In May of nineteen seventy seven, fourteen year old white twin sisters Karen and Sharon Sanders allegedly went to help their eighteen year old cousin, Keith Laboard, clean his house in a Voles Parish, Louisiana. Years later, Keith Laboard admitted to carrying on a sexual relationship with Karen Sanders, but back in May of seventy seven, when asked about a scratch on his neck, Keith began to spin a narrative supported by the twin girls, that led in a well
tread direction. According to Keith and the twins, they picked up a hitchhiking black man who allegedly pulled a gun and forced Keith and Karen into the trunk before raping Sharon, followed by Karen. Conflicting accounts and descriptions, as well as a rape kit that confirmed that Sharon was still a virgin,
didn't stop the accusation of an alleged black assailant. While police officer Robert Laboord was out searching for a potential culprit on the morning of May twenty third, nineteen seventy seven, his partner Floyd Juno spot at Vincent Simmons, whom he knew from previous petty crimes. Despite not matching what we're already conflicting descriptions of this imaginary black man, they arrested
Vincent for the alleged rapes. Both girls and Keith picked out the only handcuffed black man in the lineup, and when Vincent refused to confess, Officer Robert Leboard shot him in the chest. Miraculously, Vincent survived, but only to have all evidence, all of it exculpatory withheld from him at trial, condemning him to serve one hundred years in Angola Prison. Vincent's fight against a web of family connections, lies and the worst in American racism continues to this very day.
This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. I'm Jason Flopp. Today's case is so troubled that I don't know where to start. But I will tell you this before we even get into it, and I introduce to you the man himself, Vincent Simmons, who's still incarcerated in the Angola Penitentiary for over forty four years now for
a crime he had nothing to do with. I will tell you that this case has a toxic mixture of small town racism, false accusations, a total lack of evidence, a police officer who was closely related to what should have been the obvious suspect, who actually shot mister Simmons in the police station when he refused to confess in the chest by the way, narrowly missing his heart and killing him. Yes, you heard that correctly. And everybody involved
basically is white except for mister Simmons, who's black. And now that's just the freaking beginning. So first of all, Vincent, I'm so honored that you're here today to talk to us. I'm so sorry that you are where you are, that we're talking to you from prison, and I'm hoping that soon we'll be having a totally different conversation from the free world. So welcome to wrongful conviction.
Thank you, I haven't me.
We're very happy to have you, and we apologize to our audience in advance for the audio quality on Vincent's phone. It sounds like he's calling us from a time capsule, and in many ways he really is. And Gola Penitentiary was built on a literal plantation, which couldn't put a finer point on what this case is all about and joining us today as a man who you may be familiar with from our coverage of Nelson Cruz in Brooklyn
and Marcus Wiggins in Chicago. Now today he's fighting for Vincent's case pro bono, flying back and forth from New York to Louisiana. So justin bonas, thanks for coming back to wrongful conviction not.
A problem, Jason. It's great to be on here again as well.
So this insane saga goes all the way back to nineteen seventy seven. So Vincent, before this happened in your life that turned upside down and inside out, what was your life like before this insanity?
Yeah, I was born in a ball Paris, a place called Mansillah Lewis Air. When I was living in Mansilla, I had had some involvement with a ball parent sheriff department. I was involved with competitive crime. I moved to Houston and I got a job and I was learned to test my father at had time, and I come back to Lewis the Air. I was back for about a month. I was living with my sister or leave you and I was on my way to work and I was picked up a ball of Paris police, So.
