Here - Innocence Project

exodus
SUMMER 2015 • ISSUE XV
George Toca Freed on January 29, 2015
This Valentine’s Day was George Toca’s 48th birthday; it was the first birthday he
spent outside of prison in 31 years. George had just turned 17 when his best friend, Eric
Batiste, was shot and killed by his partner during a botched armed robbery in uptown
New Orleans in April 1984. George was arrested and convicted for that crime because
an officer from their neighborhood, who knew Eric and George were friends, assumed
that George would have been with Eric. The police continued this assumption even
after they learned the witnesses’ description of the gunman looked nothing like George.
George was nevertheless identified by two white strangers who spent less than a couple
of minutes with the actual perpetrator of the attempted armed robbery. At a trial where
the presentation of evidence lasted less than one day, then-18-year-old George Toca
was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.
­­‑ continued on page 10
Kia Stewart enjoys the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C. a month after his release.
Kia Stewart Exonerated on April 13, 2015
Kia Stewart eagerly descended the
courthouse steps into the arms of his
waiting family and friends on Monday,
April 13, 2015. In taking those strides, he
also stepped back into the free world.
Kia was exonerated through a unique
joint effort between IPNO and the Orleans
Parish District Attorney’s Office, the newly
launched Conviction Integrity and Accuracy
Project. The conclusion of Kia’s case, and
the end of his wrongful incarceration, mark
the project’s first success.
Kia was mistakenly identified as the man
who shot Bryant “BJ” Craig on a public
street in broad daylight on July 31, 2005,
just a month before Hurricane Katrina
would devastate New Orleans.
Within hours of the shooting, police
developed Kia as a suspect in the case,
­­‑ continued on page 12
M. Lizabeth Talbott (Chair)
Attorney at Law
M. Lizabeth Talbott, APLC
New Orleans, Louisiana
Frank X. Neuner, Jr. Managing Partner
NeunerPate
Lafayette, Louisiana
Kim Haddow (Secretary)
President
Haddow Communications
New Orleans, Louisiana
John A. Nolan
John A. Nolan, CPA LLC
New Orleans, Louisiana
James R. Swanson, Esq. (Treasurer)
Managing Partner
Fishman Haygood
New Orleans, Louisiana
Melody Chang
Jr. Project Manager
Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice
Coordination
New Orleans, Louisiana
Calvin Duncan
Paralegal
The Capital Appeals Project
Former IPNO client
New Orleans, Louisiana
Michael Friedman
Co-Owner
Pizza Delicious
New Orleans, Louisiana
Judy Perry Martinez
2015 Harvard Advanced Leadership
Initiative
New Orleans, Louisiana
Donald W. Washington
Partner
Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent,
Carrere & Denegre, LLP Lafayette, Louisiana
Ariel I. White
Project Coordinator
504HealthNet
New Orleans, Louisiana
Jason R. Williams
City Councilmember-At-Large
New Orleans, Louisiana
Michael W. Magner
Partner
Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent,
Carrere & Denegre, LLP New Orleans, Louisiana
Mission: In the two states with the highest incarceration rates in the world,
Innocence Project New Orleans frees innocent prisoners, exposes injustice and
prevents wrongful convictions.
Purpose: Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) is a nonprofit law office that
represents innocent prisoners serving life sentences in Louisiana and Mississippi,
and assists them with their transition into the free world upon their release. IPNO
uses its cases to explain how wrongful convictions happen and what we can all do to
prevent them. IPNO works with legislators, judges, lawyers, law enforcement and
policymakers to protect the innocent within the criminal justice system.
As of June 2015, IPNO has freed or exonerated 26 innocent men.
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Congratulations to IPNO attorney, Charell Arnold, who got engaged to
Christopher Stow-Serge in December. We are thrilled for Charell and Chris,
and to their Chihuahuas on their inevitably imminent and prominent role in
the solemn nuptials.
IPNO is delighted to announce that Huy Dao will join our staff in October
as Case Review Manager. Huy has been at the Innocence Project since 1996
and brings years of experience and commitment to IPNO. We are very
excited to begin working with Huy.
Congratulations to IPNO’s former client and now board member, Calvin
Duncan, on being awarded an Echoing Green Fellowship for his project,
Rising Foundations. Calvin’s project aims to break the cycle of incarceration
of black men in New Orleans through access to housing, gainful
employment, and financial services. We are so pleased for
Calvin and his co-fellow, Kelly Orians, and wish them all
the success in the world on this crucial project.
