An American Injustice Our World

Now on BBC News it is time for Our World.

It was a shocking crime that happened back in 1992. A newly

engaged British woman, eight to arrest, murdered in the streets of

New Orleans. But what followed was an astonishing miscarriage of

justice. There are not any other cases I know when somebody has been

committed a crime that somebody has already been convicted of. And we

had all of the evidence from the witnesses that only one person could

have committed that crime. To people who did not know each other were

both in prison for killing the woman. Who really committed the

crime and why was the other forgotten behind bars. The fact that

this was wrongly convicted did not sit with me well at all. Hackwood

the American justice system have got it so wrong -- how could?

Began on the 14th of April 1992. Julie and her boyfriend were walking

back to their hotel in the quiet streets of this city's famous French

Quarter. Unknown to them a crime spree had been taking place. He said

it give me everything you have got, I'm going to kill you. I heard shots

ring out and I said they have got somebody. And he had to. The gunmen

had confronted the tourists leaving truly dead on the road. It was left

to do the detective to try and piece together what had happened. Asuna

SEK Matty jumped out pointed a gun at them and demanded money or

whatever. They did not understand that that was a robbery and they

were trying to work out what was happening -- as soon as he got out

he jumped out. Then he drove his car and got away. It hit the headlines

here in New Orleans but back in the UK it was a page news as well. One

newspaper offered a huge reward to try and catch the killer. The

detective said that that kind of money led to a deluge of calls from

the public. Finally the police received one that might be of

interest. At the tip came in and the caller remained anonymous and

identified three guys. Because it was so soon after the murder and the

way they were describing certain things they thought that they may

have been involved with the murder. That was one leader we checked out

pretty hard. Amongst those names was Robert Jones. Police decided to

act. We just heard noise everywhere and people demanding that we open up

the door. In the middle of the night they surrounded Robert's home. We

watch them with their big guns in they made everybody get on the

floor. Even the kids. It was total chaos. You know we were tried at

what was going on. It is over and done with the Robert Jones. The next

thing that came to knew is that she was watching Robert being marched to

jail accused of murder. It was horrible. Everybody was in tears and

crying and in disbelief because we never would have thought that nobody

would come here and arrest Robert the -- for murder. Was there a

moment that they thought may be Robert had done something wrong?

Know I did not. -- no. What made you think that? Because of the type of

person he was. He would not hurt anyone. Robert Jones had previously

been suspected of drug offences though he never had a conviction.

