:00:00. > :00:08.Now on BBC News it is time for Our World.
:00:09. > :00:17.It was a shocking crime that happened back in 1992. A newly
:00:18. > :00:21.engaged British woman, eight to arrest, murdered in the streets of
:00:22. > :00:28.New Orleans. But what followed was an astonishing miscarriage of
:00:29. > :00:31.justice. There are not any other cases I know when somebody has been
:00:32. > :00:38.committed a crime that somebody has already been convicted of. And we
:00:39. > :00:41.had all of the evidence from the witnesses that only one person could
:00:42. > :00:45.have committed that crime. To people who did not know each other were
:00:46. > :00:51.both in prison for killing the woman. Who really committed the
:00:52. > :00:55.crime and why was the other forgotten behind bars. The fact that
:00:56. > :01:00.this was wrongly convicted did not sit with me well at all. Hackwood
:01:01. > :01:25.the American justice system have got it so wrong -- how could?
:01:26. > :01:35.Began on the 14th of April 1992. Julie and her boyfriend were walking
:01:36. > :01:39.back to their hotel in the quiet streets of this city's famous French
:01:40. > :01:48.Quarter. Unknown to them a crime spree had been taking place. He said
:01:49. > :01:59.it give me everything you have got, I'm going to kill you. I heard shots
:02:00. > :02:06.ring out and I said they have got somebody. And he had to. The gunmen
:02:07. > :02:12.had confronted the tourists leaving truly dead on the road. It was left
:02:13. > :02:16.to do the detective to try and piece together what had happened. Asuna
:02:17. > :02:19.SEK Matty jumped out pointed a gun at them and demanded money or
:02:20. > :02:28.whatever. They did not understand that that was a robbery and they
:02:29. > :02:37.were trying to work out what was happening -- as soon as he got out
:02:38. > :02:40.he jumped out. Then he drove his car and got away. It hit the headlines
:02:41. > :02:45.here in New Orleans but back in the UK it was a page news as well. One
:02:46. > :02:52.newspaper offered a huge reward to try and catch the killer. The
:02:53. > :02:57.detective said that that kind of money led to a deluge of calls from
:02:58. > :03:02.the public. Finally the police received one that might be of
:03:03. > :03:09.interest. At the tip came in and the caller remained anonymous and
:03:10. > :03:15.identified three guys. Because it was so soon after the murder and the
:03:16. > :03:18.way they were describing certain things they thought that they may
:03:19. > :03:24.have been involved with the murder. That was one leader we checked out
:03:25. > :03:32.pretty hard. Amongst those names was Robert Jones. Police decided to
:03:33. > :03:36.act. We just heard noise everywhere and people demanding that we open up
:03:37. > :03:41.the door. In the middle of the night they surrounded Robert's home. We
:03:42. > :03:44.watch them with their big guns in they made everybody get on the
:03:45. > :03:52.floor. Even the kids. It was total chaos. You know we were tried at
:03:53. > :03:58.what was going on. It is over and done with the Robert Jones. The next
:03:59. > :04:02.thing that came to knew is that she was watching Robert being marched to
:04:03. > :04:12.jail accused of murder. It was horrible. Everybody was in tears and
:04:13. > :04:17.crying and in disbelief because we never would have thought that nobody
:04:18. > :04:27.would come here and arrest Robert the -- for murder. Was there a
:04:28. > :04:37.moment that they thought may be Robert had done something wrong?
:04:38. > :04:40.Know I did not. -- no. What made you think that? Because of the type of
:04:41. > :04:45.person he was. He would not hurt anyone. Robert Jones had previously
:04:46. > :04:49.been suspected of drug offences though he never had a conviction.
