NEW ORLEANS — A man convicted of rape as a teenager was freed from prison after a judge threw out his rape conviction.
Sullivan Walter was 17 when he was arrested and charged with rape in New Orleans. Walter had been accused in a case where a rapist went into the home of a victim, held a knife to her throat, and threatened to harm her 8-year-old son, The Associated Press reported.
Defense and prosecutors had filed a joint motion for Walter’s exoneration, citing multiple issues in the trial, including a potentially inaccurate victim identification, and multiple failures by Walter’s defense attorney, the AP reported.
Innocence Project New Orleans, which helped to represent Walter, said in a Facebook post about the case that testing on blood and bodily fluids proved Walter was not the rapist, but that evidence was never presented to the jury and a police officer misrepresented the results of testing.
Walter was convicted of forcible rape, aggravated burglary and other charges after a one-day trial and was sentenced to 39 years in prison, nola.com reported.
“To say this was unconscionable is an understatement,” Judge Darryl Derbigny said in court.
“I’m just ready to live,” Walter told nola.com after his release Thursday evening. “I just want to live an honest, free life.”
An attorney for the district attorney’s office said the victim in the case is dead, and that authorities reached out to the victim’s son who expressed regret on his mother’s behalf for the wrongful conviction, the AP reported.
“The lawyers and law enforcement involved acted as if they believed that they could do what they chose to a Black teenager from a poor family and would never be scrutinized or held to account,” Richard Davis, Walter’s attorney, said in a statement to the AP. “This is not just about individuals and their choices, but the systems that let them happen.”
Walter told nola.com he is looking ahead to the future, and that he would like to help others who have been wrongfully convicted.
Innocence Project New Orleans started an online fundraiser for Walter.
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