Logo designed by IPNO client, Jerome Morgan.
IPNO is so grateful to be joined by seven summer law
clerks and interns this year who come from Southern
University Law Center, Harvard Law School, Loyola Law
School, Tulane Law School, Indiana University, Xavier University of Louisiana
and University of New Orleans. We could not free innocent prisoners without
students donating hundreds of hours to IPNO every year.
And finally, congratulations to IPNO’s case review manager, Zacharay
Crawford Pechukas, on finishing the Eugene, Oregon, half-marathon in
May in 100 th place.
Summer interns and staff at the Whitney Plantation on a very rainy day.
Summer 2015
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from the director
Friend:
I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome our new readers
and welcome back those lucky people who’ve been receiving our
newsletter since we began sending it in 2007. We travel around
a lot, talking to people about what we do and, through that,
we have learned that while many people have a general sense
of what IPNO does or why it exists, people also have a lot of
questions. By keeping people updated through our newsletter,
we hope to answer some of those questions. Here are a few other
key points about our work:
Since 2001, IPNO has freed or
exonerated 26 innocent men from
Louisiana and Mississippi’s prisons.
Those clients have served 535 years
in prison between them. Of the 26
cases we have won to date, all of the
defendants were young black men,
none of them were given a trial where
the presentation of evidence lasted
more than one day, and yet all but
two were sentenced to life in prison.
All were innocent of the crimes with
which they were charged.
We exist because it is a statistical certainty
that there are scores, if not hundreds,
of innocent prisoners in Louisiana and
Mississippi’s prisons serving life or near-life
sentences. If Louisiana and Mississippi are
archives of
injustice
simply in line with the national average
on wrongful convictions, conservative,
evidence-based estimates predict that
around 3.3% of their combined prison
population of around 70,000 (or 2,310)
are factually innocent. Taking the lifer
population of the two states alone, a
conservative estimate of innocent prisoners
serving life in prison in the two states is
around 200. If you are not sentenced to
death, the right to a state-funded lawyer
ends after you are convicted and your
conviction is affirmed on appeal. If you are
innocent, and there is significant evidence
of your innocence the jury did not hear
before it convicted you, it is generally only
after your appeal that you can bring that
evidence to a court’s attention. However, it
is at exactly this point you no longer have a
lawyer provided. Almost everyone in prison
The Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1898 closed
with a statement that it had been the mission of the
all-white delegates “to establish the supremacy of the
white race in this state” and “perpetuate the supremacy
of the Anglo-Saxon race in Louisiana.”
During the Convention, amidst a raft of discriminatory
measures, a rule was enacted that permitted a criminal
conviction by a non-unanimous jury verdict. This rule is still
in force in Louisiana today, 117 years later. Oregon is the only
other state that allows non-unanimous jury verdicts. Half of the
wrongfully convicted people in Louisiana who were eligible
to be convicted by a non-unanimous verdict were convicted
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is poor, and none can afford the thousands
of hours of investigation and litigation that
it takes to prove innocence in court after
conviction (it takes IPNO – an office that
specializes in these cases – upwards of 2,000
hours per exoneration). We take their cases
at no cost to them, or their loved ones.
IPNO takes on cases where DNA testing
can prove innocence (which is not
available in the vast majority of cases),
and in more difficult cases where DNA
does not exist or has been destroyed.
While some cases are relatively simple and
may require no more than an intensive
review of existing documents, court filings
and subsequent testing of DNA, this is not
the norm. Most of our cases are complicated:
they require hundreds of hours of
investigation before we are even sure it is an
innocence case we can take, and then years
and years of litigation before an innocent
prisoner is released. Something most people
don’t know is that being innocent is not
enough to get you out of prison (unless you
have DNA, which most cases don’t have).
To be able to win a new trial and prove your
innocence, you have to have evidence of
your innocence and a legal claim to win on.
Investigating the case for those two things,
and presenting them in court, often with
fierce opposition, takes years. And it takes
a lot of resources. After we free our clients,
we also try to provide them with intensive
support to help them readjust.
We try to also use our clients’ cases to ask
for changes in laws, policies and attitudes
that cause indigent prisoners to be wrongly
convicted and then make it virtually
impossible for them to access the courts
after. We believe in preventing wrongful
convictions by increasing openness and
accountability in the criminal justice system.
