Anthony Milton, while walking with his cousin through a vacant lot in New Orleans, was shot and killed on the night of September 2, 1997. Mr. Milton had just left a supermarket and was cutting across a poorly lit lot in the St. Thomas Housing Project. The shooter shot Mr. Milton from behind and fled on foot.
Mr. Milton’s cousin was the only witness. His trial testimony was the sixth version of what he claimed to see that night. These divergent narratives differed greatly: when the cousin first noted the shooter, whether there was interaction between the shooter and victim, how far away the shooter was, what the shooter looked like, and how long the cousin viewed the shooter. The first four versions of the cousin’s narrative were never turned over to Mr. Dent or his attorney. They contained descriptions that obviously did not match Mr. Dent. Mr. Dent also never learned that police had spoken to an eyewitness who had a much better opportunity to view the shooter. That witness provided a description of the shooter and the gun, but police tried to pass off this information as coming from the cousin to make him look more reliable. There was no mention of the second witness at trial. Meanwhile, Mr. Dent had turned himself in after hearing that he was wanted for murder, and provided an alibi to police. A non-unanimous jury convicted him of second-degree murder in May 1999. He was sentenced to life.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana’s investigation revealed that the state had hidden documents from Mr. Dent, including police notes about the other eyewitness and descriptions reported by the cousin that did not match Mr. Dent. Innocence & Justice Louisiana filed a motion for post-conviction relief in May 2022, while the Promise of Justice initiative filed to vacate the conviction based on the non-unanimous jury verdict. The state eventually agreed, on August 8, 2022, to move to vacate the conviction because Mr. Dent’s constitutional rights had been violated. Mr. Dent spent almost 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