You were a known entity to a Bowls Parish police before heading to Houston for work and returning when your father passed away, which made you available to be picked up for what allegedly happened to these twin girls on May nine, nineteen seventy seven. And the date, I mean, we're not even sure of that, because the girls were
never really clear on a date and time. But the narrative that comes out is a sadly familiar American tale, a false accusation of a black man by an alleged white victim or victims in this case, and the alleged crime that took place. The narrative that set this horrible
in justice against Vincent in motion is this. On May ninth, nineteen seventy seven, twin sisters Sharon and Karen Sanders allegedly went over to the house of their eighteen year old cousin, Keith Leboard remember that last name, to help him clean, and while driving the sisters home that night, the three allegedly stopped for gas when Vincent Simmons allegedly approached and asked the Board for a ride home, to which the Board supposedly agreed and then the claim is that six
miles outside of Marksville, on a deserted stretch of Little California Road, Vincent allegedly took out a gun, forced Keith the Board and Karen into the trunk while he allegedly raped Sharon, and then he allegedly put Sharon in the trunk, drove on for a bit before retrieving Karen to do the same to her. Now, afterwards, Vincent allegedly threatened them
all before dropping himself off to catch a bus. So about two weeks after this alleged incident, May twenty second is when this narrative is first reported to the Sheriff's office and the investigation, if you can even call it, that begins justin take us through this nightmare.
So there was Karen Sanders, Sharon Sanders, and then Keith the Board that were allegedly basically kidnapped, thrown in a trunk. The two sisters were raped. That's their story. So on May twenty second, John le Board, Keith's father, calls the sheriff because Keith's father is the parish assessor. What you have to understand about the boards is there's like ten thousand of them in a voles Paris. This is a
very strong family. He calls the chief of police and he says that my twin nieces have been raped by a black man. That's how this begins. And then the girls are brought in. The girls don't know what date it happens. The police give them a date, okay. The girls provide their initial statements, which weren't turned over a trial. They weren't turned over till nineteen ninety three. They give
completely inconsistent statements. Sharon Sanders actually calls the suspect the N word over and over again, says all blacks look alike, okay, and that's why she wouldn't be able to identify him. They don't talk to the boy, Keith Leboard, until after Vincent is already arrested. Neither of these girls give a description that matches Vincent. They say short and fat, well, Vincent is five to nine fifty. Again, their descriptions conflict.
You know, it's just one thing after another, and specifically with regard to Karen Sanders, she talks about being raped anally orally vaginally. When the doctor looks at her after she talks to police, there is no injuries. Sharon talks about a thirty minute rape vaginally to the point where she bled. She said that she gave her panties to
her grandmother and they were washed, of course. And what's interesting about Sharon is that her hymen was intact when she was examined by the doctor in this case.
So okay, inconsistent statements, conflicting descriptions, and outright lies unsupported by physical reality. And the next day, at nine to twenty am on May twenty third, Vincent was just walking to work when he was picked up off the street, arrested and brought to the station.
He was arrested on May twenty third of nineteen seventy seven on view for this crime. And what on view means is they didn't have a name Vincent Simmons, They had no probable cause to arrest him. They saw him on the side of the street. When I say they, you had mentioned a family member of one of the alleged victims, and that was Robert Leboard. And I don't know his direct relation to Keith Leboard, but I believe
it could be a cousin. So really, what you have to understand with Vincent is he had a history with the Marksville police Department and the Vols Parish Sheriff's office, and Floyd Juno was driving with Robert Leboard on the Dave Vincent got arrested on May twenty second. And he knew Vincent, he knew who he was before, and he knew he was a troublemaker. And he's the glue to this. He's the person that basically points the finger at Vincent first.
Right, right, right, And if you have the chance to watch one of the documentaries about vincent story, there's the farm and Shadows of a Doubt, we'll have them LinkedIn the by of course. But in Shadows of a Doubt, Floyd Juno described this arrest in much the same way
that Justin has. So that same morning, the sheriff sent deputies for the twins who were picked up from school and brought to the station along with Keith Leboord, who was brought from work, and told them that they were going to view a lineup with the perpetrator in it. So officers picked out seven guys for the lineup, one of whom was white. Okay, a few others were well over six feet tall. But remember the description was of this imaginary perpetrator was black, short, and bat right, and
they placed Vincent in the center. And get this, Vincent is the only one who was handcuffed out of all of them. I mean, it wasn't like they were trying to be subtle here right as to who they wanted them to identify. So the twins and Keith lo and Behold all select Vincent as the perpetrator.
