I think we have the best legal system.
It's just the people that implement they get lost along the way and forget what their job really is.
He just kept on trying to remind me that who was in authority, who was in control, and how easy it was for my body to be found in any alley of New York City.
It's a tough prison when you have the guards going against you because they are the biggest gang in the prison.
They do that.
They'll give a guy a life sentence and go home in eat spaghetti like it was nothing. And anybody that said, well, why would you confess to something that you didn't do? My question to them will be why wouldn't you confess when somebody's threatening to kill your life? The judge, he said, how you feel?
I said, I'm okay. He said, well, the days you're lucky day you're going home.
This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Today we have the New Orleans edition with two people who really exemplify and personify what's wrong and right about New Orleans criminal justice system. And the star of the show today is Robert Jones.
In April nineteen ninety two, a series of violent crimes were committed in New Orleans. One of the crimes was the killing of the British tourist Julie Stott, after which police received a tip and arrested Robert Jones.
All, a man who served twenty three years in prison for crimes he said he didn't commit.
Is free tonight.
The friends and family of Robert Jones broke the Core room silence with tears and applause as they judge granted the dismissal of rape and manslaughter chargers that had been thrown out, but then prosecutors vowed to reprosecute. Barry Scheck came down from New York to help Innocence Project attorneys fight the case, which was originally reversed in twenty fifteen when newly discovered evidence pointed to jones innocence.
It's just extraordinary, you know.
Sometimes they say it takes the village, it takes an army to free one man who's wrongly convicted.
This exoneration was almost twenty five years in the making, and it came on Robert Jones' forty fourth birthday.
Robert, welcome to the show. Thank you, and our other distinguished guest today is the fearless leader of IPNO, otherwise known as the Innocence Project of New Orleans. And her name is Emily Ma. And Emily is, as you will soon find out, a force of nature. So Emily, welcome to ronfolk.
Thank you for having me.
So, Robert, take us back to your childhood growing up in Louisiana.
All right.
I was the elder of five other siblings my mother, my mother had six children. I mean, we grew up poor in the poor neighborhood. I lost my father when I was at the age of seven.
He was killed.
He was a professional boxer. We had it sort of hard. We had it.
It was.
It was hard. It was like I said, we grew up poor. After our father was killed. It changed a lot of things for our family to domin. Next to our family, my mother she had to fortunately, she had to stop going to school, so she wasn't able to maintain a decent job to the extent to take care of all of us, right, so she had to take on our jobs. So it was it was rough, man, it was rough growing up. But she made it work.
And one of the things is that I learned from my mother is that even though she took odd jobs or mothers used to they used to call her like the candle lady. You know what she used to do is she used to sell out our apartment in the housing projects. She used to sell like different candies, apples and different things that she made from scratch. And eventually that kind of like substituted, you know, her income in
the sense of actually providing for us. You know, so my mother is the biggest you know, my biggest heroes because she made something out of nothing to take care of us. And you know, in the process of me growing up, you see a lot of things in the neighborhood.
And eventually I dropped out of school in the eighth grade, and you know I did regular things, you know, hung out, hung out, even though I mean my mother in approve of it, but I guess not having that for the figure there, it's only so much that a woman can actually do to a young man growing up when she reached those particular stages that I had reached on that time, you know, I was in my maybe early teens.
And so you grew up where we are right now in New Orleans and the aticenter of the criminal injustice system, right so you're going along making the best of the situation. How old were you when this crazy scenario happened that you didn't even know about, right and what was going on in your life at that point in time.
Well, at that point, I just turned nineteen years old, already had two children, and I had big dreams and aspiration to one of you know, I was always fascinated about business. I kind of like went to on the mentorship with an older guy who I know you He was a form of drug dealer and I guess you were just classify as being retired. So he started dealing in real estate and I start, you know, from there,
my focus kind of like went there. You know, I kind of like wanted to get back in school, but saw like was embarrassed because you know, the age difference was going back to school. So I started seeking out help in those particular areas to try to get in programmed so I can get back in school, so I can educate myself. Because I know, if I say, okay, you know, for me to learn or to understand and the business world understand real estate, I mean I have
to get academically in client. So I know I had to go back to school. So that's what my mind said, because I wanted a better life for my children. I wanted to create a better world for my kids because I know how we grew up. Not new for them of my mother, but I knew that she struggled, and I wanted to change and break that particular cycle. So that's where my ambition was at. And all of a sudden, you know, and at the age of nineteen, this happened.
It is kind of like it really just strolled things totally off, I mean, really devastated my entire family.
Emily, Let's let's talk about this because this is an interesting case because it's not just one case. Right. What happened was in nineteen ninety two, there was a series of attacks in and around the French Quarter that Robert ended up being implicated in and that we now know were committed by an individual who shares his last name but nothing else, no relation. This was a very violent
time in a Maria and certainly in New Orleans. And this was a particularly violent series of crimes that happened in an area where the authorities don't like to have crime. Very bad for tourism when you have, you know, serious rapes and murders and things happening in the French Quarter. So can you take us back and explain what this crime spree was all about.
Sure, there was a series of crimes that, at least as we know, began April the sixth of nineteen ninety two. A man was committing robberies in his car. He was armed. He would pull up, get out the car, rob people, and in some of the cases he did more than that, or tried to do more than that. In the first instance, he took one of the female victims and raped her. In the desire project, he asked his victims to lie
on the ground. And a week later he robbed several more people in the French Quarter, right around the corner from where he had abducted the first party of people a week previous. And in the second night of his crime spree, he robbed two people. He walked around the corner or pulled around the corner of his car in the French Quarter, and he tried to rob a pair of English tourists who just arrived in town, and he shot the woman her name is Julie Stott, dead in
that attempted armed robbery. A few hours later he used his car and went off in about a mile up the road, robbed some people who were coming out of a Poe Boy store close to the French Quarter. And the killing of the English tourist Judie Stott was a very big deal. It was a big deal here in the newspapers. It was a big deal at home in England. When I say at home, obviously I'm from England, because
New Orleans relied so much on tourism. Because it is horrifying to think that you could be on vacation, just walking along the street and get shot dead by a man wielding a gun. Because frankly, she was a young, pretty, college educated white girl from England, the case got a lot of attention, and there was a big reward that was issued for anybody with information that would help to find the person who had killed her.
