Newly Discovered Death Row Exoneration in 1967 Murder Case

Larry Hudson has been added to DPIC’s Descriptions of Innocence page as a new­ly-dis­cov­ered death row exon­er­a­tion. Mr. Hudson was tried and sen­tenced to death for a rob­bery-homi­cide in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1967, when he was 19 years old. He was exon­er­at­ed in 1993, when he was 46 years old.

An eye­wit­ness, Frank Wilson, tes­ti­fied at Mr. Hudson’s tri­al that he had picked Mr. Hudson out of a line-up pri­or to tri­al, but a police offi­cer who had been present tes­ti­fied that Mr. Wilson had failed to iden­ti­fy Hudson. Despite this, Mr. Hudson was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. His sen­tence was even­tu­al­ly com­mut­ed to life in prison, but his con­vic­tion was upheld. In 1988, with the help of a ​“jail­house lawyer,” he was able to obtain copies of police reports that had nev­er been dis­closed to his defense. These records showed that not only had Mr. Wilson failed to iden­ti­fy Mr. Hudson, but also that he had iden­ti­fied anoth­er man in a pho­to line-up as the per­pe­tra­tor. The day before the tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tor showed Mr. Wilson a pho­to of Mr. Hudson and his code­fen­dant, and after see­ing that pho­to, Mr. Wilson then affirmed that Mr. Hudson was the shoot­er. Based on the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of Mr. Wilson’s tes­ti­mo­ny and the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct involved in con­ceal­ing the pho­to line-up, a fed­er­al dis­trict court vacat­ed Hudson’s con­vic­tion in 1993 and the pros­e­cu­tor chose not to retry the case. 

Because he has been exon­er­at­ed, Mr. Hudson will not be includ­ed on DPIC’s Death Penalty Census Database. DPIC’s Death Penalty Census only includes defen­dants who were con­vict­ed after the U.S. Supreme Court land­mark deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 case which inval­i­dat­ed all exist­ing death penal­ty statutes as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. This case marks the begin­ning of what legal schol­ars con­sid­er the mod­ern death penal­ty era, as states began to recon­fig­ure their cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment struc­tures to attempt to cre­ate a ver­sion which the Supreme Court would con­sid­er con­sti­tu­tion­al. Mr. Hudson was sen­tenced to death in 1967, in the pre-Furman era, and he there­fore does not qual­i­fy for inclu­sion on the Death Penalty Census. However, because his exon­er­a­tion was post-Furman, he is includ­ed on DPIC’s Descriptions of Innocence.