They claimed that I was identified, and from that point they took me into another room and that's when he told me that I had to give him a confession, and I refused to give a confession. I told him that before I confessed to a crime that I didn't do, I'll die first. And that's when they hit me. And they knocked into the clothes and started kicking me. And then when I tried to get up, he kicked me again.
And then when I did you to chat, I was sitting in to get up Robert Loboid, he raised up from his seat where he was writing a confession and pulled his weapon and shot me.
He shot me in the check.
I think something that I really want to bring to your attention to her, Jason, is is that technically Vincent really should have been charged with kidnapping Keith Laboord. They didn't charge him with that. Why, well, you know, I think we know why. The other thing is the police all said that Vincent attempted to grab the gun of one of the officers and the safety was on or something like that, ridiculous story. They don't ever charge Vincent with attempted murder of a police officer either.
And this is weird, right, because it's not like the state typically has any issue at all with piling on charges, right, But there were no gun charges here either, as that was part of the alleged kidnapping in this case as well. So at the preliminary hearing on July seventh, both twins testified, but neither the alleged kidnapping victim Keith la Boord, nor the alleged attempted murder victims the police officers participated. Yeah
that's yeah, sure, okay. So during her testimony, Sharon is asked three consecutive times to identify the man from the crime, and this is the twin who states that all black people look alike. She doesn't respond until the court steps in, and this was when, for the very first time ever, she says that the man said his name was Simmons. Now, Karen also parroted this statement that the Culport told Keith
his name was Simmons. But then, in the same preliminary hearing, when asked why it took two weeks to come forward with this story, Karen testified that, quote, we couldn't go to the cops because we didn't know his name, unquote, So which one is it? Karen right, which is it? Because both of those things can't be true.
Everyone overlooked that that means that their testimony in the preliminary hearing that they knew the man's name, and their testimony a trial that they knew the man's name is false. That kind of just got glossed over.
So let's get to the trial, and I'm gonna put trial in quotes here. So there's no physical evidence that these rapes ever actually happen. Start with that no forensic tests were done on the twins' clothing or the car in which the alleged rapes occurred, and police reports did not include a single lead appointed to Vincent. Doctors didn't find any signs of injury on either of the alleged victims,
including Sharon's intact hymen. She was a virgin who was, according to her statement, the victim of a bloody rape, which of course is physically impossible. So if you're listening to this now and going, well, then there's all this evidence, right, How the hell could anyone, even a black man in the Deep South in the seventies, how could anyone get convicted on the basis of this. Well, it later comes out to Vincent and his attorney received exactly none of this.
They received no discovery in this case. By none, I mean zero. What I'm saying is all of that critical exculpatory evidence that you just heard wasn't revealed to him for another sixteen years. His lawyers never even knew about the shady lineup with the handcuffs, you know, which was obviously done for one reason, so that these alleged victims would know who to pick in this imaginary crime. There were pictures of that, the inconsistencies and conflicts in the
initial accounts and assailing descriptions and initial statements. They said they didn't know his name, but later testified that he had told Keith his name was Simmons. How Karen gave a clue to that discrepancy in her preliminary hearing, testimony, all of it. So the fix was in, So justin, can you take us through what happened at this sham trial?
So they take him the trial and the girls get on the witness stand and they say they know his name, they say a rape happened, and the defense attorneys don't do a great job of poking holes in there because they don't have anything to poke holes in. They don't have any cross examination material. Okay, they have three witnesses that were allegedly with this man for three hours. That's
a long time to be with somebody. Mistaken identification is not really something you can argue when you're around somebody for three hours unless you saw the initial statements, right, can't really do it. I mean the trials a joke. Eddie Knowle, who was the prosecutor, and the district attorney and his wife are the ones that tried the case,
and this was a flim flam show. They actually, on occasion during direct examination they would interchange when they thought the other one didn't ask enough questions or on cross examine. I've never seen that.