Right, ten thousand dollars crime stoppers, right, And that's right. And let's not forget this is twenty five plus years ago, so ten thousand dollars.
Was double that right now in today's money. And you know, is anybody, any police officer in this town anywhere, will tell you when there is reward money offered, you get a whole lot of crap called in, right, And what happened in this case was a tip got called in named Robert Jones and his friends as having been bragging about killing the lady in a bar or something like that, or talking about it in a bar, and the police, as they often do, started with that name, which is
a method the police used. They will pull that name and see if there's anything to it. The police had realized that the same person had committed all these crimes because it was the same car that was used, and they were all done in the same area, the same mo victims had to lie on the ground. He asked for very specific things, a similar description of the perpetrator.
And so when they get the name Robert Jones, he's a suspect in all the crimes, really, and they show his photo to the rape victim in the first crime and she picked him out.
As a result, he was.
Arrested for the murder, which was the big crime that was being investigated. It was the big, high profile.
Crime because if he did want he did them all.
That's right, the same person did all them. So Robert was booked with a series of crimes, including the murder, arrested, put in jail. His arrest was all over the newspapers. It was all over the British newspapers, It was all over the television. It was a big deal. They got the person who killed the English tourist and done the other crimes as well. The problem is that after he was arrested and put in jail, the crime spree in the car with his own gunman continued.
And it was a distinctive car.
It was very distinctive car. It's a big burgundy Oldsmobile I think, and it had like a landau roof right.
And so when the police realized.
That the crime spree had continued even though they'd arrested Robert Jones, that tipped them off that they might have not got the person responsible. And so the homicide and robbery detectives kept investigating the case. And what they found was the man who owned the car. They found the car in the Desire project, and he had jewelry or things taken from the victims in each one of the robberies, including the last one in the spree, and including the first one that ended in a rape.
So this one came with instructions.
He had the gun that was used to kill the English tourists. He had the bullets that matched the ones that were found in her head. He had the glasses in his car that the person had described the rapist wearing. He had jewelry or things taken from each of the victims. He lived less than a block from where the rape victim had been taken to be raped. In the case, he matched the description exactly of the perpetrator that each of the victims had given.
And isn't it true that he had said to at least one of the victims that he was taking her to the neighborhood where he lived.
Yeah, he told the rape victim, I going to take you to my neck of the woods, before parking his car next to his apartment, basically and taking her to an abandoned building in that building within the Desire Project.
And Robert, you didn't live anywhere near there, no, right. So Robert also had a distinctive physical feature, which is gold teeth. Right, And none of the victims described somebody with gold teeth, which would be a harder thing than most to screw up.
If it was Robert Jones, you would not miss it. Because Robert has he no longer has them. But Robert's teeth. They were completely gold at the front. He can't speak without exposing his teeth. Some people maybe can, I don't know Ventriloquist, but Robert cannot do that. And it is very very obvious if it is Robert Jones that the person has gold teeth. There is no way that he could have committed five crimes and said many things, including the woman who has taken off an aducted rape, who
spent a while with her attacker. It would not be possible for him to have interacted with any of these people, and no one had noticed the gold teeth.
So what we have now is a situation where somewhere inside police headquarters they're going, uh oh, I need Sherlock Holmes. In this particular case, everything points in one direction away from the guy that they had arrested. But they had made a big deal out of this arrest and had gotten a lot of attention, accolades, media pats on the back. None of that sounds like something that they would want to have undone or exposed. They'll probably look a little silly.
So they've got the real guy, but they still got the wrong guy.
So I think what happens at that point right now is anyone's guest. But I think it's pretty clear what happened, and I think it's a perfectly normal human reaction, right, And I think we need to be very careful about what happened with the police when they found Lester Jones.
The first reaction when you're a police officer detective and you've got your suspects, and you've booked your suspects and you've charged your suspect, all of us, all of us human beings, have brain means that exist to confirm our existing beliefs or suspicions. Right, So if you think you've got the person, and you find somebody who's got everything and the car, and it's clearly involved in this crime spree in some kind of way, your first reaction is,
how are they connected? Right? They must be because obviously I've got my person. And so that was their reaction. Now, the police's first reaction is that they must be connected. They must be connected. They must be connected, because we've got our person. And so they interrogate Lester Jones for a very long time while in the process of executing search warrants on his department and his car. Are various places that could have property connected to the crime spree.
Did you know Lester Jones? No, so you had no connection to him. What's happened right?
Lester Jones says he first told police he didn't know Robert Jones. He was then in the custody of at least one officer who's pretty notorious for his interrogation tactics, and after many hours of interrogation questioning, Lester Jones says
he does know. But Jones you can't name him, actually calls him something else and it says that he lent him his car in exchange for jewelry or something, and there was a gun in the car, and one day he lent it to Robert Jones, and then it came back and the gun.
Was still in the dash, some very funny story.
As this is going on, then they're getting more and more property from less Jones, and then they find the gun, and they find more stuff from the stalk holder side, and it comes pretty clear that Lester Jones is not just somebody who lent his car out for someone else to commit crimes in that he didn't keep anything from By the way, when they executed all the search warrants on Robert's house and places he used to visit, places
you know, where people stayed, that he knew. They found absolutely nothing connecting him to any of these crimes, which.