:04:50. > :04:52.Some in the UK media thought they had got their man. They were
:04:53. > :05:02.triumphant claiming credit for the arrest. But detectives had huge
:05:03. > :05:05.doubts. The media knew that we arrested him but I thought the
:05:06. > :05:11.headlines got a little overblown because from our perspective, the
:05:12. > :05:17.task force guys, we knew there was a lot more work to do. We had a hard
:05:18. > :05:22.time tying him back to the scene. The murder of Julie Stott was part
:05:23. > :05:30.of a crime scene was happening here. Robberies rape and killing. In
:05:31. > :05:33.each case there was a certain descriptions of the card was used
:05:34. > :05:36.and the attacker. An early indication of Rob Jones is not that
:05:37. > :05:43.man is an after his arrest, the crime spree continued. Detectors
:05:44. > :05:46.felt they finally got a real way through when they found a car to
:05:47. > :05:50.match the very distinctive description. It do not belong to
:05:51. > :05:58.Robert Jones but to Lester Jones who is no relation. When he was
:05:59. > :06:03.arrested, the crime spree did and. -- end. He was found possession of
:06:04. > :06:08.the jewellery is in the robberies and rape and one other major piece
:06:09. > :06:13.of evidence. With found a murder weapon and had the gun examined. The
:06:14. > :06:19.ballistic sky was able to tie the gun back to him. Arab opinion was
:06:20. > :06:22.that we can tie Leicester to everything and we did not tie Robert
:06:23. > :06:29.to anything. And what about tying the two of them together? We tried
:06:30. > :06:33.that but we could not. There was no links. They were 12 years apart in
:06:34. > :06:37.age to that was nothing to tie them together. Lester Jones was convicted
:06:38. > :06:48.of Julie Stott's murder and sent to jail. But Robert Jones was never
:06:49. > :06:53.released. In fact, four years after he was first arrested in a trial
:06:54. > :06:58.that lasted less than ten hours, astonishing as it sounds, Robert
:06:59. > :07:04.Jones was also sent to prison for crimes in the same spree that Lester
:07:05. > :07:12.Jones had already been convicted of, rape, armed robbery and the
:07:13. > :07:22.killing of Julie Stott. This is a pre- call from Robert. An inmate of
:07:23. > :07:26.the Louisiana penitentiary. The first time we spoke to Robert was on
:07:27. > :07:33.the phone since that fateful day in the courthouse, he had been in
:07:34. > :07:36.Louisiana's prison. Do you remember the moment that the verdict was
:07:37. > :07:38.announced and how you felt at that moment? I could not put it in
:07:39. > :07:59.words. That is amazing. When did he do
:08:00. > :08:07.this? This was sometime beginning of last year. Robert's daughter was
:08:08. > :08:11.born eight months after he went to jail. She doesn't have any
:08:12. > :08:17.photographs of him so he painted her a picture from prison. Have there
:08:18. > :08:23.been particular moments when you wish he was here right now? There
:08:24. > :08:28.has been a lot of them. From when I was younger. I'm 22 years old now
:08:29. > :08:34.and I'm still young but it is like that I see my friends and they have
:08:35. > :08:38.their mother and a father. They can ride bikes and go out to eat and
:08:39. > :08:43.spend time with them. I never really had him. I had him but I did not
:08:44. > :08:48.have him. We always kept a relationship going and we would talk
:08:49. > :08:53.on the phone, but you are here but you are not here. So I did not
:08:54. > :08:57.really know how to feel. Why don't they let him come home? It has been
:08:58. > :09:05.all this time. Every year I'm thinking he will be home this year.
:09:06. > :09:10.But now I have graduated high school and now I'm about to graduate
:09:11. > :09:15.college but I still need my father. So why did he end up in prison and
:09:16. > :09:21.we wanted to find the people who put him in there. We have been trying to
:09:22. > :09:24.locate Robert's lawyer who has been accused of incompetence during the
:09:25. > :09:30.trial but he never returned our calls. After several minutes of his
:09:31. > :09:38.doorstep I noticed movement inside the car. Excuse me I'm looking for
:09:39. > :09:47.Mr Atkins. It showed that he failed to grasp that another man had been
:09:48. > :09:55.already convicted of the crime is -- convicted in the same spree. I did
:09:56. > :09:58.represent him and did not get a free. What people are on the site
:09:59. > :10:04.criticising me saying you could have done this and that, they did not
:10:05. > :10:08.spend the time and they could've gone down there and represented
:10:09. > :10:11.him. You don't feel any responsibility to him being in
:10:12. > :10:17.jail? I did the best I could represent an Robert Jones at the
:10:18. > :10:19.time. And I think he got the best representation he could have
:10:20. > :10:34.gotten. Lawyers from the charity Project New
:10:35. > :10:38.Orleans say it wasn't just mistakes by his lawyer that meant Robert went
:10:39. > :10:43.to prison but something more sinister. There aren't any other
:10:44. > :10:46.cases I know where someone has been convicted of a crime that someone
:10:47. > :10:51.else has already been convicted of and where all the evidence from the
:10:52. > :10:55.witnesses at the scene for just one person only committed that crime. It
:10:56. > :11:00.was a pretty extraordinary circumstance. The very frustrating
:11:01. > :11:03.thing about Robert's case is that all of the people who are
:11:04. > :11:09.prosecuting it in the first instance in the early 1990s turned a blind
:11:10. > :11:13.eye to the fact that it was Lester Jones who had committed the crime
:11:14. > :11:17.and even more then turned a blind eye, deliberately but held that
:11:18. > :11:20.evidence from the jury and continued to prosecute Robert because they
:11:21. > :11:25.could come about as they should have but because they could. When you
:11:26. > :11:27.look at Robert's case it does involve some of the clearest
:11:28. > :11:33.indications of innocence but also wrongdoing on the half of
:11:34. > :11:37.prosecutors that I've seen in any case. It has now been shown state
:11:38. > :11:40.prosecutors withheld important evidence at Robert Jones' trial.