And they probably could have done anything they wanted because without discovery, they had nothing with which to hold the prosecution or any of the witnesses accountable. Then you have these racially charged elements, two white twin sisters under age, by the way, fourteen years old, a black guy in Louisiana in nineteen seventy seven. So they could have said that he took them in a spaceship, hit them on the head with a toaster oven, and then they went
and visited, you know, talking penguins on Mars. I mean, they could have said anything, And I could actually picture in my mind the jury just sort of sitting there, you know, harfyed, with their mouths open, hearing about how these two young girls were brutalizeding you know, these these poor little girls. It's hard to turn away from that kind of testimony. But there were some very significant things that still should have sowed serious doubts in the minds of these jurors.
Now, I think the biggest thing here that we started to uncover as we investigated is that the area that Vincent allegedly sees these three at a gas station in the middle of Marksville, but then he takes them allegedly or tells them to go to a part of a Voles parish that's like clan country. So where these alleged rapes happen is in the middle of clan country. It's not where the black community is. That's what to me should have raised alarm bells for everybody, including the white jury.
This is not believable.
What was alleged to be a three hour long encounter with two twin underage white girls being raped by a black man in the middle of clan country. I would have sooner bought into the story about Mars and Vincent was able to present something in his defense right. His attorney called him to the stand where he said that he was at a bar on May ninth, and presented three alibi witnesses who all dated that he was at the bar with them.
His alibi witnesses, they tried to discredit these people with traffic tickets and like petty crimes because they wanted to make the alibis look like they were not law abiding citizens, even though they basically were. I mean, one of the witnesses that testified for Vincent was a business owner, and they attacked them using like speeding tickets and parking tickets that he received. It was a joke. The trial was a joke.
Yeah, it was a joke, but not a funny one though, because eleven white people and one black woman on the jury. I remember at that time in Louisiana and all the way up till twenty eighteen, they didn't need a unanimous verdict to convict. It was one of the ways that they disenfranchised black folks. You only needed ten of the twelve members on the jury to vote guilty. So black woman or not, let's just call it like it is.
There was no hope in hell for Vincent. And so there you are, still trying to heal from a gunshot wound to the chest at close range and watching this ridiculous trial. Did you still have any hope that they would see the discrepancies in this crazy narrative and that you were innocent?
Oh? Yeah, there was no hope because the way the juror was focused, oh what the victims were saying, There was no hope of receiving a fan crown. And even though I was shot and they seed that I was shout, there was no question answer what happened.
So, Vincent, that moment, a lot had happened to you already. But I have to think this would be the worst moment of anybody's life to be wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn't commit. Do you remember that moment when they declared you guilty and sentenced you to one hundred years in prison?
Yes? I did.
When I heard all those yes sold and the juror come back and convicted me, even with my alibi with Kevin, the juror still believe their lives, and it was amazing for me to believe that those people would, yeah, that kind of lie to the juror, and the juror believed them. When I got dan Gola and they slammed the doors behind me, it was like a shot for me. And from that moment then I was experiencing nightmares at night.
When I went to sleep, or tried to go to sleep, I would have a nightmare of being shot and beaten over and over again. When I got down. Even the guys in the tail they already knew what my jarge were and I went through mulate experiences. They so I'd brought all you ship human weights. You know your torture. I've been stalled several times, you know, all the skin come off my padley, But I wouldn't report it because they would call you a wreck here at several night
night falls. That was from of all pals, they would make it possible for they didn't make the st a home the guds He of all pals, they would intentually like to report where I would be the sepetrator of the night. So from one lock down to another, that's what calls me to be locked down and solatarif confined in all these years because I was being attacked and
being transfer it to another lockdown. I've said twenty some years in solid confinits and I just got out in two thousand nineteen, and that's when I got the call from Justin say as you were going take my cakes.
Forty four years wrongfully convicted, and twenty seven of those were in solitary confinement because of constant assaults from other prisoners who also found ways to believe the childish, nonsensicalize that these three backwards, redneck low lifes told to cover up their dirty, disgusting little incest secret. And I don't even know what to say except that I'm absolutely amazed at your courage and your strength to persevere and just even be here at all, after all you've gone through, Vincent,
you are a living miracle. So justin we know that the post conviction litigation start almost immediately back in nineteen seventy eight, and it went about as well as the trial did. But Vincent finally got a break of sorts in nineteen ninety three. Can you talk us through that.
