11 States with Highest Number of Exonerations

Published on February 10, 2016 at 3:56 am by Milica Radenkovic in Lists

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9. Louisiana

Number of exonerated convicts: 45

Exonerated convict who served the longest time in prison: Reginald Adams (31 years)

Reginald Adams spent 31 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The wrongful conviction was a direct result of the fact that detectives and prosecutor concealed information that supported Adams’s innocence.

In 1979, Cathy Ulfers was shot to death by a burglar. Except rumors on the streets, police had no evidence which connected Adams with the crime but nevertheless pressured him to confess the murder. According to Adams’s account, detectives “gave him drugs and alcohol, fed him details of the crime and promised that he would be released if he confessed and implicated” other two men. Moreover, detectives Venezia and Ruiz lied in the courtroom saying that they hadn’t found the murder weapon or any of stolen things. A month after the crime happened and a year before they coerced Adams to confess, police found the murder weapon. The gun was traced to two people who had no connection with Adams and who were caught with a bracelet which belonged to Cathy Ulfers and which was stolen on the day of the murder. All of this was known to prosecutors who intentionally concealed the information that would most probably set Adams free.

Adams left the jail in 2014, after lawyers at the Innocence Project New Orleans discovered and presented evidence of official misconduct during his trial.