A man convicted and imprisoned for more than 20 years for the 1997 shooting murder of another man in New Orleans was released Monday after prosecutors agreed that his conviction should be annulled.
Court documents reveal a request to overturn the conviction of Cedric L. Dent, 47, in the shooting death of Anthony Milton was granted by a court Monday and the district attorney’s office decided not to continue pursuing the case.
The shooting occurred outside a New Orleans grocery, court documents say.
The Innocence Project New Orleans group claimed its study concluded that prosecutors in the 1990s concealed papers that indicated a witness to the shooting offered a description that didn’t fit Dent, and that a crucial witness’s narrative altered numerous times before he testified at the trial.
The records that were concealed also showed additional witnesses who supplied descriptions of the shooter that didn’t fit Dent, reports CBS New Orleans station WWL-TV.
“Cedric Dent is a victim of the failures of every system that was put in place to protect his rights as a person accused of a crime – a police department that did the bare minimum to investigate a serious crime;
lawyers that didn’t have the resources or the wherewithal to investigate his case; and a district attorney’s office that concealed evidence that should have been turned over and would have helped Mr. Dent get the not guilty verdict he deserved at trial,” Meredith Angelson, one of Mr. Dent’s lawyers, said in a statement released by the organisation.
A statement from District Attorney Jason Williams’ office stated that Dent had been convicted by a non-unanimous jury – a conviction that would not now be allowed under Louisiana law or U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
“After a thorough review of Mr. Dent’s case, our office concluded that — like many convictions decided by non-unanimous jury – his guilty verdict stemmed from a trial that was unfair precisely because one of the twelve jurors had voted to acquit and because of constitutionally ineffective assistance from his defence attorney,” the statement said.
“The justice system failed Mr. Dent, and just as critically, failed the victim of this murder and his family.”
Innocence Project New Orleans reported Dent was freed Monday from the state prison.
WWL said he emotionally hugged his mother when he was released.
The group claimed Dent is a nephew of another of their customers, Elvis Brooks. Brooks was released in 2019 after serving 42 years for a death tied to an armed robbery.
Brooks was 62 at the time of his release. He always stated he was not engaged in the heist.
After IPNO identified hidden evidence, prosecutors promised to release him if he pled guilty to manslaughter. Brooks pled guilty to get out of jail.