This approach makes the system fairer for
everyone who encounters it, not just the
innocent. And, in Louisiana and Mississippi,
the states with the nation’s highest rates
of incarceration, an exceptionally high
proportion of the population encounters
the criminal justice system.
We are lucky to have strong supporters;
people who – like us – want the innocent in
prison to know that they are not abandoned
and that someone is coming for them.
Thank you for being one of those people.
Emily Maw, Director
with less than 12 jurors finding them guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt. In other words, in half of all the Louisiana exonerations where
someone was tried for a non-capital crime, at least one juror voted
not-guilty but the person was nevertheless convicted. This includes
Louisiana’s most recent exoneree, Kia Stewart, who was convicted
on a 10-2 jury vote.
Many of these wrongful convictions only occurred because the
votes of most, or all, of the non-white members of the jury were
nullified by the non-unanimous verdict rule. Recently the LSU
Press published “Jim Crow’s Last Stand: Nonunanimous Criminal
Jury Verdicts in Louisiana” by Professor Thomas Aiello. This book
covers the history of this unfortunate rule in more detail.
Summer 2015
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JusticeAid raised over
$100,000 for Innocence
Project New Orleans and
the Mid-Atlantic Innocence
Project in May, and is
doing it again in
October!
Emily Maw and Kia Stewart at JusticeAid Concert in Washington D.C.
We’re still spinning from an incredible concert with the Blind
Boys of Alabama and Ani DiFranco – presented by JusticeAid
at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington D.C.
The Blind Boys of Alabama soared like righteous eagles and the
Righteous Babe Records singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco lived
up to her star billing. Together, they formed amazing grace.
With every dollar in concert ticket sales goes directly to IPNO
and MAIP, we raised over $100,000 for our two organizations.
IPNO’s most recent exoneree, Kia Stewart, was able to join us
in D.C. It was his first trip out of Louisiana.
Ani DiFranco
JusticeAid is developing
our next concert, to be
held at the House of Blues
on Saturday, October 17 th
in New Orleans with Ani
DiFranco, Hurray for the
Riff Raff and more! Tickets
will be on sale soon and
can be purchased through
JusticeAid.org.
Blind Boys of Alabama
To get updates, be sure to
follow us on Facebook and/or sign
up for alerts at www.ip-no.org.
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ipno exodus | www.ip-no.org
If you would like to join the host committee and
help us spread the word and sell tickets, e-mail
Jené O’Keefe Trigg at [email protected]
case updates
Jerome
Morgan
and Robert
Jones
win in the
Louisiana
Supreme
Court
Robert Jones and Jerome Morgan were both teenagers
(19 and 17 respectively) when they were arrested in New
Orleans for rape (Robert) and murder (Jerome) in 1992
and 1993 respectively. Both were wrongly convicted
after brief trials marked by the State withholding
significant exculpatory evidence and woefully
inadequate investigations by their lawyers. Both were
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of
parole. After far-reaching investigation on their cases,
IPNO found a wealth of evidence that neither man
did the crime that he is imprisoned for. After extensive
proceedings, IPNO presented this evidence to the
courts in 2013 and each man had his conviction vacated
during 2014 (Jerome’s by the trial court and Robert’s by
the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal).
In each case, however, the prosecution filed in the
Louisiana Supreme Court asking that each man’s
conviction be reinstated, despite the considerable
evidence of prosecutorial misconduct in each case.
We are delighted to report that the Louisiana Supreme Court
declined to reinstate either man’s conviction: on March 27, 2015,
the Louisiana Supreme Court announced it would not review the
decision to vacate Jerome’s conviction and on June 1, 2015, it made
the same announcement in Robert’s case.
Despite these long-awaited victories, neither man’s
struggle for freedom is over. While Jerome is finally
allowed to leave his home and go to work (he had
previously been on home incarceration with an
electronic ankle monitor), he still lives with a curfew and
the prosecution maintains that it will retry him despite
the fact that it has yet to identify any evidence it can
present against him. Meanwhile, at the time of writing,
Robert Jones remains incarcerated.
IPNO had been investigating each case for years before
signing on to represent Robert and Jerome in 2010 and
2011 respectively. We will represent both of them until
they are completely free.
Summer 2015
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from the inside
Q&A with John Floyd
Q : John, how old are you?
A : I turned 66 last month.
Q : How long have you been in prison?
A : 35 years.
Q : What do you do at Angola?
