: Which it's foolishness for sure, but it's certainly not murder.
Speaker 1: But I can also imagine that the joy rides at
Speaker 1: least kissed people off right. I think he could have
Speaker 1: been upsetting some people. I think these were crimes that frankly,
Speaker 1: white teenagers were committing that people did just call joy rides, right,
Speaker 1: and they weren't getting arrested, or they weren't getting through
Speaker 1: being my partner better. Would be hanging out there, you know,
Speaker 1: just hanging out, you know, and the police come threatened aice,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, y'all get off the screen. We're
Speaker 1: gonna rish y'all, you know, but put some charging on y'all.
Speaker 1: You know we would, Being young, we didn't take him serious,
Speaker 1: you know. So since you had this reputation as a troublemaker,
Speaker 1: they would threaten you with bogus charges to enforce some
Speaker 1: sort of an unofficial curfew that they made just for you.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that you should have taken those
Speaker 1: threats seriously. Now, this wasn't the detective in the case
Speaker 1: we're here to discuss today, but this guy did do
Speaker 1: something that put you in jeopardy for this case. There
Speaker 1: was a robbery turned homicide in your neighborhood at a
Speaker 1: bakery and one night he made his usual threat to
Speaker 1: get you off the street. That you didn't take that seriously,
Speaker 1: but this time it got a bit more real for you. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: the nineties center forward the detect to put a robbery
Speaker 1: and a tip murder charge on me. I was seven team.
Speaker 1: I ain't even know what the riberry happened. You know.
Speaker 1: It happened on St. Claude and uh treacle that was
Speaker 1: about seven blocks away from where I lived, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh he he stopped me three times altogether. He
Speaker 1: told me if he ever catched me on the street again,
Speaker 1: he's gonna bring me up to jail for that, for
Speaker 1: that charge. You know. Third time he saw me out there,
Speaker 1: he arrested me, you know, and brought me to my
Speaker 1: parents house and told my parents. You know, I knew
Speaker 1: he always didn't have anything to do with this. I
Speaker 1: gotta teach him a lesson. I'm going to arrest him.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna book him, I'm gonna put him on the
Speaker 1: line up. He ain't gonna get identified that he didn't
Speaker 1: do this here, but I gotta teach him a lesson.
Speaker 1: I was franker printed and I had him up, you know,
Speaker 1: mug shot. You know. I went on the line up
Speaker 1: and I was out when they arrest me on this
Speaker 1: case here. That's all they talked about with that nineteen
Speaker 1: SENTI folk, you know. So this detective trying to show
Speaker 1: you tough love, as if that was in his job description,
Speaker 1: put you permanently on the docket, ready to be sold
Speaker 1: off and shipped off to Angola. So three years later,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. Charrell. Can you describe the events
Speaker 1: of July one at a bar in the ninth Ward
Speaker 1: called the Welcome In that resulted in the fail shooting
Speaker 1: death of a man named Cecil Lloyd? Sure? So this cribe.
Speaker 1: I believe. It was a Friday night, but it was
Speaker 1: just the start of basically the fourth of July weekend,
Speaker 1: and the bar was a small neighborhood bar, tiny place,
Speaker 1: not a lot of room to move around. There was
Speaker 1: a few patrons left, and I think one or two
Speaker 1: people working the bar. As far as we can tell,
Speaker 1: these patrons had been drinking all day right, They were
Speaker 1: having a good time, enjoying the weekend too. Black men
Speaker 1: come to the door. And this was a bar that
Speaker 1: I think was primarily a white bar, but everyone who
Speaker 1: worked there was white. The owner was white. As far
Speaker 1: as I'm aware, the patrons were all white. Two black
Speaker 1: men come to the door and the owner says that
Speaker 1: they asked for beers to go, and she says that
Speaker 1: she opened the door to get them the beers because
Speaker 1: she recognized one of the men from the neighborhood. She
Speaker 1: hands them the beers and then they push in the door.
Speaker 1: But importantly to Mr Brooks's case, they set their beer
Speaker 1: on the bar top just a couple of steps inside
Speaker 1: the bar, and they basically commence a robbery. So they
Speaker 1: empty the cash register. They demand everyone get down on
Speaker 1: the ground. They're sort of a lead robber and kind
Speaker 1: of the supporting robber. One of them is armed with
Speaker 1: a gun, or at least one of them is the
Speaker 1: one who fires the fatal shot. I believe only one
Speaker 1: shot is fired, and sadly Mr Lloyd is killed, seemingly
Speaker 1: for no reason. Mr Lloyd complied just like everyone else,
Speaker 1: so this must have scared the living ship out of
Speaker 1: everyone in that bar. Lloyd complied and still got killed.
Speaker 1: So all bets are off. But these two men leave,
Speaker 1: and of course the cops are called in What did
Speaker 1: the victims say to the police? They take witness statements
Speaker 1: from everybody. We now know that these statements differed quite
Speaker 1: a bit from one another in many ways. By the
Speaker 1: time of trial, the statements would become remarkably more consistent.
