Martin Carnesi was shot and killed in his New Orleans driveway during an apparent botched robbery on December 17, 1983. Mr. Carnesi’s wife witnessed the crime and reported that the perpetrator was a Black male with a white blotch on his face and left in an old, light blue car. The shooter was also described as wearing a shower cap, leading investigators to suspect that this crime was one of a spree of robberies committed by a man wearing a shower cap. The case was assigned to Det. John Dillmann, who was the lead detective in at least three other wrongful convictions in Orleans Parish. Det. Dillmann focused on Mr. Flanks after Mr. Flanks was arrested in an unrelated incident, though he did not match Mrs. Carnesi’s description of the perpetrator’s age nor the facial description featuring a pug nose and white blotch.
During his arrest, Mr. Flanks had his brother’s gun, which the state initially claimed was the murder weapon. Det. Dillmann claimed that Mrs. Carnesi positively identified Mr. Flanks, even though the thing she remembered about the shooter was the white blotch on his cheek. She concluded, after Det. Dillmann told her “that’s him,” that the photo she picked did not show “the side of his face with that mark.”
James (Jim) Williams was the lead prosecutor, failing, as he did in other wrongful conviction cases, to turn over police reports and notes, grand jury testimony, and information about the other robberies to the defense. Only after the first trial did Mr. Flanks receive a ballistics report showing that the gun he possessed was definitely not the gun that killed the victim. By the second trial, Mrs. Carnesi’s recall of her own initial description had changed, as did Det. Dillmann’s testimony about the white blotch on the shooter’s face and the type of car used. Mr. Flanks was convicted of first-degree murder and the jury voted to sentence him to life, not death.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana’s investigation resulted in presenting new evidence, in May 2022, to the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. A joint motion to vacate the conviction, based on the state’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence at trial, was filed in November 2022. Mr. Flanks was exonerated and released that month, over 38 years after his wrongful conviction.