A : I’m a groundsman working at the ranch house. I
keep up all the grounds, gardens, chickens. I also have
dogs I tend to and peacocks. It’s Warden Cain’s ranch
house. That’s who I work for – the Warden.
Q : Tell me about the peacocks?
A : Oh those peacocks. They’re beautiful birds. The freedom they have. They can
leave here, we can’t, but none of them have. It’s a lot of responsibility to take care of
them. They have to be well taken care of. Warden Cain loves them.
Q : How do you stay
positive?
A : When I came here I
was real negative. Warden
Cain told me about being
positive. That when you
do good, good will come
back to you. That is why
I’m positive. That is why
I’ve made it in the system
even though I’m innocent.
Q : What is your proudest achievement at Angola?
A : I was sent to New Orleans to help after Katrina. I was handpicked – just seven
inmates out of 5,000. We were all over the city. The same city I was convicted in.
When I came here I couldn’t read and write. I’ve learned some. That’s something
else I’m proud of. I had a cassette player to play a tape that spelled out the
words so I could learn them.
At the time of writing, the most recent
Q : What is your biggest hope?
action in John Floyd’s case was a
A : It’s freedom. Getting out. I’ve
federal magistrate reporting that,
lost five members of my family
while he was “troubled” by the facts
while I am here. I’d like to get out
of Mr. Floyd’s case, he recommended
while some are still alive. I just want
that Mr. Floyd be barred from having
to see justice done in this case.
any federal court review his conviction.
Q : How can people support you?
Letters and cards of support can be
A : I’d love to get letters.
mailed to John at: John Floyd, DOC#
98651, Louisiana State Penitentiary,
Angola, LA 70172.
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ipno exodus | www.ip-no.org
from the outside
George Toca
It’s been great being free. Life has been exciting – reuniting with family and friends
and making new friends. But it has also been a struggle to re-adjust to society.
I went to prison so young and so much has changed. The city as a whole is
different. The streets are deserted at night. Everyone just seems isolated, living
in their own worlds.
And everything is so much more expensive now. I’m amazed at the costs of things. I
love breakfast foods and I LOVE eating at IHOP, but it’s expensive. I can’t eat there as
much as I would like to.
I’ve been working hard and
I’ve started a business –
Royalty Horticulture, LLC. We
handle landscaping and pest
control. It’s a challenge for
me to work every day, but it’s
also important. I have to pay
my bills and I want to help my
family as well as I can.
It takes three things to start a business:
A lot of hard work, sacrifice and money.
It’s expensive to start a business – buying
the tools, paying for licenses and supplies
– but I think worth it. For now, I mainly
get clients through word-of-mouth. I
hand out a lot of business cards. I’m
working on learning how to bid on state
contracts. I recently financed a truck –
something I have to have to get around
with my tools. It’s not easy paying the car
note and insurance every month.
But it’s also all so exciting. I’m still staying
with family, but I hope to be able to get
my own place soon. I’ve never lived by
myself before and I am really looking
forward to it.
I’m looking forward to finding someone
special to spend my life with and start
a family with. Family is really important
to me. I love kids. And I want to travel.
I want to go on a cruise, to Las Vegas
and Hawaii.
I recently flew to Chicago. It was my
second time there, I went with my best
friend Eric in 1983, but that time we took
the bus as I was afraid to fly. The trip
brought back a lot of memories. And I
learned how to catch a flight, and how to
not miss a flight (like I did!).
Another big piece of my life is my faith.
I recently joined the church that, while I
was in Angola, I knew I wanted to be a
part of. I completed a four-year degree
program in Angola, a bachelor’s degree in
Christian Ministry from the New Orleans
Baptist Theological Seminary. My faith
and the church bring me great comfort.
I hope to someday work with troubled
youth, to help keep them on a right path
and share my Christian faith with them.
I’m just blessed to be free but I’m always
thinking about the guys I left behind. I
pray for them and I hope that everything
works out for them.
Summer 2015
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­­‑ George Toca, continued from page 1
George and Eric’s families fought for
over 30 years to overturn his wrongful
conviction.
George’s was one of the first cases IPNO
took on. After seven years of working
on the case and doing investigation
that George’s trial attorney never did,
IPNO got George’s case back into court
in 2010. Unfortunately, that was only
the beginning of the fight. Then-Trial
Judge Julian Parker granted the State’s
procedural objections, so we had to take
George’s fight to the appellate courts,
where we won and the trial court’s
decision against him was overturned.