Speaker 1: But that night, the witnesses give sort of general descriptions
Speaker 1: of the men. We know they were both black. They
Speaker 1: give a variety of different clothing descriptions, a variety of
Speaker 1: hair descriptions. We know that one is short and one
Speaker 1: is tall. Mr Brooks was eventually convicted of being the
Speaker 1: shorter of the two robbers. Who is the shooter? Right,
Speaker 1: It's my understanding that the shorter of the two assailants
Speaker 1: was about five four full full by our five by
Speaker 1: the hundred forty something pound, and you see he had
Speaker 1: he is short hair. What I had a big where
Speaker 1: the shorter robber I think it may have also technically
Speaker 1: betted afro. But Mr Brooks's hair was like much bigger,
Speaker 1: you know, Mr Brooks, he could be described as short.
Speaker 1: But the hairstyles that the witnesses described just didn't match
Speaker 1: Mr Brooks. So we're seeing a market difference in height
Speaker 1: as well as length of hair. So how does Elvis
Speaker 1: even get dragged into the consciousness of these victims? The
Speaker 1: bar owner Ms. Caruso, the woman who chose to let
Speaker 1: the men into the bar. She believes that she recognized
Speaker 1: the shorter robber from the neighborhood. And in the end,
Speaker 1: this is really the only connection that Mr Brooks has
Speaker 1: to this case is that his family was a black
Speaker 1: family who lived in the neighborhood. Beyond that, police have
Speaker 1: nothing to go on. So what detectives do, and we
Speaker 1: know this from the police files that we've been able
Speaker 1: to obtain, is that they basically just started getting lists
Speaker 1: of black men who lived in theighborhood Jesus Christ and
Speaker 1: so there are just lists and lists. Frankly a men
Speaker 1: who could have been wrongfully convicted for this crime. Right
Speaker 1: if it wasn't Mr Brooks, you most certainly would have
Speaker 1: been somewhat else on one of these lists. Interestingly, when
Speaker 1: police create these lists, Elvis Brooks isn't on them. We
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what police did with these lists. It
Speaker 1: seems as though they may have gotten photos of some
Speaker 1: of these people and tried to show the robbery victims
Speaker 1: these photos. We don't know for sure. There's not great
Speaker 1: documentation on this, but for several weeks, police don't have
Speaker 1: a suspect in this case. They are basically all they
Speaker 1: have to go on is a black man who maybe
Speaker 1: lives in the neighborhood or has been in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: at some point, and so this is how randomly right coincidentally,
Speaker 1: despite having gotten these lists of people, Mr Brooks's name
Speaker 1: isn't on them. Suddenly, from reading the police report, one
Speaker 1: of the police officers would have you believe that he
Speaker 1: suddenly came came to bund to suspect that matched the
Speaker 1: description who lived in the neighborhood, and that was Elvis Brooks.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a sinister game of any meny miny mo, right.
Speaker 1: And this is why we must remind people that black
Speaker 1: lives matter, because to these people, they simply don't. So
Speaker 1: even though he's four inches taller than the shooter, has
Speaker 1: a big afro unlike the shooter, they still put Elvis's
Speaker 1: photo in an array to show to the victims. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's even like multiple photos on one
Speaker 1: piece of paper. They just have photos. And one of
Speaker 1: those photos is of Elvis Brooks. But it's not a
Speaker 1: photo from nineteen seventy seven. It's a photo from several
Speaker 1: years before, right when Mr Brooks had been arrested previously.
Speaker 1: And so they take this old photo where his hair
Speaker 1: looks differently, right, because it was two years previously. His
Speaker 1: hair is much shorter in this photo that his hair
Speaker 1: was in nineteen seventy seven. He hadn't cut his hair
Speaker 1: in between because it was an afro that he was
Speaker 1: letting grow out. And so they take this old photo
Speaker 1: to the witnesses from the bar. But because it's the
Speaker 1: same photo, when a witness signed the back of it, right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes when you sign things, you can tell that there's
Speaker 1: writing on the back of something. So it's certainly possible
Speaker 1: that as they're showing the photo to the witnesses from
Speaker 1: the bar, it's very obvious which photo has been identified.
Speaker 1: So not only is the photo lineup suggestive because of
Speaker 1: the signature on the back, but also the photo of
Speaker 1: Elvis from four more closely met the description of the
Speaker 1: actual assailant in than Elvis did in that same year.
Speaker 1: This is also a situation where you have three fully
Speaker 1: traumatized victims, so not exactly a room full of people
Speaker 1: with clear heads, and the victims were white, the assailants
Speaker 1: were black. And we have to go back to this
Speaker 1: important point, which is that study after study has shown
Speaker 1: that cross racial identification it's less accurate than guessing. So
Speaker 1: they got three cross racial identifications from two patrons, Mr Nodo,
Speaker 1: Miss Gibriani and the bar owner, Miss Caruso, But they
Speaker 1: didn't have to go down the identification route, right. What
Speaker 1: about the fingerprints, they're right there on the beer cans. Correct.
