In April 2008, FBI director Robert Mueller got back to Congressman
Conyers about our FBI files. He said they had recently been destroyed in a
“routine” purge of departmental files. We were told no record was preserved
of what was in those files. That same month Louisiana state representatives
Cedric Richmond, Avon Honey (Baton Rouge), and Elbert Guillory
(Opelousas) went with King to Governor Bobby Jindal’s office to deliver a
ColorofChange.org online petition signed by 25,000 people, calling for an
investigation into our convictions and lockdown in solitary confinement.
Governor Jindal refused to meet with them, but Representative Richmond left
a message for him, publicly calling for the governor to reexamine our case
and asking him to pardon me and Herman. “The state is too silent on this
issue,” Richmond told reporters, “so we need official government action. At
some point, we’re going to have to stand up as a state.” He announced that
the state legislature would hold hearings about the case. (In 2011, Richmond
would join the U.S. House of Representatives. He would go on to serve
alongside Congressman Conyers on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and
eventually be elected as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He would
continue to speak out actively on our behalf until I walked out of prison, and
he is still trying to get legislation passed that would limit the uses of solitary
confinement.)
In May 2008, a panel of three judges in the First Circuit Court of Appeal
ruled on Herman’s claim. One of them, Judge Jewel “Duke” Welch, ruled
that based on the evidence concerning Hezekiah Brown, Herman should get a
new trial. Unfortunately, he was overruled by the other two judges, who
denied Herman’s petition. Herman would now appeal to the Louisiana
Supreme Court. Meanwhile, I got hopeful news that month. Magistrate Judge
Christine Noland reviewed my habeas petition and recommended that Judge
James Brady return my case to state court for a third trial because I had not
received effective legal counsel during my 1998 trial. Among other
deficiencies, she specifically found that my defense counsel was
constitutionally ineffective for failing to object to the reading of forensic
expert testimony about blood spatters on the “lost” clothing alleged to have
been worn by me and for failing to further investigate. Modern forensics, she
noted, could have determined who wore the clothes and whose blood was on
the clothing.
In June, the NBC
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