Meanwhile, in 2012, the U.S. Supreme
Court, in Miller v. Alabama, held that
mandatory life sentences for children
convicted of homicide were unconstitu‑
tional. Since George was barely 17 years
old when the crime happened and he
was given a mandatory life sentence
(and since correcting his sentence after
30 years in prison may have seen him
released sooner than proving his wrongful
conviction), we filed a motion to correct
his illegal sentence and requested a
sentencing hearing. Again, procedural
issues got in the way of him seeing any
substantive justice. The State argued
that the Miller decision should not apply
retroactively to men like George who
were already serving the unconstitution‑
al mandatory life sentence. In a different
case, the Louisiana Supreme Court
agreed with the State’s argument and
held that Miller would not be applied
retroactively; and so, George’s case was
denied as well.
George continued his fight to the U.S.
Supreme Court. He filed an application
for a writ of certiorari, and the Court
granted it. George’s case was going to
be the case that determined whether
Miller would apply retroactively to the
hundreds of men nationwide serving
10 ipno exodus | www.ip-no.org
George Toca
life sentences they were given when they
were children.
George never gave up on fighting to
prove his innocence, but he also made
the best of his time in jail. He worked hard
every day to improve himself. George
entered prison as a high school dropout
who’d just been wrongly convicted,
but while in prison, he worked to get a
GED, associate degree, and bachelor’s
degree. He also worked for certificates
and diplomas from nearly every program
available to him at Angola. Each time
someone from IPNO visited George, we
would talk with him about his case, and
then spend time listening to him tell us
about his latest goals and achievements.
Regardless of his innocence, he was a
perfect example of how people change
and mature with time.
When George’s IPNO attorneys visited
him, to talk to him about his case in the
U.S. Supreme Court, he had just finished
his horticulture certificate. He had just
begun a new job caring for the grounds
of Angola, but he told us that he had
requested to be assigned to a job in the
greenhouse because he needed to stay
near the classrooms in order to begin
his next goal of getting a landscaping
certificate. George had mastered walking
a line between staying sane in prison,
while never losing sight of his freedom.
The next time IPNO visited with George, he was faced with the hardest
decision of his life: would he accept a plea offer from the State that
would guarantee his immediate freedom, but would end the fight in
the Supreme Court, and require him to take responsibility for a crime he
did not commit?
George was devastated and knew that
he was carrying the hopes of scores of his
fellow prisoners with him to the Supreme
Court. Be he also knew that he had to
put his family – his mother and sisters
– out of their misery and come home.
He also knew that Eric Batiste’s family
had lived for 30 years without Eric and
with the pain of knowing George was
wrongly imprisoned and that it was time
for them to be able to move on. With
a heavy heart, George agreed to plead
guilty to a crime he did not commit.
Having made that anguished decision,
on January 29, 2015, Judge Byron
Williams vacated his murder conviction
and George entered an Alford plea (in
which the accused is permitted to plead
guilty because it is in his best interests
but is not forced to admit his guilt)
to manslaughter and pled guilty to
attempted armed robbery. Later that
night, after over 30 years of visits that
ended with his family driving away from
Angola heartbroken, he was able to
walk out of the front gates of Angola
prison, get in the car with his family, and
drive home to New Orleans.
Within a few weeks of being released,
George had a job and was taking
the first steps toward starting his
own landscaping business. He is
reconnecting with his family, friends and
the community he was taken from 30
years ago. He writes about his new life
on the outside on page 9.
If you would like to help George, he has
an Amazon wish list at http://tinyurl.
com/GeorgeTwishlist.
George Toca, hugged by family after he walked out of Angola.
Summer 2015
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11
­­‑ Kia Stewart, continued from page 1
based on a factually inaccurate
anonymous tip. By the end of the
day, without canvassing the scene for
witnesses or doing anything else to
develop leads, police included Kia’s
photograph in an array for BJ’s distraught
friend to identify. This single eyewitness
identification was the only evidence
against Kia.
At the time of his arrest, Kia was just
17 years old. He was forced to suffer
through the hells of Hurricane Katrina
and its aftermath from the Orleans
Parish Prison, where – he believed – he
would be left to drown in a cell. Even
after being belatedly evacuated, he
waited for months without an attorney
and with no way to contact his family.