Some in the UK media thought they had got their man. They were

triumphant claiming credit for the arrest. But detectives had huge

doubts. The media knew that we arrested him but I thought the

headlines got a little overblown because from our perspective, the

task force guys, we knew there was a lot more work to do. We had a hard

time tying him back to the scene. The murder of Julie Stott was part

of a crime scene was happening here. Robberies rape and killing. In

each case there was a certain descriptions of the card was used

and the attacker. An early indication of Rob Jones is not that

man is an after his arrest, the crime spree continued. Detectors

felt they finally got a real way through when they found a car to

match the very distinctive description. It do not belong to

Robert Jones but to Lester Jones who is no relation. When he was

arrested, the crime spree did and. -- end. He was found possession of

the jewellery is in the robberies and rape and one other major piece

of evidence. With found a murder weapon and had the gun examined. The

ballistic sky was able to tie the gun back to him. Arab opinion was

that we can tie Leicester to everything and we did not tie Robert

to anything. And what about tying the two of them together? We tried

that but we could not. There was no links. They were 12 years apart in

age to that was nothing to tie them together. Lester Jones was convicted

of Julie Stott's murder and sent to jail. But Robert Jones was never

released. In fact, four years after he was first arrested in a trial

that lasted less than ten hours, astonishing as it sounds, Robert

Jones was also sent to prison for crimes in the same spree that Lester

Jones had already been convicted of, rape, armed robbery and the

killing of Julie Stott. This is a pre- call from Robert. An inmate of

the Louisiana penitentiary. The first time we spoke to Robert was on

the phone since that fateful day in the courthouse, he had been in

Louisiana's prison. Do you remember the moment that the verdict was

announced and how you felt at that moment? I could not put it in

words. That is amazing. When did he do

this? This was sometime beginning of last year. Robert's daughter was

born eight months after he went to jail. She doesn't have any

photographs of him so he painted her a picture from prison. Have there

been particular moments when you wish he was here right now? There

has been a lot of them. From when I was younger. I'm 22 years old now

and I'm still young but it is like that I see my friends and they have

their mother and a father. They can ride bikes and go out to eat and

spend time with them. I never really had him. I had him but I did not

have him. We always kept a relationship going and we would talk

on the phone, but you are here but you are not here. So I did not

really know how to feel. Why don't they let him come home? It has been

all this time. Every year I'm thinking he will be home this year.

But now I have graduated high school and now I'm about to graduate

college but I still need my father. So why did he end up in prison and

we wanted to find the people who put him in there. We have been trying to

locate Robert's lawyer who has been accused of incompetence during the

trial but he never returned our calls. After several minutes of his

doorstep I noticed movement inside the car. Excuse me I'm looking for

Mr Atkins. It showed that he failed to grasp that another man had been

already convicted of the crime is -- convicted in the same spree. I did

represent him and did not get a free. What people are on the site

criticising me saying you could have done this and that, they did not

spend the time and they could've gone down there and represented

him. You don't feel any responsibility to him being in

jail? I did the best I could represent an Robert Jones at the

time. And I think he got the best representation he could have

gotten. Lawyers from the charity Project New

Orleans say it wasn't just mistakes by his lawyer that meant Robert went

to prison but something more sinister. There aren't any other

cases I know where someone has been convicted of a crime that someone

else has already been convicted of and where all the evidence from the

witnesses at the scene for just one person only committed that crime. It

was a pretty extraordinary circumstance. The very frustrating

thing about Robert's case is that all of the people who are

prosecuting it in the first instance in the early 1990s turned a blind

eye to the fact that it was Lester Jones who had committed the crime

and even more then turned a blind eye, deliberately but held that

evidence from the jury and continued to prosecute Robert because they

could come about as they should have but because they could. When you

look at Robert's case it does involve some of the clearest

indications of innocence but also wrongdoing on the half of

prosecutors that I've seen in any case. It has now been shown state

prosecutors withheld important evidence at Robert Jones' trial.