Would be a little bit of.
A relp exactly exactly, and the police have said that, you know, they knew there may be something wrong when there was nothing connecting him. Usually if you've been on a robbery spree, you're going to find something connecting each of those crimes.
Yeah, my guess is that by the time they were finished interrogating Lester, Jones would have probably said that he knew Abraham Lincoln too.
Yeah, I think he probably would have done that, but he certainly knew Robert. And then ultimately he made some cockamami story about how they all did the murder together, Robert and his friends, because they'd also book Robert's friends in connection with this crime spree. And it's a totally preposterous statement. But what happens is there's some really good
police work in this case. And I think that, you know, very often these cases involved very sloppy police work, and there were certainly some of that on one end, but
there were some good detectives. And I think whether it should be a lot of credit given is a couple of the detectives, one homicide detective and one robbery detective who even though they had this confession from Ester Jones allegedly saying me and Robert did all this stuff together, and even though there was a couple of eyewitness ideas of Robert, they were and still are the kind of quality police that understand that that in itself is not
damning right, that it can be, but it is not conclusive, and that that's the kind of evidence. It's very manipulable. And so they kept investigating, and they kept investigating, and they investigated whether these statements that he'd given in the custody of this officer who somewhat notorious, whether there was any truth to them. And they said, and they have now testified many times under oath, both of them sadly
not at any of Robert's initial proceedings. But later on when they were called and asked these questions, they couldn't confirm any connection between Lester and Robert. There was no evidence connecting Lester Jones and Robert Jones. Lester Jones had been in prison and only got out eighteen months before this for an armed robbery that happened in the French Quadron in nineteen seventy nine, so maybe he got a little under two years previously. So there was a long
period where they were together. They didn't live in the same neighborhood. There was just no connection between them. And so the.
Police who had figured that out, they figured that, well, we've got.
This statement, but it's kind of bs. We're going to keep investigating and see whether our initial suspect really was good for this. Have testified now under oath many times that they went to the prosecutors and they said, we've got nothing on Robert Jones. It was one person on that crime, and it was Lester James. It wasn't Robert, and there is no connection between these two, and.
The victims knew it was one person.
All with one exception, which I'll come to in a minute, all describe one person. And so what happens is you have the police saying Detective James Stewart, who again deserves a lot of credit here, went to the prosecutors and he has testified as the only time in his law enforcement career, his thirty year career in law enforcement, that he went to the prosecutors and said I arrested the wrong guy initially, and he will tell you it was a bit of a black eye, that it was a
high profile case. We thought we had our guy and it turned out.
It wasn't him that somehow got lost.
Well, I mean, I say that very loosely. I think it. I think it was never never taken seriously or never turned over. And what happened is Robert remained charged on several of the crimes. Lester got charged with some of the crimes, and they tried to just kind of have it both ways, the prosecutors, this is not the police at this point.
What's going on in your head and your you know, your psyche at this time, because you're locked up now right awaiting the outcome of this, I assume you couldn't post bail, right, No, how much did you know about what Emily's describing that was going on in the situation. It was all swirling around you. But I don't know what they were telling you, or what or what you thought your outlook was, or whether you thought you would be able to get justice.
At first, I thought it was a print.
Actually I really thought it was a print, because I mean, when you knew for a fact that you didn't do anything and somebody saying that you did it is like the officer.
Has got to be some type of joke.
And I know when we got to the station and they went the question is, I'm like telling you, now, what are you talking about? I don't know nothing that you're talking about. You know, It's really it was crazy even at some point after I got charged. I mean, I didn't know nothing what was going on. Only thing that I was able to get information about the situation is from the news because it was on the news every day. Didn't at a certain pert that had became
so frust grated just to watch it. So at one point, I mean I just didn't watch it, don't want to hear about.
It or nothing.
I mean I was just kind of like frus grated in the back of my mind. I just I realized, I say, okay, maybe they might drop the case.
Oh. I just couldn't see myself getting found guilty.
So you were in jail, right, and the TV would come on and you'd see yourself on the TV. Right, How strange is that?
That was crazy?
And then I imagine that doesn't engender anything other than hostility from the guards or other inmates, because you're now kind of a notorious guy, right right, and you're also like an infamous guy. But I mean, what a weird thing.
Like here you are just a regular guy nineteen years old, a couple kids, trying to figure out your life, right, and the next thing you know, you're in prison or jail which could be worse in prison, right, and you're watching TV and there you are this like notorious, like multiple rapist, murderer, a guy like you're sitting there going wait a minute, you even having this strange nightmare.
Or right right?
And yeah, that's exactly what it was. As you say, you know, jail can be you know because during that particular time in the nineteen nineties, New Orleans Parish Old Paris jail, which most violent criminals is, really was tough. I mean I grew up in a tough naggs, so I know how to defend myself, and I had to defend myself a lot in the sense of, you know, you hear people talking, you know, like oh, yeah, they're gonna send him, They're gonna send him to the prison.
He gonna never get out of person. You know, you can walk up on conversations like that. I'm like, it's like, you can't tell nobody that because poor people, especially young blacks, you know, it's like they must have did something, they're doing some type of crime. And it was just the
image that's perpetuated about that. It's like, Okay, this nigga wrote and did all this, and I'm like, you can't even explain that to nobody, right, you know, all that very few people that me understand and even in the back of their mind like, okay them people ain't got them child with all that for nothing, you know, you can't even expend.
So at that point, I mean, I really need to talk to him about it.
