#395 Jason Flom with Sullivan Walter

On the night of May ninth, nineteen eighty six, a young mother was showering when a masked, knife wielding man snuck into her Garden District apartment in New Orleans. When he attacked her in the bathroom, he threatened that he'd hurt her eight year old son if she didn't cooperate. Moving to a bedroom, he put a t shirt over her head, forced her to perform oral sex, and raped her twice. Plenty of seminal fluid was collected in a rapekit, as well as her undergarments, but this was before the

Thank you.

So all of this took place in New Orleans, which, under the DA that oversaw this caseous DA Harry Connock Senior, New Orleans became the most incarcerated city and the most incarcerated state in the most incarcerated country in the world, probably in the history of the world. And so, knowing that the story you're about to hear, unfortunately will come as no surprise. And Sullivan, you grew up in New Orleans, right.

Yes, I grew up in the city of New Orleans. My mother was the mother of eleven the tenth of eleven children. My mother had kids in a previous marriage, and some of the kids were being raised by their father, and my mother and my father separated when I was very young. My mother raised me and my younger sister and my brother right over me as a single parent. I didn't do well in school. I would find ways to get out of school and just hang around in the neighborhood. I grew up in a high crime area.

And so you had at least been processed for that behavior and your fingerprints were on file, et cetera. And so that brings us to the summer of nineteen eighty six, when you had just turned seventeen.

Yeah, I was arrested for burglary and it occurred on Laurel Street, Law and Amelia. I mean, it's uptown New Orleans, and it was basically just household items, stereo equipment, small stuff, you know, cameras, something like that. The burglary occurred on a Saturday. I was arrested Monday morning.

Do you know how they honed in on you?

Yeah? I was picked up because there were a window pane that my fingerprint was actually found on. And while in police custody, you know, that's what led to me being I was with a cram that I had nothing to do.

With, right, And this burgulary happened on June twenty first, nineteen eighty six. When the police got you the rape person on Monday morning, June twenty third, But then somehow signals got crossed, lanes were switched, and you ended up spending thirty six years in prison, now for the burglary, but for a rape that occurred about six weeks earlier, on May ninth, nineteen eighty six, in the Garden District neighborhood of New Orleans. Richard, can you fill us in on what happened that night?

So, on the night of May the ninth, May tenth, nineteen eighty six, a woman was cleaning her home. The only other person in her home was her young zahn, who was sleep. She was showering after doing some cleaning and was disturbed by someone breaking in, and that person attacked and raped her. At all times during the rape, the person either was covering their face, or the lights were off, or they were threatening the victim of knife

Right, And as I've read, not only did the assailant have half of his face covered by a washcloth, but then after dragging her out of the shower, it's like a horror scene, he put a t shirt over her head and he threatened her at knife point to collaborate or he would hurt her eight year old son. Then he took her into a bedroom where he forced her to perform oral sex and then vaginally raped her twice.

Yeah, so the victim described it as a young assailant. She fo eighteen to twenty years old, five to eleven, slender with thick eyebrows and a Jerry curl. The reports of a night of a crime is which she said the attacker had stubble, but there are two different police documents showing she told two different offices on the night of crime that it was an assailant with like two

Okay, so either some stubble or two to three days growth, but facial hair growth varies, so these descriptions could mean the same thing depending on who you're talking to. And then the victim said that the assailant was wearing a baseball cap.

Yes, and she described it as a blue baseball cat, but nothing else distinctive about it.

So, Sulliban, how did you compare to this description?

I am, in fact five to eleven. I was very then. I didn't have a Jerry curl. As far as facial hairs, prior to my arrest, I'd never grown facial hairs.

Right for a seventeen year old, that's not surprising.

Yeah, I had just turned seventeen.

So even though your age heights get into an end build were similar, your lack of facial hero at the very least not having a Jerry Curl should have ruled you out or cast at least serious doubt on this, but clearly it did not. Now, six weeks passed after the rape, before you became a suspect. Did the investigators have any other leads during that time?

There are some indications of the officer's notes they may have had other suspects, but we are never able to figure out what those notes meant for sure. From his interviews with the victim, he come to believe it was an experienced perpetrator. There was also some indication that someone who seemed to match for description or for complete sketch had been loitering around the area of the crime beforehand.

But the composite wasn't all they had to go on, right, this was a rape, So what about the physical evidence? There was a lot of it.

The perpetrator was ejaculated twice during the rape, and so this was, you know, a good scene for forensic evidence. They did for normal sexual assault exam and also collected the undergarments for the victim had worn after the crime and based on the victim's sexual history, any product detected was coming from the perpetrator, and so the items were quickly tested by the police department.

Grant that this was nineteen eighty six, so they were only working with sorology in not DNA, and if understand this correctly, the undergarments were tested by Harry O'Neill, a criminalist working with NOPD the Orleans Police Department, while Patricia Daniels with the Cornor's Office tested the rape.