:11:41. > :11:46.Some of that evidence is still coming to light now. They also told
:11:47. > :11:48.a jury that Robert Jones and Lester Jones were friends even though
:11:49. > :11:55.detectives had said that wasn't true. Inside the grand new Orleans
:11:56. > :12:02.courthouse, Wi Calvin Johnson, the judge who presided over Robert 's
:12:03. > :12:06.trial -- we met. Robert Jones, at the very least, in terms of how his
:12:07. > :12:14.trial played out in front of me, I can believe the way Plato based on
:12:15. > :12:20.what we could do, that it played out in a fairway -- played out. So I
:12:21. > :12:25.don't... It... The fact that he was wrongly convicted and is in jail for
:12:26. > :12:31.something that he didn't do is not on me. He told us state prosecutors
:12:32. > :12:34.skewed evidence to prevent a compelling case framing Robert
:12:35. > :12:40.Jones. But why? Judge Johnson said at the time the state steam to beat
:12:41. > :12:45.-- seem to be trying to put a behind bars as many young black men as
:12:46. > :12:48.possible. That was the driving thing in this town in this area for
:12:49. > :12:55.decades before Robert Jones and since Robert Jones. It has changed
:12:56. > :12:59.some but not totally changed. In that how we operate the criminal
:13:00. > :13:04.justice system in Louisiana, or for that matter how we operate that
:13:05. > :13:09.criminal justice system across the South, where race is such an issue,
:13:10. > :13:13.you see the same things play out. What does it say that he's still, 23
:13:14. > :13:19.years after he was arrested, he's still in prison? What does that say
:13:20. > :13:30.about how much he is valued? Well, he isn't. And the way we look at the
:13:31. > :13:32.Robert Jones case, if he didn't do this, he did something else and
:13:33. > :13:39.therefore got away with doing something else, and therefore his
:13:40. > :13:41.punishment is not justified for this particular act, it's justified for
:13:42. > :13:46.other things he did or would have done down the road. An extraordinary
:13:47. > :13:49.admission, to say black men were being put away because the
:13:50. > :13:53.authorities felt they had probably done something to deserve prison,
:13:54. > :13:58.even if that wasn't the crime at hand. Attila to African-Americans
:13:59. > :14:02.living in New Orleans and they won't be the slightest surprised and it is
:14:03. > :14:06.hard to prove definitively. What is clear is that for many years, what
:14:07. > :14:11.ever the reason, there was something badly wrong with the justice system
:14:12. > :14:14.in this city. This is not the only case. There have been other cases
:14:15. > :14:19.where prosecutors either intentionally or negligently
:14:20. > :14:24.withheld evidence. So I don't think there is a question about that. The
:14:25. > :14:29.best I can do is, let's move forward. From this point, from the
:14:30. > :14:32.moment I took office, what we said we were going to do is, those things
:14:33. > :14:36.are not going to happen. We are going to do the very best we can to
:14:37. > :14:41.see to it that every person who comes into the justice system in New
:14:42. > :14:45.Orleans parish is treated fairly. But that didn't stop the district
:14:46. > :14:51.attorney fighting against any court ruling that Robert Jones' trial was
:14:52. > :14:55.unfair. In summer 2015, the Supreme Court finally dismissed the state's
:14:56. > :15:03.appeals, saying Robert had not had a fair trial. And in November, 23
:15:04. > :15:09.years and seven months after he was first arrested, members of Robert's
:15:10. > :15:10.family waited outside New Orleans parish jail for him finally to be
:15:11. > :15:50.released. CHEERING. It'll be all right. What was
:15:51. > :15:55.yesterday like, walking out? It was wonderful. It's a beautiful
:15:56. > :16:02.feeling. It was something I always talk about actual a couldn't have
:16:03. > :16:05.dreamed that feeling. -- it was something I always... Actually I
:16:06. > :16:12.couldn't have dreamed that feeling. It was beautiful up quite what do
:16:13. > :16:17.you remember -- beautiful. What do you remember yesterday? This burden
:16:18. > :16:22.of being incarcerated all those years was lifted. It was like I
:16:23. > :16:26.wanted to fly. If you tried to explain what it is like to be in
:16:27. > :16:30.prison for something that you weren't guilty of, how can you
:16:31. > :16:35.explain to others what that felt like? A complete nightmare
:16:36. > :16:45.actually. A real nightmare. It was... You can't find a word in the
:16:46. > :16:48.dictionary to describe the cruelty that is in someone's mind in dealing
:16:49. > :16:59.with something like that. Prison life is just rough, you know? It is
:17:00. > :17:07.a deeper injustice when you're in innocent -- innocent. How did you
:17:08. > :17:12.get through it? My faith in God. And I developed a system of just
:17:13. > :17:17.grabbing onto the positive things that happened in my life through the
:17:18. > :17:21.course of the years. It is a true saying, the truth will set you free
:17:22. > :17:26.one day when you can find it and that was the problem for us. As well
:17:27. > :17:34.as for me, finding the truth. The truth was buried so deep. But in
:17:35. > :17:38.spite of all that has come to light since his conviction, Robert is not
:17:39. > :17:44.in the clear yet. The district attorney is still insisting he faces
:17:45. > :17:48.a retrial. If the defendant does not receive a fair trial, then he is
:17:49. > :17:54.entitled to have any conviction that may have resulted from that vacated
:17:55. > :18:01.and then we proceed to give him a fair trial. I think sometimes people
:18:02. > :18:08.equate the fact that someone did not receive a fair trial with the fact
:18:09. > :18:12.that the defendant may be innocent. But Robert's lawyers feel on the
:18:13. > :18:15.basis of what we know today, the district attorney should dismiss his
:18:16. > :18:20.case. One that should never have gone to trial in the first place.