I mean I just I kind of like stayed to myself, and a lot of people was fearful because I was kind of like a quiet person in the sense and they know I was a person that will defend myself. So when it is, you know, it's kind of like kept everything out of balanced. You know, it's like it was a crazy time. You know, you got, like I said, you walked up on a conversations that like, yeah, they gonna send this bigga such and such, They're gonna execute me, and all kind of stuff.
I'm like, you don't even know nothing about me.
So Emily, back to you. Finally comes to a trial.
Four years after he was arrested.
He was tried four years waiting.
For He sat in jail for four years.
Wow, let's just think about that for a second. Four years is just if we just think about anybody listening, think about what the last four years of your life looked like and all the things that you did, and you're just sitting there waiting try That's a crazy amount of time and it should be. It's totally unacceptable. Emily. What happened to the constitutional right to a speedy trial? Where does that fit into all of this? Isn't that one of the central tenets of the justice system in America.
There are a couple of factors at work that meant Robert sat in jail for four years. One of them is, Honestly, I don't think anybody from the prosecutor's office wanted to try this case because it was clear that Lester Jones had done this crime spree to anybody looking at the file, and Lester Jones was before Robert's trial, was convicted of the stotthomicide. He was convicted of the robberies that happened right afterwards, so.
He'd already been convicted of that.
James was convicted of that and centers to life of that parole. And he was convicted of the robbery that happened a couple of hours later, and he was charged with the robbery that happened after Robert was in jail. And I think that any reasonable prosecutor looking at the case thought he's going to use that as his defense, except as a complicating factor, which is that they charged Robert with the murder as well, even though it was
one person crime. They charged him with the murder by by presenting perjury to the grand jury information they knew to be false. It horrendous, horrendous behavior by a prosecutor in this case. So Roberts sort of hands were tied on his defense, or were because his defense lawyer was also asleep at the wheel. His defense lawyer rarely showed up. When he did, he did not do any investigation right away. Robert had an alibi. It was at his son's birthday
party on the night this rape happened. Then he was charged with everybody there could have testified to that if the defense had spoken to them within two, three, four, five weeks, six weeks, two months, even six months, right, But he didn't. He rarely showed up to court. He didn't file any motions, any motions except a motion for speed trial after he'd been asking for delays for two years. It was Robert just is a very clear example of
somebody who gets completely lost in the system. Nobody really wants to do anything about it. The judge isn't going to push it, the prosecutor is not going to push it. The defense is asleep at the wheel. Roberts defense overs was criminally negligent in this case.
I'm getting the chills when I hear you say that he rarely showed up to court, Like that sounds impossible, right.
No, it's not impossible at all. Robert gets brought in cross cubs. Defence is not there, he continued to next week. It's just for a status or something anyway, and so
it just rolls along like that for years. There's a very basic motion in a criminal case called if there's an identification, and it's called emotion to suppress the identification, which would have been a very fruitful motion in this case because there are a lot of problems with the way the identification happened, and it was very clear by the way the victim's testimony changed from what she told police initially to match Robert Jones right by the time
of the trial, she was just describing the person she saw in front of her. She wasn't describing the person she remembers from the night of the crime. And if you look at the police notes from the time, it's very very clear that she's describing an entirely different person by the time Robert James is on trial from the initial description. Emotion to suppress the identification is a basic Every single criminal defense lawyer with an identification case does
it unless there is a airing reason not to. That would not be the case here. Robert initially was appointed to public defender. That's what happened. If you don't have a lawyer with you on the day that you go to be arranged, they'll they'll appoint the public defender and
then Robert. Ultimately, Robert's family scraped together to hire probably the worst purchase they've ever made, hire a defense lawyer for him, because everybody knew the public defender was overworked, didn't necessarily have the resources to do what they needed to do, at least that's the reputation right in the
nineties here, and rightly so they were. They didn't have any money and didn't have any resources, and so when the public defenders appointed, they file all these boiler plate motions, motion to suppress the identification, motion to suppress any evidence was seized, all the kinds of things the criminals defensor does for good reason. When the private lawyer comes in the case, he withdraws all those motions and doesn't file
any of his own. So there was never any issue as to whether an identification of Robert, which was an incorrect identification it tends out, was coming in at trial. He withdrew the work that had already been done and did nothing else for four years. He didn't even go to the trial of Lester Jones for them murdered that his client was charged with, or read the transcript of that case to see what they were saying at Leicester
Jones's trial about who did this crime. He then pled his client guilty to murder to manslaughter in the Stott homicide after he'd got him wrongly convicted at a trial of rape. He then recommended that Robert plead guilty to four separate charges, including including the homicide that Lester Jones had already been convicted of in a crime that everybody described as a one person crime, and a robbery that
Robert didn't even know he was pleading guilty too. And I guarantee the defense lawyer didn't even know it was a different incident either. He didn't even know he pled guilty to that crime until twenty years later. We told him the paperwork that shows it was a completely separate incident, and they snuck it in there, and he told him to plead, and he didn't know he was pleading guilty
to a separate robbery. This defense lawyer is now suspended, I think, from the practice of law, but he is not permanently disbarred, which is a crime in itself.
That is a crime in itself, and of all the horrible twists and turns in this case. For some reason, it's really bugging me. I've just been imagining you showing up at court and looking to your right and to your left and not seeing your lawyer and going what's going on here? Like, what the fuck is going on here?
Outside of family members in you know, friends, That was supporting It's like me against the entire system in the sense it's like I'm staying before a system and nobody has my interest. It's obviously I didn't do these crimes, but the idea of having no type of representation for my particular RSIs like it was crazy.