Kit, so he's a two separate test, but they're both coming to the same conclusion, which is they cannot detect any blood type activity in the seminal stains and spumtazoa found on the evidence.

So with zology there are really only two ways to narrow down a field of suspects. Blood typing like ab ab and O and then secretor status, which refers to whether or not your blood type shows up in other bodily fluids like semen or saliva.

The majority of the population secretes their blood type into our bodily fluids, but some percentage of the population doesn't. And value from these two different tests and not finding any indication of blood type being secreted into the bodily fluids of perpetrata.

So the assailant was among the twenty percent of the population who are non secretors, which unfortunately is quite convenient for the assailant, but secretor status still offers a way to narrow a field of suspects, if only to the exclusion of eighty percent of the population. So this was all the police had to go on, along with a composite sketch from a victim who really didn't get a great look at her assailant. So how did they land on Sullivan?

Officially, what happened in the investigation is six weeks after a crime. As the police tell it, an officer working in the burglary case was doing a fingerprint check Sullivan from the burglary case saw his photo, thought, gosh, this

So this composite sketch didn't really look like Slovon, yet their focus still landed on him. Sullivan, how do you remember this all going down?

Well, the burglary, I was being about it. They wanted to know what the property was, They wanted to know if there was someone else involved, and when I didn't cooperate, well, ultimately I was threatened that if I didn't cooperate and if I didn't tell them what they wanted to know, then they would see to it that I was given a life sentence. I mean, they didn't mention the crime that I would be punished with. They didn't question about a rape, you know, so they played good cop, bad

So after he has been booked on the burger and they've taken these photos. The detective go see the victim with a photo array and the photos they've taken. We don't have recording of this procedure. It's a cross racial

So we have no idea what kind of suggestions were being made to the victim. And then add to that the toxic fact that it was cross racial, which study after study has proven is less accurate than guessing.

This is one of the challenging things about the cases. We do not have the photo oray he was identified from, and we don't even know with any certainty what photo of they had of Sullivan and raided alone, who were fulfillers, and if they looked anything like him or not. We don't have the photo lineup, so we don't actually.

Know so Jerry Curl's in facial hair or not. They got their cross racial misidentification while Sullivan was already being held on the burglary charge. Now, Sullivan, when did you find out about the rape charge?

After being charged with a burglary while in Central Laga? Either the following day or day after that, I was taken back down and I was charged with another burglary, a rape, two council crime against nature, which was all one case, and this was the rape charge.

And after finding out a bit more about this charge, were you able to remember where you were at on May ninth?

I mean, I was arrested six weeks after this rapehead occurred. So how would be lying if I said, well, I was here, I was there six weeks ago. I don't know where I was at six weeks ago.

And you're barely seventeen, so it's not like you had a daily planner or like a you know, a calendar like we all have on our phones now these days. So you weren't sure where you were on that day, but it certainly wasn't the garden district. Did they try to corroborate the identification with the physical evidence.

So they took blood and saliva from Sullivan pre trial apparently, so charge first, do the science later, and according to report of a time, they somehow fouled for sample so badly they didn't even detect Sullivan's blood type, so at a time of trial they didn't know his blood type, let alone whether he's a secretor or not. And then at the eleventh hour, right before trial, they disclose this evidence of the perpetrator was a non secretor. But the case goes ahead to trial anyway.

So at this point the prosecution didn't get a second sample from Sullivan to be sure that they had the right person.

But also law says that state needs to give stuff to defense in enough time for them to be able to use it.

So what's the answer to the million dollar question? I think I can actually predict this, but go ahead.

My blood type is B and I am a secretor.

So it was fully impossible that you could have committed this crime.

As far as we can tell, no one knows all of a secreteors state us at this time, they just plowed ahead with the trial. And I think you've got a wonder do you in fact not want a scientific answer because it might contradict your witness.

Nevertheless, the trial began and ended on the same day, December two, nineteen eighty six. The NOPDS criminalist O'Neil unwittingly testified to your innocence at trial that the assailant was a non secretor, but no one cared to discover, let alone make the jury aware of your secretor status. Makes sense for the prosecutor. They already ad an identification from the victim. After all, she.

Got understand and they asked us some questions about the crime and asked us did she see the perpetrate on the court. She said that I was the perpetrate at the.

Crime and without knowing your secretor status or your whereabouts on May nineteen eighty six, this was probably an easy decision for the jury.

I mean I was in and out of trial within an hour or so. I mean the state presented the physical evidence. They presented the expert witnesses, they presented the victim. It was never any day presented on my behalf and I was found guilty.

And then you were sentenced to thirty five years in prison.

