Man freed after 45 years in prison: ‘God is so good’
BATON ROUGE, LA. >> A 65-year-old man who was arrested at 19 and sentenced to life without parole walked out of prison on Wednesday, saying “God is so good” after his rape conviction was overturned by a judge.
Authorities withheld evidence that could have exonerated Wilbert Jones decades ago and their case against him was “weak at best,” State District Judge Richard Anderson said.
“Freedom. After more than 45 years and 10 months. That’s going through my mind,” Jones said as he hugged his brother, Plem Jones, and other relatives outside the gates of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.
Jones also thanked his legal team at the Innocence Project New Orleans, saying “without them, this wouldn’t be possible.”
Doing that time was “very difficult,” Jones said, but he said he holds no resentment. “I forgave. I forgive,” Jones said. “I didn’t have control of it. Why should I worry about it? I’m in charge of myself.”
Attorney Emily Maw praised “the extraordinary strength” of a man “who has spent over 16,000 days in prison for something he didn’t do,” and would nevertheless
“come out with a faith in God and in humanity.”
Prosecutors said they do not intend to retry Jones, but they also said they would ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to review last month’s decision by the judge. Court spokesman Robert Gunn said Wednesday that no such request had been filed. Jones has yet to be cleared; the judge set his bail at $2,000.
Maw said it would be “legally incorrect and morally problematic” if the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office insists on trying to uphold the conviction, because by doing so, it would be “saying that when Wilbert Jones was arrested in 1972 as a young, 19-yearold poor black man, he did not deserve the rights that
people deserve today.”
The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to the AP’s request for comment.
Jones was arrested on suspicion of abducting a nurse at gunpoint from a Baton Rouge hospital’s parking lot and raping her behind a building on the night of Oct. 2, 1971. He was convicted of aggravated rape at a 1974 retrial that “rested entirely” on the nurse’s testimony and her “questionable identification” of Jones as her assailant, the judge said.
The nurse, who died in 2008, picked Jones out of a police lineup more than three months after the rape, but she also told police that the man who raped her was taller and had a “much rougher” voice than Jones had.