Speaker 1: The police got to the scene and they knew exactly
Speaker 1: what would be probative to finger print in this scene.
Speaker 1: This isn't a case where they were figure printing the
Speaker 1: ceiling or something like that. They knew that the robbers
Speaker 1: had touched these beer cans and that they had then
Speaker 1: set those beer cans on the bar top. And so
Speaker 1: they collected those Kansas evidence and they were able to
Speaker 1: get usable prints that they could compare to Mr Brooks's prints.
Speaker 1: And what we now know and what police and what
Speaker 1: the district attorney in ninety seven new as they were
Speaker 1: trying to kill Mr brook right to prosecute him capitally,
Speaker 1: was that the figure prints saw those beer cans didn't
Speaker 1: match Elvis Brooks. We don't know who's they were, but
Speaker 1: we know they didn't belong to Mr Brooks. So they
Speaker 1: got these fingerprints, they knew that they didn't match Elvis,
Speaker 1: but yet they decided to go ahead and pursue the
Speaker 1: death penalty. Anyway, let's just marinate on that for a second.
Speaker 1: That sounds like state sanctioned attempted murder. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: if these folks were civilians, they'd be charged and punished accordingly.
Speaker 1: But our system has decided that these people have special privileges,
Speaker 1: including the right to kill for the advance of their
Speaker 1: careers with no recompense. And this was the notorious Harry
Speaker 1: Conic senior era, so this sort of behavior was the norm,
Speaker 1: even from the junior a t A who was trying
Speaker 1: the case. So they ignored the beer canned fingerprints that
Speaker 1: they knew to be from the actual assailants, no question
Speaker 1: about it, and they got into restaurant for Elvis instead.
Speaker 1: And I was at work that day. You know, when
Speaker 1: I got home, my sister say to Polly, will look
Speaker 1: like you for you? I see it for what they said,
Speaker 1: you kill somebody. I said, kill somebody. I ain't ever
Speaker 1: killed nobody. Then I went to the phone book called
Speaker 1: the phil Priests, and you know Acton was he looking
Speaker 1: for all the books. And they said, yeah, let's see
Speaker 1: where you are. I said, my on paid final Saint
Speaker 1: Claude and Falster. Then when he came and got me
Speaker 1: right there. You know, we'll be right back after this.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading
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Speaker 1: social responsibility and is making a positive difference in the
Speaker 1: lives of its employees and in the communities where we
Speaker 1: work and live. In light of the compelling need for
Speaker 1: pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of A I
Speaker 1: G's commitment to criminal and social justice is reform, the
Speaker 1: A i G pro Bono Program provides free legal services
Speaker 1: and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. I had
Speaker 1: to go to get ball set. That's the first thing
Speaker 1: I went to, which I didn't have any ball because
Speaker 1: the first degree murial. So after that it went into
Speaker 1: the emoting for identification. Brought me the coda. So I
Speaker 1: feel like I know I didn't do it, I said she.
Speaker 1: She said, these people here ain't gonna say I've done it,
Speaker 1: because if I knew I didn't do it, I see
Speaker 1: they got the wrong person. You know. When I go
Speaker 1: in the code room for emotional for identification, one of
Speaker 1: them saying he potive it wasn't me, you know, because
Speaker 1: the d A came in private me. See this ain't
Speaker 1: the man, you said, now my pot to that ain't
Speaker 1: the man. And uh, the two ladies, you know, they
Speaker 1: said it was me, you know. But when okave back
Speaker 1: the trial and man, it changed man, you know, and
Speaker 1: she was me, you know. So Joseph Noo when he
Speaker 1: went to court for the motion to suppress identifications, he
Speaker 1: essentially couldn't recognize if the man he had identified in
Speaker 1: the photo, if that was the same man who was
Speaker 1: in court. Someone who can't even look at a photo
Speaker 1: and say if it's the same person as someone sitting
Speaker 1: in front of them shouldn't be considered to be reliable
Speaker 1: evidence against someone. Yet somehow something helped him come around
Speaker 1: by the time of trial to make the identification. At trial,
Speaker 1: the evidence against Mr Brooks is three cross racial stranger identifications.
Speaker 1: At least two of the witnesses were quite a bit
Speaker 1: older than Mr Brooks. It can be more difficult to
Speaker 1: identify someone who's of a different age than you are.
Speaker 1: We most recognize people who look more like us. It's
Speaker 1: just easier for people to remember. And then also, these
Speaker 1: people had been drinking for hours in a dark bar.