In 2006, the Tulane University Law Clinic
accepted an appointment to represent
Kia on his second degree murder
charge. Though the Clinic students and
attorneys were dedicated to Kia’s case,
they were unable to locate witnesses
in post-Katrina New Orleans. Four
years after his arrest, Kia was wrongly
convicted after a short trial at which the
State presented one eyewitness.
Shortly after his conviction, the Clinic
began to uncover some of the many
witnesses who would eventually prove
his innocence. Unfortunately, despite the
Clinic filing several Motions for New Trial
based on this evidence, Kia’s conviction
became final and he was sent to the
Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola,
where he was sent to work in the fields.
IPNO began work on Kia’s case in 2013.
In total, through vigorous investigation,
we discovered at least 18 witnesses
who either saw the crime and saw that
Kia was not the shooter, heard the true
perpetrator confess to the crime or who
proved Kia’s alibi. After bringing the
case to the District Attorney’s office and
doing a joint review of the evidence,
12 ipno exodus | www.ip-no.org
Kia Stewart and mother Terry Stewart
IPNO and the Orleans Parish District
Attorney’s Office entered into a series of
joint stipulations concerning the breadth
of this new evidence. On April 13, 2015,
Judge Darryl Derbigny reviewed these
stipulations and ordered that Kia’s
conviction be vacated and that he be
immediately released from custody. The
District Attorney’s Office immediately
agreed to dismiss all charges against Kia
for this crime.
Kia left the court house surrounded by
members of his loyal and loving family
and friends, as well as IPNO staff. Kia
celebrated his exoneration with chicken
salad, per his request. Since his release,
Kia has been getting in touch with old
friends and spending time with his
family – especially his little nieces and
nephews. He is so glad he gets to be
“Uncle Kia” now. Kia has also had the
opportunity to travel to Washington,
D.C. and to speak with a variety of
groups concerning his case. He is
working hard to make up for spending
the first 10 years of his adult life in prison
for a crime he did not commit.
With help from Café Reconcile and its
partners and Operation Spark, Kia is already
building a good array of marketable skills
and has begun working his first jobs.
If you would like to help Kia get back
on his feet, you can send money to him
through this fundraising page: www.
gofundme.com/s4mz4m2tw or check
out his Amazon wish list at http://tinyurl.
com/KiaSWishlist.
Young
Professionals
this year, IPNO created a Young Professionals
Committee Earlier
Committee (YPC) to help fundraise and raise
Launched
awareness.
The committee is comprised of emerging leaders who are passionate about the
mission of IPNO and are willing to devote time and energy to further the organization’s
critical work through grassroots efforts.
IPNO is honored to
announce the inaugural
Young Professionals
Committee members:
Rachael Bauer, Cynthia Browne, Ashley Crawford,
Royce Duplessis, Cat Forrester, Kyle J. Jones,
Elizabeth Kiefer, Charlie King, Whitney Magendie,
Melanie, Anna Singleton, Angela Tucker, Elizabeth Williams.
In April, the committee held its first YPC Happy Hour for IPNO at the Rusty Nail –
raising nearly $1,000 and introducing our work to dozens of new people.
To learn about future events, be sure to follow us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/IPNOLA
Amazon.com Helps You Support IPNO
Amazon.com enables our supporters to help IPNO and our clients simply by shopping
– and you have already raised thousands of dollars for our work and provided
thousands of dollars’ worth of necessities to our freed clients. Here’s a summary of
Amazon tools you can use to help us and our clients.
Every time you visit
http://ip-no.org/
make-a-difference
and click through the
Amazon link to shop
on Amazon, IPNO gets $$. The more
you buy, the more $$ we get – up to
15 percent of your purchase!
When you shop with
Amazon Smile, 0.5% of
your purchase is donated
back to IPNO. Simply go
to smile.amazon.com,
choose “Innocence Project New Orleans”
and every time you shop on the site
IPNO will receive 0.5% of your purchase.
Which option should you choose?
It’s up to you. The affiliate program takes more of your time because you have to
get into it by going through our Web site every time, but gives us a much larger
donation. With Smile, once you have selected us as your charity you are done and
we will get 0.5% of every purchase.
IPNO sets up Amazon wishlists to enable people
to donate tangible things to our freed clients to
help them get on their feet.