So now you end up getting convicted sends to the most popular sentence in Louisiana, oh, the most common, most popular among law enforcement. I would say, life without parole, right, and you end up going to Angola. I mean, you're such a positive person. People just light up when they talk about you. And you know, we were talking last night about how it took twelve thousand hours of legal time of lawyers donating time to free you from this
grip that the criminal justice system had on you. And from being in that room with a lot of people who did the work, I can say that if somebody would have said, well it would have taken one hundred and twenty thousand hours, people would have said, well, ill sign me up for that too. I mean, like everybody feels like this was the best time that they spent because of the way you are. But how how are
you like that? How is that possible? When someone has been through this very profound experience of being abandoned even by the people that are being paid to protect you, not just the system, but also your own team, and then being thrust into this Angola plantation. They call it a jail, but it's a slave plantation. How'd you maintain this attitude?
Well, we'll give me spriint is it used to bother me to talk about it, but I have to now because it's therapeutic. But nineteen ninety six I was found guilty. But at the same time, within that same year, I lost my brother. My brother was killed. And you know brother he was he was maybe a year, well two years younger than me, but we did everything together coming up. And he wasn't like only a brother, He was like a son of me, because like I said, I was
born like a big brother, father figure. And you know, my brother he dropped out of school as well, and he sold drugs. You know, he kind of rose to the level of selling drugs. That kind of the thing was for guys in that particular thighborhood. And he was one of my my supporters in the sense of, you know, being able to help my mother out even though you know, She didn't condone it. She always disagreed with that type of action. But he helped out, and he helped me out.
He was helping me out because he knew that I was innocent. In prison, I couldn't afford the attorney.
So he sold drugs to.
Raise money to try to get me a better attorney, and he lost his life because of that.
He lost his life.
So from that particular stage, from that part right there, I decided that I wanted to make a change. That was one of the most bivocult point in my life in nineteen ninety six, and I decided that I'm gonna fight for justice. I'm gonna get out of prison and anyway I see and justice umber standing and fight because I feel like, you know, he the most currazy person in my eyesight because he gave it likee to try to save minds. So from that part, I re educated myself.
And when he got my GED, I rose in school, got my GED and I sit and try to master every aspect of life I could, because I wanted.
To be a beacon up hope to other people.
So my method what I use is I kind of like detached myself from any type of cir circumstance in the sense of like being denied, like I always helped him. I used to get denied all the time. When I started doing my approceed litigation, you know, it was hurting at first, and then it started hurting them less so because I realized that they were all in denying the rich, that it wasn't denied me. I had to detach myself from it, and I realized that everything is take a process.
And I'm not saying I don't never get frustrated or get discouraged or hurt because I'm a human being. But I don't allow nothing just to devastate me like that no more, you know, and not just kind of keep on going no matter what it is. I just have to deal with it whatever face me. I don't care what it is. I want to face it. I'm not afraid of anything anything to anybody, any system.
I'm not afraid of it. I'm just face me with it. I'm not afraid.
I can see that, and it is and I know I'd heard that aspect of your story and it really knocked me out. I mean, the idea that in the process of the system trying to steal your life to actually stole your brother's life because in a very real way, he was in this case a sort of I mean, you can't really say it any other way. It was a heroic figure, and that he was out there doing what he was doing, not because he wanted fancy jewelry or whatever else, but so that he could pay for
a lawyer, which you should have had in the first place. So, Emily, how did this seemingly impossible situation up against the odds as much as you could be How did you unravel this?
We started looking at Robert's case in two thousand and four before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and we were looking because it was very clear to us that if we could find the rape kit from the rape we could probably exonerate him because it was pretty clear to us that he was innocent, And so we looked for it and it was lost. It had been thrown out or destroyed or just gone. All the biological evidence that could be tested had been thrown out before Hurricane Katrina.
And I say that because a lot of a lot of evidence got lost in Katrina. And so there's either are cases where you look now and if it was a pre Katrina case, the evidence is likely gone, but this was just the general negligence of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina flooded the evidence facilities. So we looked at that and we wanted to help Robert. But then when
the evidence was gone, we came back post Katrina. We also we talked to Lester Jones and he said, yeah, I don't know this guy, and they maybe say it,
I owner who he is. When we were screening the case to see if it would be a good case to do DNA testing on, and when he said that to us, and we were just doing it for purposes of checking out whether we really thought Robert was innocent and DNA could help him, that made us really understand that Robert was completely innocent and they screwed this up royally,
so we couldn't do it for DNA testing. And then when we came back after Katrina, we didn't really have the resources to do his case at that point because it was a big and very very complicated case. It was not just the rape case, but it's the homicide plea and the subsequent the subsequent cases, and though it was going to be a very complicated, long struggle, we kind of knew that, and we also thought Robert was a pretty good lawyer. He may't be able to do
it himself. Frankly, we knew he had some good information, including the stuff from Lester Jones, and I'm like, well, we I mean, like a good judge could give him relief with what he has. And we knew he was litigating, so we stayed in touch with him, but we weren't working on his case at that point because of our resource issues. He got denied. You know, we're looking at a case with a guy that we're convinced is innocent.
There's no physical evidence. They've lost the district attorneys far, which many times in these cases is the source of ex or information that can get a conviction thrown out if the person is innocent. So they didn't have the district's attorney's father'd lost the physical evidence. He'd exhausted his appeals he had. He was charged and convicted of ten separate charges from three different crimes, four of which he pled guilty to. He was sentenced to life with that barol.
He had eight sentences of twenty five years on top of that, plus a twenty year sentence, and he'd had two place conviction applications which had been rejected now, which means he is procedurally barred and time barred.
Right.