:18:21. > :18:25.The evidence that was withheld is not some evidence about fairness. It
:18:26. > :18:30.is not a little bit of evidence that might tip the balance. It was
:18:31. > :18:34.evidence that Lester Jones did the crime. It is not some technicality
:18:35. > :18:37.that means he didn't get a fair trial. The district attorney's
:18:38. > :18:44.office over several attorneys and several years withheld key evidence
:18:45. > :18:47.from Robert Jones' defence. Robert Jones now, having to defend himself
:18:48. > :18:54.against charges of a crime that happened when tea four years ago, it
:18:55. > :19:00.will underlay cripple his defence because the state refused to comply
:19:01. > :19:03.with the Constitution when they tried him the first time. Robert
:19:04. > :19:06.says he is determined to carry on the fight to officially clear his
:19:07. > :19:14.name and get justice. Say for instance there is a guy living in a
:19:15. > :19:18.bad neighbourhood and pulled out of pistol until some guy and you look
:19:19. > :19:25.at him as a cold blooded murderer -- killed some guy. But you have a
:19:26. > :19:29.district attorney who would withhold crucial evidence from a guy, take
:19:30. > :19:35.his life, sent him to prison, and most guys that die in prison or
:19:36. > :19:38.innocent people. What's the difference? The downside is I
:19:39. > :20:03.watched a lot of guys die in prison. A lot. I watched a lot of
:20:04. > :20:17.guys die in prison. A lot of them were my good friends, also. And
:20:18. > :20:24.Robert counted 39 prisoners he knew in his 23 years in prison who he was
:20:25. > :20:33.convinced were innocent and who died behind bars. How many Robert Jones
:20:34. > :20:44.like people do you think are in prison? In Louisiana and the South,
:20:45. > :20:48.our justice system is replete with them, replete with individuals who
:20:49. > :20:55.because of how the justice system was operated over the last decades,
:20:56. > :21:02.pick a number, we have ended up with people who were wrongly prosecuted,
:21:03. > :21:06.convicted, who had mountains of evidence not provided which could
:21:07. > :21:22.have exonerated them. We ended up with this in America. My case is
:21:23. > :21:29.given a lot of guys hope because of the fact that they know I'm going to
:21:30. > :21:36.stand up and fight to the end. And it gives them hope. It gives them an
:21:37. > :21:43.opportunity to create a better system for them. That is another
:21:44. > :21:56.avid thing that actually gives me strength, to fight for a lot of
:21:57. > :22:01.those guys also. That his mushroom with pesto. Remarkably, Robert says
:22:02. > :22:06.in spite of his 23 years in prison for what he didn't do, he's not
:22:07. > :22:12.bitter or angry. But he does justice and assurances other people won't go
:22:13. > :22:19.through what he did. But that is a tall order and Robert still has to
:22:20. > :22:22.clear his own name in a retrial. Having dissected this particular
:22:23. > :22:27.wrongful conviction and having got a sense of what he took away from
:22:28. > :22:32.Robert Jones, it is shocking to think this is being played out so
:22:33. > :22:42.many more times, and in cases where this is -- innocence is not so
:22:43. > :23:09.obvious, the truth is buried even deeper.
:23:10. > :23:15.The weekend is upon us and the weather is not looking too bad. Rein
:23:16. > :23:16.in the forecast but as far