Speaker 1: They were terrified they were being told to lie down
Speaker 1: on the ground. Someone had just been shot seemingly randomly,
Speaker 1: And this is a very quick situation, and so they've
Speaker 1: had only a few minutes to look at a person
Speaker 1: they've never seen before and to identify them after they've
Speaker 1: been drinking, some of them seemingly for hours. And then
Speaker 1: there's a fourth witness presented a trial in addition to
Speaker 1: the other three we've already mentioned. The fourth person is
Speaker 1: actually he's the he's he's the victim who can't identify anyone.
Speaker 1: He describes the circumstances of the crime and agrees, you know,
Speaker 1: in many ways with the other witnesses, but he could
Speaker 1: never make an identification of Mr Brooks. And so this
Speaker 1: was the evidence against Elvis Brooks. No physical evidence ever
Speaker 1: tied him to the crime, and in fact, the finger
Speaker 1: prints right made it very clear that he was not
Speaker 1: one of the robbers. So what the hell is this?
Speaker 1: How is it that the defense did not bring this up?
Speaker 1: His lawyer didn't mention the fingerprints because he wasn't told
Speaker 1: about the fingerprints the police, right, they had gathered the evidence,
Speaker 1: they had tested the evidence, They knew about the evidence.
Speaker 1: We know that the assistant district attorney in this case
Speaker 1: knew about the evidence because of notes we would later
Speaker 1: find in the d A file. Mr Brooks's attorney was
Speaker 1: never told that there were fingerprints exonerating his client. But
Speaker 1: in this trial that lasted only a few hours, Mr
Speaker 1: Brooks's attorney fought. He presented witness after witness after witness,
Speaker 1: all demonstrating Elvis Brooks's alibi for that night. Mr Brooks
Speaker 1: also testified on his own behalf right. He told the
Speaker 1: jury that he was innocent, that he didn't do this.
Speaker 1: In total, the jury chose to believe for white witnesses
Speaker 1: who had been drinking in a dimly lit bar, oh
Speaker 1: for thirteen black witnesses, who described almost to a t,
Speaker 1: the alibi that Mr Brooks had that night. They all
Speaker 1: explained how they had come to be at the Brooks
Speaker 1: house that evening, what they were doing, the time periods
Speaker 1: they were there, what they saw Elvis doing. These were
Speaker 1: people who, yes, many of them were related to Mr Brooks,
Speaker 1: though not all of them. But these were also people
Speaker 1: who just frankly, they corroborated one another, not in a
Speaker 1: perfect way, right, not everyone had been there for the
Speaker 1: exact same time period that night, but they were clear
Speaker 1: as to what Mr Brooks had been wearing, which wasn't
Speaker 1: the clothing described as the robber was wearing, what his
Speaker 1: hair had looked like, and what he had been doing.
Speaker 1: And they were all clear that in this small shotgun
Speaker 1: style house, which right, it's a house that it has
Speaker 1: what entrance and what exit, it's very clear when someone
Speaker 1: leaves the shotgun house, you can't sneak out. They knew
Speaker 1: that Mr Brooks had been there all night, he couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly be the robber, and yet these black voices were ignored.
Speaker 1: I had my brother, he come overever his friend, and
Speaker 1: my sister she come overever with her boyfriend, and she
Speaker 1: had but three kids with I'm the one to open
Speaker 1: the door for them, you know, four to July was
Speaker 1: coming up, and uh, they wanted to come visit my mom,
Speaker 1: my daddy. You know, No, I might have been a
Speaker 1: bad little kid, but my mom and dad. It was
Speaker 1: very honest people. You know, even if it meant I
Speaker 1: had to have the depth pen, it wasn't gonna laugh
Speaker 1: for me. You know. After this very short proceeding, three
Speaker 1: cross racial misidentifications were made, but thirteen alibi witnesses swore
Speaker 1: that you were with them instead. In your life was
Speaker 1: literally hanging in the balance. Did you still hold out
Speaker 1: hope that the jury was going to believe your parents
Speaker 1: and your family? You know what, at that time, I
Speaker 1: was young, Like I said, I didn't take life serious, damn,
Speaker 1: you know. But I was saying to myself, I didn't
Speaker 1: do this. To me, I'm I'm not gonna get convicted
Speaker 1: because I didn't do it. You know. But when I
Speaker 1: got convicted, I learned the hard way just how much
Speaker 1: people hate out of people. You want to get somebody,
Speaker 1: to get the right person that's done it, you know,
Speaker 1: don't come just national anybody that just made me look
Speaker 1: at people different. I learned the hard way. I never
Speaker 1: forget it, though. We'll be right back. After a quick break.
Speaker 1: A week later, they uh sends me to life and
Speaker 1: fifty years and they go. And after that a few
Speaker 1: months later, I was then ain't golden For the next
Speaker 1: farty years. They put you in the field, you know,
Speaker 1: working like a sleeve, picking cutton, digging dishes, picking colm,
Speaker 1: doing called grains, cutting grass, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I really weren't familiar with those things that, you know,
Speaker 1: so I just had to get used to it. When
Speaker 1: I face went there I will get right us. No.