So all that, I have a really great colleague who was my coke haunts on this case for many years and who looked at it at that point and he's like, I think we can get this guy excelerated. And I thought he was joking, actually, but he explained that he thought we could get some more information and that where it would come from. And I said, well, let's do it. And that was in two thousand and nine, and we
litigated for a long time. And you know, the default, the default, especially for someone who's tried to get themselves out of prison before, is deny, deny, deny, deny. Right, you're out of time two lately, fathers before it's the
same information, it's not the same information. We found a whole lot more information in the police files than Robert had been able to get himself from prison, including the details of Lester Jones's crime spree which had never been turned over to Robert, including the initial descriptions of the rape victim in the case, which clearly matched Leester Jones not Robert Jones, in key ways in which they were different in the ways in which they were different. Her
initial descriptions matched Lester Jones, not Robert Jones. We found information in the Leicester Jones files at the District Attorney's office showing that they had presented perjury basically to the grand jury in Roberts case to try to get an indictment in the Stot homicide. And then we talked to the police officers who said, oh no, we figured out
that wasn't rober Jones. We told the prosecutors that, so you know, at that point we had a lot of information that most reasonable courts would look at and say, this man does not need to be convicted of this anymore.
But it still took us seven years, and we filed in twenty ten, and we spent the first three and a half years arguing over whether he was too late to bring all this information to the courts which he couldn't have got previously been doing his best to get well every could from prison, and so we did that many times. In these cases, what you argue about for a long time is whether the person even has the right to be there in court presenting their new evidence.
So we did that for three and a half years twenty ten to the middle of twenty thirteen, right and then after that we presented the evidence in a hearing late twenty thirteen in front of a judge here in New Orleans, and it included testimony from both the two main detectives who investigated the robbery spree and the homicide. We had all of the police documentation in the record, We had witnesses, We had a lot of people talking about the fact that there was no connection between Robert
James and Lester Jones. We had expert witnesses and so on. And the judge, you know, she took a few months to deny Robert, say no and there's nothing new under
the sun. And so then we took what's called a writ to the appellate court here and said, it is clear that all this information should have been heard by the jury that convicted Robert Jones, even shouldn't have even got as far as a trial when you've got all this information that it was clearly the wrong person, including the police telling you that you've got the wrong person.
And so we took that appeal and the appellate court took it on and they threw out Robert's conviction in late twenty fourteen, October twenty fourteen.
So October twenty fourteen, you're both in court.
No no, So we argued it in September, which is the Court of Appeal. So Robert is not present for that because it's an appellate court, right, it's not the district court. If you're in prison, you get brought in for a something that involves taking evidence or testimony, so you get brought into the district court, which is like the trial level court. After that, Roberts family was there when we argued it in the Court of Appeal. Breathe was there, Kendra, I think came. But it's just lawyers
in court arguing us. Now, there's no right to be present if you're locked up for something like that. So we did that and then they rendered a decision pretty soon after that, throwing out his conviction, which, of course the state then appealed to the Supreme Court. So then that was another seven months I think, pending in front of the Louisiana Supreme Court, which did not overturn the appellate court. Right, they declined to overturn the appellate court.
So by June one, twenty fifteen, Roberts new trial was final. That meant he really was getting a new trial, so then he's pre trial again. In June of twenty fifteen, on the rape case, we approached the district attorneys. We said, this is a case you should absolutely dismiss. It's clear At wasn't him. The whole thing is a mess. You should absolutely dismiss it. And the district attorney's response to that was, he's welcome to take a play if he wants to do it, and he complete to anything, we
don't really mind. They were fine with him being out of prison. They just had to have them convicted of
something in their minds. So then we moved to get the judge to remove herself from the case, the judge who had denied him relief previously, because at that point they revealed a memo in their file they didn't even reveal to us while we were challenging Robert's conviction that proved exactly what Robert had been saying since two thousand and six, which is that Leicester Jones was asked to testify at Robert's trial by the prosecutor that he knew
Robert Jones, and Leicester Jones said to the prosecutor, no, I'm not going to do it. I don't know him. Those statements that the police kicked out of me were not true. So the only connection they ever had between Lester and Robert with these statements by Lester Jones. Leicester told Robert, and Robert filed that stuff in court in two thousand and six, and you know in an affidavit and Lessons came and testified in in two six for Robert when he was basically a pro sa litigant. I
didn't know Robert Jones. Police made me say I did. I didn't know him, and I told the prosecutor that before trial. At Robert's trial, at his rape trial, where the prosecutor spent the entire closing argument saying that they were friends, they know each other, Lester used to lend
Robert his car. That was his closing argument, after the man had said I don't know Robert Jones, and there was no evidence entered at trial that they knew each other, and Robert had said that there's there's a Brady violation. Here is sculptory information that should have been turned over, which is that Leicester Jones told the prosecutors he didn't know me, and of course when he was pro say in two thousand and six and seven, had ignored it, and when we brought his case back to court, we
had added that. We said, you know, in addition to all the other stuff we found, here's the evidence that Leicester Jones told the prosecutors. That's Brady. That is sculptory information for Robert favorable. The jury should have heard that Ester didn't know Robert, right, because the crimes all happened in Leicester's car and he's got all the jury that's
an exculpatory fact. The prosecutor owed that to the defense, and when we were on the case all through the courts, the prosecutor's like, ah, this, you know, this, this sudden, made up thing that Lester Jones said about not knowing Robert is unbelievable. And the courts repeatedly rejected that part of Robert's challenge. And in the DA's files a memo confirming the conversation that Lester Jones had had with the prosecutor the day before Robert Jones's trial, telling the prosecutor
he didn't know Robert Jones. And they turned that over to us after we'd managed to win Robert's case, and at that point we said, you cannot be trusted. This
DA's office cannot be trusted. And the judge who had denied Robert relief was actually a DA for some of the part of the time that Robert's case was being litigated in two thousand and six and two thousand and seven, and we said at this point that memo was in one of her files, one of her ada's didn't turn that over while arguing that Lester Jones was lying that he didn't know Robert in post conviction like no one,
no one can be trusted. We need a new judge. Ultimately, we didn't ask the das to recuse themselves yet, although we may have got there if they had continued what they were doing in the pre trial case. So that's when we got a new judge on the case who said, yes, first of all, I'm going to give this man bail because's pretty clear he's probably not going to get convicted again,
and that's a factor that you consider. And I'm going to kick the old judge off the case because she could be a witness in why it took so long to disclose this memo, and so on and so forth right. That's also when we fought the motion to barn and reprosecuting him just because of the decades of misconduct at this point, and so because because of Judge let him out on bail, he didn't have to take a plead, which a lot of it is that people do to bring these wrongful conviction cases to an end just so
they can come home, especially if they have kids. You know, we have had several clients you've done that. But because we've got already won on my a new trial, he was out on bail, so he was able to stare out of the DA and the dabling first, and he dropped all the charges in January of this year, on.