I mean, it was so disturbing to me. My family was unable to help me. I had nobody to come and give me advice. I was seventeen, so I couldn't began to try and figure this out, understand this. I didn't think that this could happen to me. I didn't think it could happen to anybody. It was like, man, this can't be real.

This episode is sponsored by Marsha mc clean and the world's leading professional services firm in the areas of risk strategy and people. It's legal and compliance department provides pro bono legal assistance and other support to underrepresentative communities and individuals.

After being convicted. To have to go to prison for a rape crime. You know, this is one of the most degrading crimes that a man could be charged with in prison, other than child molestation. You're an outcast. I mean, you don't have friends. You're pervert. However they want to describe you, then that's what it is. So this he has a real effect on a seventeen at eighteen year old because now you got to try to find ways to protect yourself. And you know, my only host was, man,

So that's an initial appeal after the trial, which the sole issue he lawyer raises in the only files of three and a half page brief is that he got the blood typing report too late to be able to use it. The court tends it back with an instruction, but you need we need to figure out this guy's blood type and figure out if he was prejudiced by the late disclosure of the perpetrator's blood typing information, because obviously, if it was a match, puss out, it's kind of

So therefore I was the total opposite of what the state head actually identify in open call. You can determine my blood type, dom salavo do my seminal fluid. I am a SECRETA.

And so this then goes to a hearing of promotion for a new trial to determine well, we've now shown that sal has been prejudiced by this late disclosure because his blood type doesn't match. And so this goes to a hearing in nineteen eighty eight, and at this point the analyst who had said a trial, well, the evidence indicates it was a non secretor suddenly is now saying, well, I don't know, maybe like I missed for stain and was testing something else. I can't really say anything about

At this point, Sullivan was entitled to an appointed lawyer for the appeal of that decision, but that lawyer simply did not follow through. For four years. There was no communication, sharing of documents or strategy, nothing. And then when the Court of Appeals recognized the dereliction and appointed a new lawyer, it took two more long years before the motion appeared before the court, this time filed on behalf of Walter Sullivan,

The Court of Appeals been told by the Louisiana Supreme Court, you've got to analyze this under the rules for a non disclosure rather than just evidence found from a neutral source. The Court of Appeals does actually get the legal standard wrong a second time.

This time they based their denial on O'Neill's altered testimony from the motion for a new trial rather than his trial testimony. That the assailant was, unlike Sullivan, a non secretor.

And then after this ruling, the court appointed lawyer doesn't take further appeal to really easy on the Supreme Court or any kind of a federal court. And so this is it for Sullivan in terms of getting lawyers provided by the state.

And I mean, do we have this wrong? Nothing was filed again until twenty twenty one.

Between nineteen ninety seven and twenty twenty one. No one is helping Sullivan.

Oh God, Sullivan, I mean you touch a quarter century. I mean you talked about how hard it was for you in prison, even when there was some hope for you in post conviction. But that's a long, bleak stretch of a lot of years.

As I just explained to you, being in prison as a sex offender is not easy. It's not easy at all. Not only the population, but you also have the officers you have to deal with. And then you had the work expect of prison. I mean they digging ditches and picking and farm vegetables, stuff that I had never done before in my life. So I didn't know anything about none of this. So I stayed in and out of lockdown, in and out of I'm locked up because I didn't know how to do the work, and I'm trying to

So Hypno was established, and it's a project New Orleans in two thousand and one. Had you ever reached out to them?

No, I had no knowledge of the inn some project New Orleans. I knew nothing of them. I can remember in two thoy and nineteen, you know, they had started the Kiosk machine. People get letters and stuff through the Kiosk machine and do like man, because dudes used to see, man, I ain't never used to write nobody. I never received mail, nothing. I mean, so a friend of mine had told me. The dud was like, man, you need to set up the Kiosk machine because you can get pictures of your

So man, one morning, one morning I came in from work and I looked at the Kioska.

She and I had a letter mister Richard Davis, and it was like if you celeb reporters and you was charged and convicted with a rape in nineteen eighty six, and all of his paish, you need to contact my office immediately, you know, because it's how yes, you know you've been subjected to an injustice, Richard.

Could you have ever imagined just one email from you carried this much weight.

I wish we had a system where we didn't make any kind of adition. I wish the system ever convicted him, but I wish I we absolute minimum they dealt with him in nineteen eighty eight, when I was five years old and I'd never met him. I liked Sullivan a lot, but I wish i'd never met him. I wish we had a system that treated his life as important enough that it was dealt with just like competently conscientious professionals.

Unfortunately, I have to agree, and this case also could have been resolved much sooner had Sullivan been sentenced differently during this awful span of twenty four years nineteen eighty seven to twenty twenty one. On the outside, the Supreme Court made some landmark decisions regarding juvenile justice, which ruled that mandatory life sentences and death sentences for children were a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on Cruel and

I had first read about Sullivan's case in I think twenty eleven. I was just doing legal research on another case about non disclosure of evidence, and I'd read the opinion and he was not very technical. Asia well, that's bullshit that they upheld for conviction in this case. So it's stuck in my head. And then ten years later there was a change to the law, which meant that I thought that was a way to represent the case potentially.