Speaker 1: So when Mr Brooks was sentenced to life in prison,
Speaker 1: the sentence he only got because his mother begged the
Speaker 1: jurors to spare her son from the death penalty. He
Speaker 1: was sent to Angola Peditentiary, right the Louisiana State Penitentiary,
Speaker 1: where he got reprimands for essentially not doing hard labor
Speaker 1: fast enough or with sufficient enthusiasm for the hard labor.
Speaker 1: He was assigned lucky in a hole in the dungeon
Speaker 1: yourself back then, Uh, they give your extra duty, you know,
Speaker 1: something you gotta do on the weekends, going to field
Speaker 1: on the weekends, or they might give you a higholation
Speaker 1: time which is ten days, you know, without a matches
Speaker 1: than all that, they never even tried to hide the
Speaker 1: fact that mass incarceration was just what slavery morphed into
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, and they still aren't. Louisiana just
Speaker 1: did have the opportunity as four other states did, who
Speaker 1: all passed it to remove the slavery loophole of the
Speaker 1: Thirteenth Amendment from the state constitution by ballot initiative that
Speaker 1: was in November two, but they voted to keep it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was the voters voted this way by a
Speaker 1: comfortable margin, which is um. I don't have the right
Speaker 1: words for it. Anyway, it wasn't bad enough for your
Speaker 1: mom to lose you, but your brother was in Angola
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah, he looked up up. Then they go
Speaker 1: with me, you got killed, you know name with the
Speaker 1: Brooks killed. I'm sorry to hear that. So I understand.
Speaker 1: They tried to get a friend of yours too to
Speaker 1: shoot him in for the taller shooter in V. Eight
Speaker 1: and this was a guy named Alvin Keller. Keller. They
Speaker 1: said the second man was something like six ft or
Speaker 1: six one. Keller was saying high as me. You know.
Speaker 1: They tried to arrest but kills a man. I was.
Speaker 1: I was locked up when that happened, you know, did
Speaker 1: they check and see it was? Really? Didn't They let
Speaker 1: him go? But no, they ain't never arrested anyone else,
Speaker 1: you know. So luckily for him, he was able to
Speaker 1: use their own words against them to escape being another statistic,
Speaker 1: another wrongfully convicted black man in Louisiana at the time,
Speaker 1: and then being forced onto that horrible conveyor belt of
Speaker 1: free labor that fuels this system. You were making two
Speaker 1: to four cents an hour in the fields. It's an
Speaker 1: amount of money that makes it impossible to save up
Speaker 1: so that if you wanted, like Mr Brooks did, to
Speaker 1: try to get information about his case, Postage cost money, right, envelopes,
Speaker 1: paper cost money. In prison documents certainly cost money. And
Speaker 1: when you're talking about making that little and having a
Speaker 1: family that though they supported him as best they could,
Speaker 1: they just weren't in a position to support him financially
Speaker 1: like that. And so it leads to a situation where
Speaker 1: people are desperate to try to get information about their cases, right,
Speaker 1: and they have virtually no tools to do so. And
Speaker 1: so for years Mr Brooks struggled right to try to
Speaker 1: litigate his case pro say, meeting without a lawyer, because
Speaker 1: in Louisiana, once he wasn't given a death sentence, he
Speaker 1: was no longer entitled. He wasn't entitled to some sort
Speaker 1: of post conviction counsel. Right, he did get to take
Speaker 1: it out of time appeal it was denied, but those
Speaker 1: sorts of things, that's not going to reveal any new evidence,
Speaker 1: that just going to review what occurred actually at the
Speaker 1: trial itself. And so for years Mr Brooks was just
Speaker 1: left alone to try to manage as best he could
Speaker 1: to try to scrape together the body to get documents,
Speaker 1: to try to get information about right what he always
Speaker 1: knew that he wasn't the robber. He knew he didn't
Speaker 1: do that crime, and he was certain that there would
Speaker 1: be something in those files to prove it. But he
Speaker 1: just couldn't get to them. But you got crafty right
Speaker 1: when you weren't out in the fields. I understand you
Speaker 1: actually started making belts, like with your own hands, from scratch.
Speaker 1: They had a police take called the hobby shop. Bills
Speaker 1: were my person all items you know, we ought own.
Speaker 1: Let we make our own products and sell them, you know,
Speaker 1: so that well I've gotten the hobby shop, I would
Speaker 1: make him bills, have to sell bills in support myself.
Speaker 1: So you worked on your appeals pro se and so
Speaker 1: on your own using the belt business in order to
Speaker 1: make enough money just to get postage and pay for
Speaker 1: documents and try to fight the state in post conviction.