His forty fourth birthday.
So they dropped the charges on your birthday. You'd been out for how long at the time that the charges were dropped?
A year over?
Yeah?
Yeah, So what happened? Did Emily call you and say this is it?
Like?
How did you find out?
Remember that night?
Yeah?
He did describe that moment, how it happened. Who broke the good news?
Richard?
Richard, let me have that privilege.
Emily brought the good news. She she called me, what you say?
She said that She told me how the process was going to go, and you know, everything that we had to go through the process, but they was going to drop the charge. They called her and I said, wow, this is crazy.
To be clear, two days before they asked him if you wanted to play against.
Right Actually yeah, they called she. I also received a call in regards to another plea. We discussed that that everything was off the tape. I'm gonna fight these people head nil too and everything with all the five.
Of my spirit. I'm gonna fight them. I don't that you don't even talk to me about.
How long was that phone call.
We were in the middle of a multi day hearing at the time, but it wasn't just like, you know, all of a sudden out of the blue. So we were at the end of a long day in court,
preparing for the next day in court. We were going to have some fun witnesses, both Richard and I are kind of looking forward to and they called that evening and you know, to be to be fair to the Assistant district's attorney, he is the one we had been talking to and he had recommended that resolution to his boss and I had ultimately got approval and he was very He's a professional guy. So he and I talked for a minute, and he guaranteed me that it was
not something that was still up in the air. It had been done, and that they were calling him the victim to tell her that it would be happening, not to ask a permission for it to happen, and so we just knew that had to get done before before. So we had a day then of not being in court, and then we went back the next day.
So, Emily, is there anything you'd rather do for a living? How how satisfying was that day? How much joy did you get from that?
I mean, the Robert Jones day?
Quite a lot.
Now, My problem is I can't think of anything else I'd rather do for a living. And that's so, that is it's hard, but the anger, right, I am very, very angry about what happened to Robert. And I'm more angry than he is because I have not had to deal with my anger in a prison where it would only destroy me. So I still feel shame and horrified by what they did to him and what good people allowed to happen on their watch, too, And I think that that is it's very that is a very anger
is and energy. Right, it's a very motivating force. But it's real, right, I feel when I see people who were involved, it's I can't be nice to them. I can't think you're okay because you let that happen.
It's not okay. There's nothing okay about it. I don't know how people go so far wrong that they lose their humanity and they you know, even though in this line of work, you and I see it over and over again, but it's still just doesn't add up to me. I don't. I don't get it. I don't. I can't relate to it. I can't. I can't sugar color. And it's weird because the exgonneries are much better at it than we are.
Great because we haven't had to deal with it.
They right, they find this grace which is beautiful and inspiring. I guess you're right, though for us, I never thought of it that way. For us, this continual state of anger that we find ourselves in drives us forward, and so that works for us, and I guess that's just the way it is.
I do want to say that the problem I think, and the thing that maybe makes me most angry about Robert's case is I do see exactly how all that happen, and I do see people that I know and people who have made other good decisions in their lives, and I think that the normality, in some ways, like the US abnormality, the extreme version of what happens to Robert is horrifying, But actually it's so bloody normal, like all of those people and those players, and that system works
that every day. And I think maybe the reason I find his case most upsetting is I can see how each of those decisions were made, and how or not made, or how all of those things didn't get done that needed to be done, and how no one had time to pay attention, and how somebody assumed this, and somebody assumed that, and somebody thought they weren't really breaking the rules, with the exception of the one thing that I think screwed everything up, which was knowingly presenting a lie to
the grand jury. Other than that, I see how that train went, and I think I see it a lot.
Yeah, I see it a lot too. I mean, this is a particularly crazy case and a particularly backwards and corrupt system in this state and city that we're in right now, New Orleans, Louisiana. But at the end of the day, Robert, you're here and that is ultimately the great part of this story. And you've now reconnected with
your family. I know your beautiful daughter was out with us last night, and the evidence would show from having seen her last night that you did a pretty remarkable job of being a responsible even from being hundreds of miles away locked up, you never lost sight of those responsibilities, which is extremely admirable.
Two those three of his kids as well, and two of them live further away. But he's been an amazing father to his children.
How are the kids, all of them doing their kid that's a miracle too.
Yeah, right, although all of them doing well.