And then, as we mentioned earlier, the last denial in appeals court was wrongly based on O'Neill's altered testimony, but the carner had also had the same findings that the assailant was a non secretor. So it sure seems like O'Neill had lied, but you still got to prove that.

And so fortunately as a guy called Alan Keel, who I'd worked with as a DNA analyst, and before he was a DNA analyst, he was a zerologist, so he was willing to consult on the case, and so I'd

So you found a credible source in Keel to confirm what was clear to everyone that O'Neill's shady change of opinion at the motion for neutral hearing was total horseship. But it unfortunately upheld Sullivan's wrongful conviction long after his secretor status had proven his actual innocence, all the way back in January nineteen eighty eight, when Orleans Parish GA Harry Connick Senior was still in office, and after him,

So in early twenty twenty two, I presented this case to the Civil Rights Division, a woman Lame Melissa Montel, who immediately saw of that this guy should not be in prisoner. And so while I think the evidence we had found, I think if we had to litigate the case, I think Sulivan was eagerly entitled to have his conviction thrown out. The District Attorney's office actually signed off on agreeing to it. So this was a rare case where we could actually file a joint motion with the District

Mean a judge, and he seemed to be very disturbed matters, and he made some statements quote unquote, he stated, there, you know, to say that this was uncashionable would be an understatement, you know, And he actually asked them, you know what happened. Why is it this guy has been in prison all these years after this physicaloeverness was presented on his behalf and then the prosecuting she was like, you know, man, this shouldn't have happened. These people actually lie.

And so you have Sullivan's conviction was vacated.

Yeah, well, luckily you have Jason Williams in office rather than Conic Senior or ely On Connizarro.

Leon Cannizero was a judge who denied the motion for a new trial after the blood typing came back proving Sullivan was a type beaty greeta.

Wait, wait, wait, so Connazaro, this character was the one who watched O'Neill blatantly lie about the evidence that proved your actual innocence and still denied your motion for a new trial. Right, and then became district attorney for the seventeen years following Harry Connock Senior. You know what, let's just move on to the good stuff. You had your conviction finally vacated in the summer of twenty twenty two.

It was in August August the twenty fifth, but the week prior to that, mister Davis called me and he told me that, you know, I was going to be going back to court and act I was going to be exonerated, and he asked me to see how you feel in that moment, you know, I told him, you know, I feel as if I could breathe, because man, for all the years, it was like I couldn't breathe. My whole life was taken from me. And as I said, I can't tell you what I would have done had

Ever.

That's one of the hard things about this case. Even though I'm out and I'm free, the victim is deceased, so I never see this woman. I'll never looked on her eyes, and she'll never know. And that my mother, my sister, These are people I would have wanted to know that I didn't do this, you know, I wanted

Yeah, you'd think that even just out of pure self interest, right for their own safety of their own families, right, You think that these folks in law enforcement would want to get the actual perpetrator off the street and save all the future potential victims from enduring a horrible ordeal like this poor person did this poor woman. But that's not what happened here with you, Sullivan, and in so

Well, well, my release. You know, the Anderson Project has a client service person who helps helps out and there were go fundme page.

All right, well, we'll make sure that we have that linked in the bio. And now, of course we've come to my favorite part of this show. I'll call it closing arguments, where I first of all, thank you both for being here with us and courageously sharing this incredible, harrowing story. I'm going to turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, close my eyes, and kick back in my chair and just listen to anything else you guys

So I think Sullivan's case, beyond his own story, of course, is just a real demonstration of how much power of the system gives people without expecting any kind of responsibility or foreigness. It's just the the incredible fecklessness with which his case was treated, and the incredible power they have to define his life or being incredibly careless about it. That's what I see is that you know, this is

That anyone who hear my story, you know, if you listen and you hear my story, you know, all I ask is that you know you understand and know that you know these things happen and it didn't just happen to me, It happens to many people throughout the country. You know, people have been subjected to injustice and wrongful and canceration and put in prison for extended amount of times. And you can't make up for it, you know, I mean thirty six years. It's impossible to make up for it. So,

You know.

I lost my mother, my father, my family. I don't have any kids, and I lost a lot. I'm fifty four years old. I don't have kids. You know, a lot was taken from me. You know, I just was denied a chance to live a life. And I believe that.

I know.

I don't believe it, I know it without a doubt. I'm a good person. I'm a good man, and you know I believe that I would have made the best out of life.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team Connor hall Any, Chelsea, Lyla Robinson, and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Awardis, and Jeff Clyburn. The music in this production was supplied by