Speaker 1: Of course you're fighting against them with their unlimited resources. Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: and all of them got denied. But we really helped
Speaker 1: me and a bunch of other people when uh the
Speaker 1: d A files, when they made it uh possible for
Speaker 1: us to have you know, the Supreme co see we
Speaker 1: were entirer to it has opened a lot of dolls
Speaker 1: for people because when you get there, you get the
Speaker 1: information that could help you something that you weren't it
Speaker 1: tighter to it one time, the d A Files as
Speaker 1: I found out about the Bill Cans Frank of Prince
Speaker 1: d A Files who that was way later and the teens. Wow,
Speaker 1: so you went in nineteen seventy seven and didn't find
Speaker 1: out about the fingerprints until well after two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: So when did the Innocence Project of New Orleans get involved?
Speaker 1: And how did this thing turn around? Basically, as soon
Speaker 1: as he heard about KNOW, which we were founded in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, he wrote to us and asked for help.
Speaker 1: But so did the thousands of other people. And right,
Speaker 1: we're only one office, and so as best we can, right,
Speaker 1: we work through cases. And unfortunately, and I'm I'm so
Speaker 1: sad that Mr Brooks had to wait even longer for
Speaker 1: Inpo's help, but we were finally able to start looking
Speaker 1: at the case around I believe twenty sixteen was what
Speaker 1: I first wrote to him. And hypno and this is
Speaker 1: progenials of course is an incredible organization, and they have
Speaker 1: done a ton of good in a place that has
Speaker 1: an insane backlog, and it's just a tortured history of
Speaker 1: these kind of cases. We're talking, of course, about the
Speaker 1: most incarcerated state in the country. Almost always sometimes Oklahoma
Speaker 1: takes their place, they flip flop, but Louisiana it's the
Speaker 1: most incarcerated state in the most incarcerated country in the world.
Speaker 1: So the task that they face, the uphill battle that
Speaker 1: they fight every day, no matter year, it's daunting, to
Speaker 1: say the least. So if you listeners can help them
Speaker 1: with a dollar, a hundred dollars, a hundred million dollars,
Speaker 1: whatever you got laying around, we'll have a link in
Speaker 1: the bio to YPNO, and I hope our audience will
Speaker 1: be driven to get involved and help other people like
Speaker 1: Mr Brooks. So when IPNO finally did get involved, what
Speaker 1: did that investigation look like. So in the post conviction process,
Speaker 1: one of the things we do to investigate is use
Speaker 1: the public records laws and request documents, and we were
Speaker 1: able to write, go look at them, pick them up,
Speaker 1: pay for them, decide what you want to pay for
Speaker 1: what you don't. That's something that people who are incarcerated
Speaker 1: often can't do that. In Mr Brooks's case, he actually
Speaker 1: had a sister who was really moved by what happened
Speaker 1: to her brother, and she wanted to join the police
Speaker 1: force to make sure that didn't happen to another black family,
Speaker 1: and she unfortunately was injured and so had to eventually
Speaker 1: resign the force. But during the time that she was
Speaker 1: there at p D, she tried to look in the
Speaker 1: record for documents about her brother's case, and she couldn't
Speaker 1: find them. She was told that they were too old,
Speaker 1: that they probably didn't have them anymore. So this is
Speaker 1: something where even someone who should be an insider right
Speaker 1: who's trying to help her brother, trying to do these things,
Speaker 1: and even as an p D officer, was being told
Speaker 1: that these documents didn't exist. But as you've heard before,
Speaker 1: this fingerprint evidence that should have stopped this train before
Speaker 1: it even left the station did actually exist. Unfortunately, in
Speaker 1: this case, we were actually never able to find the
Speaker 1: physical fingerprints. It seems as though they were lost or
Speaker 1: frankly possibly destroyed. We found handwritten notes that, it turns
Speaker 1: out we learned were written by the assistant district attorney
Speaker 1: saying Prince not Elvis Brooks. Right. That was written on
Speaker 1: a notation next to a discussion of the fingerprints on
Speaker 1: the beer cancer. And so when we saw that, we thought, wow,
Speaker 1: what you know, what do you mean, let's find these fingerprints?
Speaker 1: Whose fingerprints are? And unfortunately, because of how n p
Speaker 1: D conducted it's figure printing back then, if they didn't
Speaker 1: find a match, if they didn't get an i D
Speaker 1: to someone, they just didn't record it. Right back in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, if ed p D tested someone's fingerprints, compared
Speaker 1: the fingerprints and it wasn't that person, often they just
Speaker 1: didn't write a report because they thought, well, this is
Speaker 1: of no use, right They thought, if it wasn't their suspect,
Speaker 1: what good would it do the same with if they
Speaker 1: showed a photo to someone and they didn't make an identification,
Speaker 1: very often they would not write a report documenting that
Speaker 1: because it wasn't helpful to their case. And so in
Speaker 1: this case, there was no fingerprint report to find. There
Speaker 1: was just these notes that happened to document that the
Speaker 1: prince did not belong to Elvis Brooks. So we conducted
Speaker 1: an extensive search for these prints down in like the
Speaker 1: bowels of the op D building, right, looking for this evidence,
Speaker 1: and despite many, many hours of searching, we weren't actually
Speaker 1: able to find their figure prints, which is sad because
Speaker 1: we could have found out who the real robbers were. Right,
Speaker 1: we could have actually solved this case and gotten a
Speaker 1: little justice for Mr. Lloyd, and unfortunately, because of the
Speaker 1: evidence retention practices, we just weren't able to do that either.