One of the main reasons, like I said, I just re educated myself and I started understanding the world that I lived in, in the world most people live in. Is that statistically wise, they say that you know, generally whit when your father, especially a young black father, when they go to prison, that generally their children follow yep. And me understanding that from being educated, I see that wasn't gonna happen to my kids. I wasn't gonna liow
that happen to my kids. So you know that forced me or compelled me in the sense this guy like made sure they was on the straight path too. So that was one of the things outside of just having a responsibilities, having a love for your own children, but to make sure to make sure that these don't follow that those statistics. And my thing is, you know, and I tell people this all the time that and I know it's well yourself, you'll get frustrated about it, and
y'all get angry, and you should be. And my angring in frustrations about the situation. I think, like you said,
we kind of like look at it different. I don't feel like justice l being served until the system is fixed and to the point where you can't do it to nobody else, you know what I'm saying, Well, you can't really and I'm not saying that the system actually be perfect, but they got things here, especially here in New Orleans, that they got processes, you know that that can happen, that that system can actually be fixed because those decisions that they make and they're end up to
a practice of law, this silliness or foodness or this no care for human life scisions that they make really affect people lives, you know, they think about all the years that hard knic and then you they have another administration, then you have canders. Ever, all these hundreds and hundreds of people that you set in the prison, innocent or not.
But for the most part of those who are innocent, when you make decisions to do that, you're affecting their children, lives, their mother lives, their sisters, their brothers, their family, their friends. You change the dynamics of those people family, and you discard things. You know, you discard things when you take that man from out the household, that male figure from out the household that people have a lot of respect
for and a lot of love. You have kids go off into different directions, the sisters, their brothers, their aunts. They changes things, you know, their mother, you know, And my mother's a strong woman. She has grown because she dealt with a lot, She lost a lot. She dealt with my father's dead, she deald with my brother dead, and she had to deal with the fact that I was gonna for a crime that she knew how to commit, and she had to deal with that that way that weighs heavily own her.
You know what I'm saying.
Those decisions affected a lot of that changed a lot of lives, and that's the thing, that's one of the key things, and that's what I that's why I fight, That's why I fight the way I fight. You lend the systems anything tools what's right, that's that's all, that's all I want, That's how I feel. That's how justice serves me in the sense of fixing that system so they wouldn't be able to do it to nobody else.
I do want to have you talk a little bit about your art.
Or one of the things I do with I pain issues in regards to like social justice issues.
I pain issues that deal with that.
Now I feel like, oh, it's another way, another area that I feel like it can be effective. When I do a piece of art, I'm all like, hopefully that you can look at that particular expression and over a period of time, or if you just look at it every day, whatever, that it actually can change your perception about this particular issue, that expression that I'm trying to conven to you. And if I know, if you can change the way you think about then ultimately continue the way you act about something.
So that's what I kind of like do my art.
I've seen it and it's beautiful. Every painting has an element of your philosophy right of social justice and of a strong viewpoint of right and wrong, and that it really hit me hard. I know you're doing five different things every day in terms of work and building your new life. But talk for a second, if you would, about the Freedom Foundation and what it is and how people can get involved.
The Freedom Foundation is a nonprofit organization that I co founded with Daniel Rito and Jeron Morgan. Well, actually it's created to mentor the you and to give them directions so they wouldn't find themselves in the situation like we even though we didn't committ these particular crime, but we still became part of the massive incarceration problem that's happened
in this country. So we kind of like mentor them by giving them our experiences and allowing them helping them acquire skill set, then it can prevent them from you know, going to commit crimes and hanging out with the wrong crew of people and falling victim to the system.
You know, is there a Freedom Foundation website?
Yeah, freedom Foundation dot org.
Okay, so that's Freedom Foundation m Foundation dot org.
And that's that's exactly what it means. It mean like free.
Them, double meaning I like it so, Robert, we have a tradition here at Wrong for conviction, which is that we turn the mic over to you, the star of the show, the Axennery, for any closing thoughts that you want to share.
The essence of this particular story, of my story, as I always tell a lot of people, is that you look at all of the obstacles or the odds that I had to overcome throughout my childhood through I mean, do now, and it should be able to inspire you to withstand and knowing that if you stand, I mean, if you can put whatever in your mind, you can stay determined and focus on whatever your aim is, whether whatever it is, no matter what you go through, whatever
life throws at you, if you just keep on pushing forward, then I think that you can overcome anything. That's the essence of what I want people to get for my story out of you know, like I said, I know what happened to me is dramatic, and what happened to a lot of design the reasons so dramatic, and I mean can it touched people?
I mean it hurt me.
So I know hear a lot of people, but for the most part, I don't want people to feel sorry for me, you know, and I know they do either have empathy, but I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I want you to just use my story as an inspiration of you, whether.
If you just just think about it.
A lot of high school dropouts, you know, of a kid that thinking that he can't he can't overcome this, or I can't go to this particular profession because I didn't have an education.
I mean, I know what it is, because I didn't.
I didn't have an education, and I had a focus, and I was determined to get an education.
I was.
I had a focus and determined to get out of prison. And with the help of the instant projecting people with that particular hut yourself and other people that's on this particular route.
I got out. I got out of prison. The eyes will stacked against me.
So I just want people to use this particular story and let them know that anything they did facing in life, that you can do coming.
But you gotta be you gotta be fearless in it.
You know, just kind of face it, head up, don't dug it this uncle straight at it.
And you not only got out of prison. But you did it on your terms, and it took an incredible amount of courage and perseverance. But you're here and I appreciate you you being here, and I want to thank both of my amazing guests today. Robert Jones twenty three and a half years in prison for criming and commit and coming out swinging strong and commit.
It still swing.
And the one and only for some nature, Emily Ma, the fearless leader of the Innocence Project New Orleans ipn O, and please support their work I do. What is the website for the Innocence Project New.
Orleans www dot ip dashno dot org give.
Till it hurts. Thanks you've been listening to a very special episode of Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm from New Orleans. Once again, thank you to my guest Robert Jones and Lyma.
Thank you Jason, don't forget to.
Give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts.
It really helps.
And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence project dot org to learn how to donate and get in. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one