Convicted at age 17 of a rape he didn't commit, Sullivan Walter, 53, holds a shirt reading "Justice," near the road that leads to the gate of Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel on Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022, shortly after Walter was released from the prison. His was the longest known wrongful incarceration of a juvenile in Louisiana history, and the fifth longest in U.S. history, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. With Walter are, left to right, his brothers Joseph Corner and Byron Walter Sr. and Richard Davis, Innocence Project New Orleans legal director. Copy article link Sullivan Walter brushed away tears Thursday as a New Orleans judge ordered his immediate release from prison, 36 years after he was incarcerated for a rape he didn’t commit. Withheld evidence and fudged testimony kept Walter, now 53, wrongfully locked away, the Innocence Project New Orleans and the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office agreed, as they moved jointly to vacate his sentence and set him free from Elayn Hunt Correctional Center at St. Gabriel. According to their motion, blood and seminal fluid could have exonerated Walter at his trial and throughout his appeals’ process. But neither the prosecutors nor the defense attorneys at his trial transparently presented that evidence. “To say this was unconscionable,” Judge Darryl Derbigny said Thursday, “is an understatement.” Walter was 17 when he was imprisoned. His 36-year lockup marks the longest known wrongful incarceration of a Louisiana teenager, and the fifth longest of any juvenile in the United States, according to the University of Michigan Law School's National Registry of Exonerations . That's a distinction even for New Orleans, which has the most exonerations per capita of any U.S. city. “I'm just ready to live,” Walter said Thursday evening, after he was released from prison into the arms of his two older brothers. “I just want to live an honest, free life.” Crime and conviction On May 9, 1986, a man raped a woman inside her Lower Garden District home as he held a knife to her throat, threatening to hurt her 8-year-old son if she refused to cooperate. Though the perpetrator had partially covered his face and the rape was committed mostly in the dark, the woman told police she could identify him. After Walter was arrested for an unrelated burglary, his photo was added to an array presented to the woman, six weeks after the rape. She picked Walter’s picture from the group. Later, seminal fluid collected from the shorts that the woman wore during the rape was tested. It came from a non-secretor, a unique and relatively uncommon blood type. But during Walter's trial, no evidence was presented on whether Walter was a non-secretor. And there was no evidence linking him to the crime, except for the woman's identification of his photo. After a one-day trial, a jury convicted Walter of forcible rape, aggravated burglary and two counts of aggravated crime against nature. For those crimes, and the burglary of which he was also convicted, Walter was sentenced to 39 years in prison. “I couldn’t believe it,” Walter said of the trial. “I couldn’t believe this was happening to me.”

He added: “I felt like I was going up against a giant. There was nothing I could do.” Long road to freedom Less than two years after the conviction, New Orleans police tested Walter’s blood as he fought for a new trial: He was indeed a secretor. But that didn’t win him a new trial. The criminologist who had presented the original seminal findings in Walter's trial instead changed his story: He testified in an appeals hearing that he “could not say whether” the seminal fluid found on the survivor’s shorts was left by a non-secretor. Walter was denied a new trial. On Thursday, Emily Maw, the head of the district attorney’s office civil rights division, said that instead of copping to the truth, prosecutors back then, when Harry Connick was district attorney, asked the criminologist to “fudge” his findings. “And that’s what he did,” Maw said. Eventually, Walter wrote to the Innocence Project, and the Innocence Project New Orleans took his case in October. 'This is horrible' Together, the nonprofit and the district attorney’s office under Jason Williams moved to vacate his sentence, not only for the withheld evidence and red flags of the woman's identification, but also for the errors of Walter's previous attorneys, who had failed at the trial to provide effective counsel, they said. Derbigny shook his head as he listened to Walter’s story unfold. “This is horrible,” he said. “I’m at a loss of words to express the sorrow and the anger I have at the treatment you’ve been dealt by the system.” On Thursday night, however, Walter said he wanted to look ahead. He spoke of wanting to help others who had been wrongfully convicted, and of visiting Washington D.C., to see the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. That monument is inscribed with quotation from King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Email Jillian Kramer at jillian.kramer@theadvocate.com . Copy article link