A 65-year-old Louisiana man who was arrested at 19 and sentenced to life without parole has walked out of prison saying<\/b>
\nA 65-year-old Louisiana man who was arrested at 19 and sentenced to life without parole has walked out of prison saying \u00ab\u00a0God is so good\u00a0\u00bb after his rape conviction was overturned by a judge.
Authorities withheld evidence that could have exonerated Wilbert Jones decades ago and their case against him was \u00ab\u00a0weak at best\u00a0\u00bb, State District Judge Richard Anderson said.
\u00ab\u00a0Freedom. After more than 45 years and 10 months. That’s going through my mind,\u00a0\u00bb Mr Jones said as he hugged his brother, Plem Jones, and other relatives outside the gates of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.
Mr Jones also thanked his legal team at the Innocence Project New Orleans, saying \u00ab\u00a0without them, this wouldn’t be possible\u00a0\u00bb.
Doing all that time was \u00ab\u00a0very difficult\u00a0\u00bb, Mr Jones said, but he told reporters he holds no resentment.
\u00ab\u00a0I forgave. I forgive,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0I didn’t have control of it. Why should I worry about it? I’m in charge of myself.\u00a0\u00bb
His lawyer Emily Maw praised \u00ab\u00a0the extraordinary strength\u00a0\u00bb of a man \u00ab\u00a0who has spent over 16,000 days in prison for something he didn’t do\u00a0\u00bb and would nevertheless \u00ab\u00a0come out with a faith in God and in humanity\u00a0\u00bb.
Prosecutors said they do not intend to retry Mr Jones but they also said they would ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to review last month’s decision by the judge.
Court spokesman Robert Gunn said on Wednesday morning that no such request had yet been filed.
Ms Maw said that it would be \u00ab\u00a0legally incorrect and morally problematic\u00a0\u00bb if the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office insists on trying to uphold the conviction because by doing so it would be \u00ab\u00a0saying that when Wilbert Jones was arrested in 1972 as a young, 19-year-old poor black man, he did not deserve the rights that people deserve today\u00a0\u00bb.
Mr Jones was arrested on suspicion of abducting a nurse at gunpoint from a Baton Rouge hospital’s car park and raping her behind a building on the night of October 2 1971.
He was convicted of aggravated rape at a 1974 retrial that \u00ab\u00a0rested entirely\u00a0\u00bb on the nurse’s testimony and her \u00ab\u00a0questionable identification\u00a0\u00bb of Mr Jones as her assailant, the judge said.
The nurse, who died in 2008, picked Mr Jones out of a police line-up more than three months after the rape, but she also told police that the man who raped her was taller and had a \u00ab\u00a0much rougher\u00a0\u00bb voice than he had.
Mr Jones’s lawyers claim the nurse’s description matches a man who was arrested but never charged in the rape of a woman abducted from the car park of another Baton Rouge hospital, just 27 days after the nurse’s attack.
The same man also was arrested on suspicion of raping another woman in 1973, but was only charged and convicted of armed robbery in that case.
Judge Anderson said the evidence shows police knew of the similarities between that man and the nurse’s description of her attacker.
\u00ab\u00a0Nevertheless, the state failed to provide this information to the defence,\u00a0\u00bb the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

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