November 15, 2017 The Skanner Page 9
News
‘God is so Good,’ Says Man Freed After 5 Decades in Prison
Attorneys say police knew, but never acted upon, information pointing to a diff erent suspect
By Stacey Plaisance
Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. — A 65-year-old
man who was arrested at 19 and sen-
tenced to life without parole walked
out of prison on Wednesday, saying
“God is so good” aft er his rape convic-
tion was overturned by a judge.
Authorities withheld evidence that
could have exonerated Wilbert Jones
decades ago and their case against him
was “weak at best,” State District Judge
Richard Anderson said.
“Freedom. Aft er more than 45 years
and ten months. That’s going through
my mind,” Jones said as he hugged his
brother, Plem Jones, and other rela-
tives outside the gates of the East Baton
Rouge Parish Prison.
Jones also thanked his legal team at
the Innocence Project New Orleans,
saying “without them, this wouldn’t be
possible.”
Doing all that time was “very diffi -
cult,” Jones said, but he told reporters
he holds no resentment.
“I forgave. I forgive,” Jones said. “I
didn’t have control of it. Why should I
worry about it? I’m in charge of myself.”
Attorney Emily Maw praised “the ex-
traordinary strength” of a man “who
has spent over 16,000 days in prison for
something he didn’t do,” and would nev-
ertheless “come out with a faith in God
and in humanity.”
Prosecutors said they do not intend
to retry 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 Wednesday morning that no
such request had been fi led. Jones has
yet to be cleared; the judge set his bail
at $2,000.
Maw told The Associated Press that it
would be “legally incorrect and moral-
ly problematic” if the East Baton Rouge
District Attorney’s Offi ce insists on try-
ing to uphold the conviction, because
by doing so, it would be “saying 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.”
The district attorney’s offi ce did not
immediately respond to the AP’s re-
quest for comment.
Jones was arrested on suspicion of
abducting a nurse at gunpoint from a
Baton Rouge hospital’s parking lot and
raping her behind a building on the
night of Oct. 2, 1971. He was convicted
of aggravated rape at a 1974 retrial that
“rested entirely” on the nurse’s testi-
mony and her “questionable identifi ca-
tion” of Jones as her assailant, the judge
said.
The nurse, who died in 2008, picked
Jones out of a police lineup more than
three months aft er the rape, but she
also told police that the man who raped
her was taller and had a “much rough-
er” voice than Jones had.
Jones’ lawyers claim the nurse’s de-
scription matches a man who was ar-
rested but never charged in the rape of
a woman abducted from the parking lot
of another Baton Rouge hospital, just
27 days aft er the nurse’s attack. The
same man also was arrested on suspi-
cion of raping yet another woman in
1973, but was only charged and convict-
ed of armed robbery in that case.
Anderson said the evidence shows
police knew of the similarities between
that man and the nurse’s description of
her attacker.
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