Some of that evidence is still coming to light now. They also told

a jury that Robert Jones and Lester Jones were friends even though

detectives had said that wasn't true. Inside the grand new Orleans

courthouse, Wi Calvin Johnson, the judge who presided over Robert 's

trial -- we met. Robert Jones, at the very least, in terms of how his

trial played out in front of me, I can believe the way Plato based on

what we could do, that it played out in a fairway -- played out. So I

don't... It... The fact that he was wrongly convicted and is in jail for

something that he didn't do is not on me. He told us state prosecutors

skewed evidence to prevent a compelling case framing Robert

Jones. But why? Judge Johnson said at the time the state steam to beat

-- seem to be trying to put a behind bars as many young black men as

possible. That was the driving thing in this town in this area for

decades before Robert Jones and since Robert Jones. It has changed

some but not totally changed. In that how we operate the criminal

justice system in Louisiana, or for that matter how we operate that

criminal justice system across the South, where race is such an issue,

you see the same things play out. What does it say that he's still, 23

years after he was arrested, he's still in prison? What does that say

about how much he is valued? Well, he isn't. And the way we look at the

Robert Jones case, if he didn't do this, he did something else and

therefore got away with doing something else, and therefore his

punishment is not justified for this particular act, it's justified for

other things he did or would have done down the road. An extraordinary

admission, to say black men were being put away because the

authorities felt they had probably done something to deserve prison,

even if that wasn't the crime at hand. Attila to African-Americans

living in New Orleans and they won't be the slightest surprised and it is

hard to prove definitively. What is clear is that for many years, what

ever the reason, there was something badly wrong with the justice system

in this city. This is not the only case. There have been other cases

where prosecutors either intentionally or negligently

withheld evidence. So I don't think there is a question about that. The

best I can do is, let's move forward. From this point, from the

moment I took office, what we said we were going to do is, those things

are not going to happen. We are going to do the very best we can to

see to it that every person who comes into the justice system in New

Orleans parish is treated fairly. But that didn't stop the district

attorney fighting against any court ruling that Robert Jones' trial was

unfair. In summer 2015, the Supreme Court finally dismissed the state's

appeals, saying Robert had not had a fair trial. And in November, 23

years and seven months after he was first arrested, members of Robert's

family waited outside New Orleans parish jail for him finally to be

released. CHEERING. It'll be all right. What was

yesterday like, walking out? It was wonderful. It's a beautiful

feeling. It was something I always talk about actual a couldn't have

dreamed that feeling. -- it was something I always... Actually I

couldn't have dreamed that feeling. It was beautiful up quite what do

you remember -- beautiful. What do you remember yesterday? This burden

of being incarcerated all those years was lifted. It was like I

wanted to fly. If you tried to explain what it is like to be in

prison for something that you weren't guilty of, how can you

explain to others what that felt like? A complete nightmare

actually. A real nightmare. It was... You can't find a word in the

dictionary to describe the cruelty that is in someone's mind in dealing

with something like that. Prison life is just rough, you know? It is

a deeper injustice when you're in innocent -- innocent. How did you

get through it? My faith in God. And I developed a system of just

grabbing onto the positive things that happened in my life through the

course of the years. It is a true saying, the truth will set you free

one day when you can find it and that was the problem for us. As well

as for me, finding the truth. The truth was buried so deep. But in

spite of all that has come to light since his conviction, Robert is not

in the clear yet. The district attorney is still insisting he faces

a retrial. If the defendant does not receive a fair trial, then he is

entitled to have any conviction that may have resulted from that vacated

and then we proceed to give him a fair trial. I think sometimes people

equate the fact that someone did not receive a fair trial with the fact

that the defendant may be innocent. But Robert's lawyers feel on the

basis of what we know today, the district attorney should dismiss his

case. One that should never have gone to trial in the first place.

The evidence that was withheld is not some evidence about fairness. It

is not a little bit of evidence that might tip the balance. It was

evidence that Lester Jones did the crime. It is not some technicality

that means he didn't get a fair trial. The district attorney's

office over several attorneys and several years withheld key evidence

from Robert Jones' defence. Robert Jones now, having to defend himself

against charges of a crime that happened when tea four years ago, it

will underlay cripple his defence because the state refused to comply

with the Constitution when they tried him the first time. Robert

says he is determined to carry on the fight to officially clear his

name and get justice. Say for instance there is a guy living in a

bad neighbourhood and pulled out of pistol until some guy and you look

at him as a cold blooded murderer -- killed some guy. But you have a

district attorney who would withhold crucial evidence from a guy, take

his life, sent him to prison, and most guys that die in prison or

innocent people. What's the difference? The downside is I

watched a lot of guys die in prison. A lot. I watched a lot of

guys die in prison. A lot of them were my good friends, also. And

Robert counted 39 prisoners he knew in his 23 years in prison who he was

convinced were innocent and who died behind bars. How many Robert Jones

like people do you think are in prison? In Louisiana and the South,

our justice system is replete with them, replete with individuals who

because of how the justice system was operated over the last decades,

pick a number, we have ended up with people who were wrongly prosecuted,

convicted, who had mountains of evidence not provided which could

have exonerated them. We ended up with this in America. My case is

given a lot of guys hope because of the fact that they know I'm going to

stand up and fight to the end. And it gives them hope. It gives them an

opportunity to create a better system for them. That is another

avid thing that actually gives me strength, to fight for a lot of

those guys also. That his mushroom with pesto. Remarkably, Robert says

in spite of his 23 years in prison for what he didn't do, he's not

bitter or angry. But he does justice and assurances other people won't go

through what he did. But that is a tall order and Robert still has to

clear his own name in a retrial. Having dissected this particular

wrongful conviction and having got a sense of what he took away from

Robert Jones, it is shocking to think this is being played out so

many more times, and in cases where this is -- innocence is not so

obvious, the truth is buried even deeper.

The weekend is upon us and the weather is not looking too bad. Rein

in the forecast but as far