Nineteen ninety three, Vincent files a man Damus and somebody in the DA's office copies the whole file. That's how Vincent gets his file. That's when he first gets the discovery. And then Vincent got a letter from his lawyer in ninety eight saying that we've never seen these documents before. You know, and by the way, that lawyer in ninety eight, I think he was a judge by that point, I mean, these are credible people that came forward and said that they had never seen these documents before.
Right, this is the discovery with the details that we mentioned earlier. That if Vincent's trial attorney would have had this at the trial in nineteen seventy seven, and of course it was totally illegal for them not to share it, but if they had had this discovery, it's very possible that even that jury could have come to the right conclusion. So in addition to that, more exculpatory evidence has developed over time. Meanwhile, Vincent has denied parole again and again
and again and again. The sisters showed up at the parole hearings and said all sorts of awful racist things. I remember seeing this on the video and hearing about it on one occasion where one of the three members of the pro board was a black gentleman, and one of the sisters actually said in the parole hearing that she wouldn't feel safe alone in the room with him. And I'm talking about the guy who was on the parole board, the black guy on the parle board. Am I actually right about that?
You are? You cannot make this sub So.
Now we're all the way at October twenty twenty and justin you've now joined Vincent's team, and Vincent has applied for post conviction based on several two process violations and newly discovered evidence which shows that the alleged rape was a total fabrication, and that part of the new evidence that was presented is from a family member of the alleged victims themselves. Right, So can you tell us about that?
Essentially, we have a family member of the the Boards coming forward with a detailed statement about an admission that Keith gave her. I think it was in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, And actually what happened forty four years ago was she was there when Keith came into her mother's
house and he had a scratch on his neck. And it appears is that Keith is the first one that drops the story that gets Vincent thrown in prison, which is that you know, he gave a black man a ride home with the girls and the black man scratched his neck, throw him in the trunk, and rape the two girls. See the problem with that, though, is if you talk to this witness, she knows Keith Leboard. He's
a total psycho. Keith also, I believe I said twenty eleven, twenty twelve, he admits that there was no black man. We actually have Facebook messages between Keith Leboard's first cousin and Karen, where Karen admitted that Keith le Board raped her. Now you have to understand this same cousin, Keith le Board actually admitted that he had what he termed to be consensual sex with Karen and threw Sharon in the trunk.
So that's why Sharon Hymen is attack as Keith threw her in the trunk because she didn't want to have sex with him. But he definitely had sex with Karen. Now, Karen says that it was a rape. Keith says it was consensual sex. But at the time of the alleged sexual act, Keith was an adult, Karen was a minor. You know. Then we have an investigative report from our investigator who spoke to Karen, where Karen said she might have made a mistake, that she doesn't want to testify again in this case.
This is even worse than I originally thought, which I didn't think was possible. So where are we now? What in the world is it going to take to bring Vincent home?
Where are we right now? We filed the motion to vacate the conviction, a post conviction relief motion in October of twenty twenty. I mean, there's Affidavid's newly discovered evidence. There's scientific reports in here, identification experts, doctors, obviously the previous discovery that wasn't turned over when the motion was
initially filed. Carrie Sprool was the judge that was overseeing the motion and Charles Riddle was the district attorney, and essentially what happened is in March of twenty twenty one, I got my hands on a document where Carrie Sprool admitted that he represented Keith Leboard's daughter in a previous I don't know if it was a custody case or
a family court case. And so we had a hearing to recuse Carrie Sprool, and in that hearing to recuse Harry Sprool, Kerrie Sprool not only admitted that he had represented Keith the Board's daughter, but also that he had a close relationship with keithle Board since I guess almost childhood, and actually hired Keith the Board to work on construction projects in his house, so he had a long standing
relationship with Keith the Board and his family. And then after that is when we had the motion to recuse the District Attorney's office where we took testimony from Vincent's trial attorney, Mike Kelly, where Mike Kelly testified at the hearing that the defense received no discovery, not a single document. They didn't know there was a lineup, they didn't know that there was original statements made, they didn't know anything.