We recently set up lists for: Kia Stewart: http://tinyurl.com/KiaSWishlist
George Toca: http://tinyurl.com/GeorgeTwishlist
For additional lists, visit: http://ip-no.org/ make-a-difference
Summer 2015
| ipno exodus
13
IPNO thanks its recent donors, especially those who have given $250+
and those who give monthly:
INDIVIDUALS
Alfredo Kemm
Andy Rittenberg & Amy Lit
Ani DiFranco
Anonymous
Ariel White
Arthur & Marcia
Waterman
Barbara & Donald Shack
Ben LaBranche
Bishop Joe Morris Doss
Brian Robbins
Caitlyn Silhan
Carol Strasburger
in memory of Larry
Strasburger
Denny LeBouef
Emily Ratner
Erin Bannister
George & Milly Denegre
George Pelecanos
H. Bruce and Jacqueline
Shreves
Hamilton Simons-Jones &
Annette Hollowell
Helena Blundell
Henry & Suzanne Bass
in memory of Larry
Strasburger
Hon. Fredericka Wicker
J. Gordon Cooney
Jack & Kristalina Taylor
Jacob Pitts
Jancy Hoeffel & Steve
Singer
Jane Clarke
Jeffrey Alexander
Jimmy Robertson & Linda Thompson
John & Elizabeth Futrell
John Dias
John Sullivan
John Watson
Joseph Olivier
Joseph Pappalardo
Julia & Chris Spear
Julia Romano
Julie & Seth Harris
Julie Ferris
Kerry Cuccia
Kim & George Haddow
Kim M. Boyle
Kristen Terry
Lauren McCulloch
Lee Cline
Leslie Langhetee
Leslie Lowe
Lynne Burkart
M. Lizabeth Talbott &
Galen Brown
Mallory McDuff
Margaret & Jonathan
Lewis
Mary Zervigon
Meg Fidler
Michael Avery
Michael Zeneg
Michael Harris
Michelle Moore Smith
Michelle Rutherford
Monique Lafontaine
Mr. & Mrs. Louis Glade
Mr. Herschel Richard, Jr. &
Rev. Mary Richard
Nandi F. Campbell
Noelie Alito
Olivia Pritchard
Peter Coyote
Peter Neufeld
Rob Mink
Rosemary Ryan
S. William & Elizabeth
Livingston
Sara Johnson
Scott Clugstone
Scott Norris
Sean Cummings
Simone Levine & Will Harrell
Stacey Wexler
Stephanie Green
Stephen Bright &
Charlotta Norby
Steve Milliken
Timothy A. Meche, Esq.
Timothy Crowley
Tom Klotz
Virginia & Carl Schlueter
F O U N D AT I O N S & O R G A N I Z AT I O N S
Baptist Community
Ministries
Department of Justice:
Bureau of Justice
Assistance
Department of Justice:
National Institute of
Justice
Frank & Denise
Quattrone Foundation
Gulf Coast Bank
JusticeAid
Keller Family
Foundation
Kendall Vick Public Law
Foundation
Law Offices of Robert
Toale
Lorenzi & Barnatt, L.L.P.
Louisiana Bar
Foundation
Louisiana Public
Defender Board
NOLA Investigates
14 ipno exodus | www.ip-no.org
Pizza Delicious
Rittenberg Family
Foundation
Rockefeller Family Fund
The Rusty Nail
Sanderson Farms
Southern Poverty Law
Center
St. Vincent de Paul |
Catholic Charities
Wise Carter
On May 15 th , nearly 300 guests joined Innocence Project New Orleans
in honoring our innocent clients and their loved ones and recognizing
14 years of freeing innocent prisoners, exposing injustice and
preventing wrongful convictions.
Darrin
Hill and
Family
Emily Maw and City
Councilmember
Jason Williams
Hon. Calvin Johnson
Reginald Adams and
his family
Earl Truvia, Michael Williams
and Jerome Morgan
Clients’ loved ones onstage
Betty Anne
Waters,
Guest
Speaker
— LEADER SPONSORS —
— SUSTAINER SPONSORS —
Fishman Haygood | Jason Rogers Williams & Associates
Law Office of Stephen J. Haedicke | NeunerPate | The Quarter Stitch
I N - K I N D S P O N S O R S ASAP Printing & Digital Imaging
|
Jacques-Imos
Summer 2015
|
Nine Design
| ipno exodus
15
4051 Ulloa Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
NEW ORLEANS LA
PERMIT NO. 392
PAID
NONPROFIT ORG
U.S. POSTAGE
535 candles were lit at the 14 th Anniversary Gala – one for each year our innocent clients spent behind wrongly incarcerated.