Mike Perlstein / Eyewitness News
NEW ORLEANS - The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to look at yet another case in which the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office is accused of withholding key evidence from a defendant.
Juan Smith has been on Louisiana death row since 1996 after convictions in a quintuple murder and separate triple murder. Smith’s attorneys said prosecutors withheld information – and presented false evidence in its place – to land a conviction in the quintuple killings, an infamous 1995 case known as the Roman Street massacre.
The Roman Street convictions were then used against Smith at his next trial, a triple murder in which the ex-wife and three-year-old child of Saints defense back Bennie Thompson were fatally shot along with the ex-wife’s fiancée. The former Saints player, Bennie Thompson, was publicly named as a prime suspect before evidence turned toward Smith.
The appeal granted by the Supreme Court agreed to hear deals only with the Roman Street slayings.
“We were very excited when we found out,” said Gary Clements of Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, the organization representing Smith. “The odds of getting a writ granted by the Supreme Court is more than one in a hundred. The chance of them granting hearings to two cases like this from the same city is astronomical.”
The rarely granted appeal comes just weeks after the high court ruled against another New Orleans defendant with a similar claim. In that case, the court threw out a $14-million-dollar judgment awarded to John Thompson, a death row inmate who was exonerated when he proved that prosecutors withheld evidence pointing to his innocence.
Smith’s petition noted that since 1981, four death row inmates from New Orleans have been exonerated after defense attorneys uncovered evidence withheld by prosecutors. The Supreme Court issued a key ruling in one of those old cases, reversing the murder conviction of Curtis Kyles.
“Rather than heed this Court’s directive in Kyles,” Smith’s attorneys wrote, “the Orleans Parish DA’s office continued its pattern of deceit by concealing material…from the defense.”
The Supreme Court is requesting supplement briefs by the end of July, Clements said, while oral arguments probably will be scheduled in the fall.