We took testimony from a civil rights activist, Alan Holmes, who heard Charles Riddle admit that Mike Kelly didn't receive discovery, and then we took testimony from Charles Riddle himself, and Charles Riddle admitted that he believed Mike Kelly when Mike Kelly to testified that they didn't have any of the discovery in this case. That caused Judge Bennett to recuse Charles Riddle because Charles Riddle refused to consent to give Vincent Simmons a new trial. Essentially that Riddle was basically
condoning a constitutional violation. Right he knew that there was a violation and refused to remedy it. And a prosecutor has a duty to act fair and and partial, and his duties are based upon the Constitution. He has to be fair to the accused, and when there's a due process violation like there is in this case, the only way he can remedy that is by giving Vincent another trial, and he refused to do it. We now have an Attorney General's office that's taken over. They're trying to vacate
the recusal of Charles Riddle. They're basically trying to delay this as best as they can. No one wants to give Vincent any relief here, and that's where we are right now. We're in front of the Supreme Court battling it out over the motion to recuse a district attorney, and I'm in the process of filing something to try to compel the court to do the right thing here.
So before we go to the closing of the show, is there something that our listeners can do, Hopefully they're going to be inspired to take action. What would you recommend that they do to help Vincent or just to help in general.
I would recommend that they write Judge William Bennett the Attorney General's office, and that they write the Governor of Louisiana, and that they write the District Attorney of a vols Paris, Charles Riddle. These are all people that have the ability to concede. I mean, Vincent would love a retrial because the retrial is not going to happen because it didn't happen.
Vincent has a page on the Friends and Family of the Wrongfully Convicted, which is an organization that Derek Hamilton started, and then he also has a change dot Org web page as well.
We're going to put everything in the episode bio for everybody to do what they can. And I've gotten to know the governor of Louisiana over the years. I think he's a good man, and I think he's a fair man, and I believe if he was made aware of this that he will feel inspired to take the action that the local authorities are still to this day unwilling to take. So with that, we now turn to the closing of our show, and it works like this. It's called closing arguments.
First of all, I thank you Justin Bonus again for being here sharing you know, your frustration and your thoughts on this case. And of course, Vincent Simmons, stay strong. You know there's a lot of good people out here that care about you. I'm one of them. And as though I speak for our whole wrongful conviction community when we say we're rooting for you, a lot of people praying for you and hopefully help is a red around the corner. So now the end of our show works
like this. I turned my microphone off, I leave both of your guys on, and I turn it over first to Justin for his final thoughts. Whatever he wants to say. And then, of course, Vincent, we're going to save the best for last, all due respect to you, justin Vincent is the man of the hour. And then Vincent, you could just say whatever you want about whatever you want. Okay, I'm now going to turn my microphone off, a kickback of my chair and just listen.
Okay. Well, I just want to start off by saying, what's right in front of the court right now is probably the most egregious Brady violation in the history of the United States, because I've never seen a case where no discovery was turned over and almost all of the discovery is exculpatory that the DA's office in a Vols Parish has admitted that they believed that Vincent Simmons' defense
attorney that he didn't receive discovery in this case. The only way you can remedy that situation is by a new trial, and they are refusing to give him a new trial. It should start there because the evidence that wasn't turned over is what proves that Vincent Simmons didn't commit this crime. This guy didn't commit this crime. He was railroaded, he was legally lynched, and he's been in prison for almost forty five years. It's a disgrace. This
is simple. They could give him a new trial right now, but they know that they can't retry him because the people that testified against him will never testify against him again because they lied. All of the evidence that wasn't disclosed proves that they lied. I took this case because my wife said I have to take this case because that's how much she believed he was innocent. But I believe he will be victorious because he is innocent and
every single shred of the evidence shows it. And that's all I have to say.
I say, God is the light of uncovers all, so I have faith it does and I have faith. Yes, yeah, God have to put justice molds in my life. In this face, just going to grant us this.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wardis. The music on this show, as always is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
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