Speaker 1: But we were able to file on Mr Brooks's behalf
Speaker 1: based on some of this new evidence. There was also
Speaker 1: some other undisclosed evidence about another crime committed that night
Speaker 1: by people who seemed to match the description, and it
Speaker 1: was committed right around the corner that Mr Brooks was
Speaker 1: also never told about his lawyers never learned about. And
Speaker 1: so unfortunately, what we know about what happened the night
Speaker 1: the welcome it was robbed is probably only a sliver
Speaker 1: of what investigators actually found out back then, But because
Speaker 1: they didn't document it, were left to sort of follow
Speaker 1: the bread crumbs, and those bread crumbs led to two
Speaker 1: conclusions that they had prosecuted Elvis knowing that he was innocent,
Speaker 1: and that Elvis needed to be released a s a P.
Speaker 1: So how did the state respond? We were met with
Speaker 1: procedural objections by the state. It's not enough to find
Speaker 1: new evidence in your case. Before you could get any
Speaker 1: court to listen to your new evidence to consider the
Speaker 1: merits of your claims, you have to prove that you
Speaker 1: basically meet the procedural hurdles. We had to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: this information had been withheld from Mr Brooks and his attorney. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Mr Brooks's attorney was deceased, and so we had to
Speaker 1: try to come up with other ways to show that
Speaker 1: he obviously didn't know this information about the fingerprints. That
Speaker 1: had he known, right this attorney who put on thirteen witnesses,
Speaker 1: which was just unheard of in nineteen seventy seven, that
Speaker 1: had he known that the fingerprints on critical items didn't
Speaker 1: match his client, he obviously would have mentioned that to
Speaker 1: the jury. And once the state was forced to look
Speaker 1: at Elvis's case, they must have realized what had happened.
Speaker 1: And this was the Leon Kannazaro administration. Still, so instead
Speaker 1: of doing the right thing, on the eve of in
Speaker 1: October fifteenth, two thousand nineteen hearing, they brought Elvis a deal.
Speaker 1: They were asking that you plead guilty to a lesser
Speaker 1: charge and avoid a potentially very lengthy procedural battle, which
Speaker 1: would have cost you much more time, might have even
Speaker 1: led to you dying in prison. But was that decision
Speaker 1: a struggle for you? Yeah, struggle with it. Could always
Speaker 1: see I ain't gonna never see guilty to this year.
Speaker 1: You know that I didn't do it. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: never plead guilty. But I went to taking when I
Speaker 1: was offered the deal, I said, man, you gotta use
Speaker 1: kind of sitisten time. You knew, because you may not
Speaker 1: ever get out of you. I just wanted to get out,
Speaker 1: you know, did I know? I didn't do it? And
Speaker 1: I feel like forty two plus year was long enough.
Speaker 1: You know, I just made a decision, you know that. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna plead guilty to the list of child and
Speaker 1: get out. You know it was tough. But oh, my
Speaker 1: whole family say I did the right thing. You know,
Speaker 1: they want to see me out. This is why I
Speaker 1: went on and took the plea. I mean, we call
Speaker 1: it a choice, but in some ways that's not really
Speaker 1: a fair assessment. It turns out later and we found
Speaker 1: out that the state was also aware at the time
Speaker 1: they offered him right that supposed choice, that they knew
Speaker 1: that the trial prosecutor hadn't turned over those prints. They
Speaker 1: do that because he told them, frankly, probably to avoid liability,
Speaker 1: that I could only guess as to their motives. But
Speaker 1: they found that out in a meeting with the trial prosecutor,
Speaker 1: and shortly thereafter, within days, they offered Mr Brooks a plea. So,
Speaker 1: despite the sour taste in your mouth over having to
Speaker 1: plead guilty to get out, you were still free and
Speaker 1: back into the arms of your family. How did that
Speaker 1: feel after all these years? WHOA, it felt great, you know.
Speaker 1: I really couldn't believe it. You know, I feel really
Speaker 1: great to be out. You know, you're around my family
Speaker 1: and my kids, my grandkids. But Burt, sisters, nephew, nieces,
Speaker 1: oh dam mimss my parish you know, the d d
Speaker 1: C now. So, but it was it's a wonderful feeling
Speaker 1: to beginning out. It ain't going especially everybody telling me congratulation,
Speaker 1: you know, and I would leave. It was a good
Speaker 1: feeling there, you know. So he was out, but that
Speaker 1: was not the end of it. And I can't stress
Speaker 1: this enough. Elections matter, folks, Okay, especially the local ones.
