HUFFINGTON
08.04.13
THE UNTOUCHABLES
Assistant District Attorney Jerry
Glas. A week later, Glas resigned.
During a deposition at Thompson’s civil trial, Glas gave the
reason for his resignation. He believed Williams, the prosecutor,
knew about the swatch of clothing and the blood test, but had
concealed the test and may have
helped destroy the blood sample.
He also believed the other prosecutors in the case — Assistant
District Attorneys Eric Dubelier
and Gerry Deegan — may have
been implicated. Glas recommended that Williams be indicted, and he wanted more time to
investigate Dubelier. Deegan had
since passed away, but in a sworn
deposition, another former prosecutor said that on his deathbed,
Deegan had told of the existence
of the exonerating cloth and blood
test, and admitted that he had
helped to hide it. Glas revealed all
of this to Connick in May 1999,
along with his plan to present it to
the grand jury. Connick promptly
closed down the grand jury, and
Glas resigned.
By the time Thompson filed
his misconduct lawsuit against
Orleans Parish in 2005, another
wrongly convicted New Orleans
man had already filed a similar suit
and come up short. Shareef Cousin
was convicted in 1996 for the 1995
murder of Michael Gerardi, who
was shot and killed in front of his
date, Connie Babin, just after the
two had eaten dinner in the French
Quarter. Babin would later claim
she was “absolutely positive” that
Cousin, who was 16 at the time,
was Gerardi’s killer.
Cousin’s trial produced one
particularly odious example of
misconduct. The prosecution
called on James Rowel, a friend
of Cousin’s. They expected him to
testify that Cousin had confessed
the murder to him. Instead, to
the surprise of everyone, Rowel
denied Cousin had ever confessed. Instead, he informed the
courtroom that prosecutors had
promised him leniency on his own
pending charges if he would falsely implicate his friend.
Connick’s prosecutors attempted an awkward correction by calling a police officer and Rowel’s
former attorney to the stand, both
of whom claimed that Rowel had
told prosecutors about the confession of his own volition. The
prosecutors then attempted to
submit that testimony to jurors as
substantive evidence of Cousin’s
guilt. It was a move the Louisiana
Supreme Court later called “a flagrant misuse” of evidence.
Cousin also had an alibi: He was