Speaker 1: The Conic and Connasarro era has left a harmful legacy
Speaker 1: in their wake. And even though the young Condazarro was
Speaker 1: not seeking re election, Jason Williams was elected to the
Speaker 1: Arms Parish das office, and we interviewed Jason on my
Speaker 1: other podcast, Righteous Convictions. We're gonna have that episode linked
Speaker 1: in the bio by the way, that having a man
Speaker 1: of his caliber, I'm going to say it now, a
Speaker 1: great man like Jason Williams in that office means people
Speaker 1: like Elvis can finally get justice and have their names cleared.
Speaker 1: He has cleared his name. Earlier this year, Mr Brooks,
Speaker 1: represented by a different attorney at a different office, did
Speaker 1: file another application for post conviction relief, seeking to withdraw
Speaker 1: his guilty plea and seeking to have his conviction overturned.
Speaker 1: And so that was granted this year, meaning that at
Speaker 1: this point Mr Brooks is fully exonerated as much as
Speaker 1: you can be in the criminal legal system. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the day that Mr Brooks was able to go into
Speaker 1: court and that was decided, the a d A at
Speaker 1: that time made it very clear and apologized to him
Speaker 1: for all those years that were taken from him wrongfully
Speaker 1: and acknowledged his innocence. The attorneys did admit to Ron thought,
Speaker 1: you know, to see they he and Elvia Din. You
Speaker 1: know it could have clear my name years ago, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, uh they asked me how long I was
Speaker 1: to I see for the two plus years you know,
Speaker 1: I was locked up. You know, it was great to
Speaker 1: get that done. You know, like I said, I would
Speaker 1: want to vote away from the tip. They took my
Speaker 1: whole youth from me. It took the best years of
Speaker 1: my life, you know, and nothing could ever replace it.
Speaker 1: You have my deepest sympathies for that, and we'll have
Speaker 1: action steps for our audience if they'd like to help you.
Speaker 1: By that, I mean there's an Amazon wish list and
Speaker 1: a Freedom Fund, So if you've got the wherewithal to
Speaker 1: do it, then please do help. It means a lot.
Speaker 1: And with that, we now turned to the closing of
Speaker 1: our show, which of course is called closing Arguments. And
Speaker 1: it's the part of the show that I always look
Speaker 1: forward to. It's where I get to turn off my mic.
Speaker 1: That's not why I look forward to, It's because of
Speaker 1: what we're about to hear. Because when I turned my
Speaker 1: mic off, I'm gonna leave your mics on so that
Speaker 1: you can share any closing thoughts that's why it's called
Speaker 1: closing arguments with me and our audience. Thank you again, Cherrell.
Speaker 1: Why don't we start with you first, and then Elvis
Speaker 1: please take us out into the sunset. You know, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you having us and for letting Mr Brooks
Speaker 1: share a little bit of what happened to him. And
Speaker 1: I think in some ways this case is extraordinary, and
Speaker 1: that every time I look at a new file, I
Speaker 1: hope that we're going to find something as sort of
Speaker 1: earth shattering as the physical evidence. In Mr Brooks's case,
Speaker 1: it's fingerprints, But in many ways it's more a kid
Speaker 1: almost to a DNA exoneration. Right, this isn't just as
Speaker 1: he said. She said, This is this tangible evidence didn't match,
Speaker 1: and they do it didn't match, and they framed Elvis
Speaker 1: Brooks anyways, and they did it because they could. And
Speaker 1: it's a system where could they do it again today? Sure?
Speaker 1: I think I think they could. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of it is just about to me how little thought
Speaker 1: anyone gave to what they were doing. They did it
Speaker 1: because they could, They did it because it was easy.
Speaker 1: Maybe they thought Mr Brooks was a troublemaker. Maybe they didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't care. Frankly, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: it right. He was a poor black boy who didn't
Speaker 1: have the means to defend himself, and they did it
Speaker 1: because they could. I'm just I'm just so happy to
Speaker 1: be a month the free people again. You know me,
Speaker 1: I had to forty two plus years. You know, my
Speaker 1: help not really good right now, but you know I'm alive.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm mam here with my family. You know,
Speaker 1: like I said, all the people are missing with my
Speaker 1: mom and dad because they pass, you know. But everything
Speaker 1: else it's good. No, No, I appreciate whatever y'all could do,
Speaker 1: you know, prayer to know that you know, we need it.
Speaker 1: You know, look at this wait is world coming to
Speaker 1: right now? It's ridiculous, you know. Well, I'd like to
Speaker 1: just thank y'all, thank the and some project. Thank gave
Speaker 1: it body, Thank you, thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Claver,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wordis. With research by Lila Robinson. The music
Speaker 1: in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
Speaker 1: composer Ja Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
Speaker 1: on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
Speaker 1: me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason flom Ravul.
Speaker 1: Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcasts and
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one h