On the night of October 2, 1971, a Baton Rouge General Hospital nurse was abducted from the parking lot by a Black male, who forced her to drive to a local high school. She was made to exit the car and walk with him. He put his arms over her shoulder and made her make it look like they were a couple. She was taken behind a building and forced to undress, at gunpoint. The victim was raped, then forced to drive the assailant around. They wound up back at the high school, where the victim was raped again. She was then driven, in her car, around the neighborhood. The assailant wiped down the car with a shirt and left on foot.
Over three months later, in January 1972, police arrested a man for another rape. Wilbert Jones, an acquaintance of this man, was then placed in a live lineup. The victim in the first case identified Mr. Jones because of similar facial features and the way he spoke, though she noted that his voice was different at the lineup. She called police later to report that there was a small possibility that she’d identified the wrong man, as the voices were different and the rapist seemed taller than Mr. Jones. She’d also considered the gap between Mr. Jones’s front teeth, but reported that she’d not previously noted the other spaces in his teeth and that she didn’t look to see if the others in the lineup had similar spaces between their teeth.
At trial, Mr. Jones maintained his innocence. He was convicted, but the case was overturned after the Louisiana Supreme Court found that the state had appealed to racial prejudice in its opening statement. Mr. Jones was tried again on the same charge in July 1974. At the second trial, the victim identified Mr. Jones in court, but added details about the perpetrator speaking to her about getting revenge for racial prejudice. The lead detective testified about the arrest of the other man who’d committed a rape – that man claimed that Mr. Jones had committed this first rape. The only witness for the defense testified that Mr. Jones was under 5’4” tall. The victim had reported to police that the assailant was taller than her own height of 5’5”, guessing at one point that he was 5′ 8”, then 6’3”. Mr. Jones was convicted of aggravated rape in February 1974 and sentenced to life.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana started investigating Mr. Jones’s case in 2001. After years of investigation, we identified a serial rapist who not only matched the victim’s description, but committed an almost identical crime less than a month later. Police, at the time, connected these rapes, but never turned over this information. This new evidence led to Mr. Jones’s conviction being vacated in October 2017. The state appealed, though, and asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to reinstate the conviction. The court declined to do so and the state announced that it would dismiss the charges in October 2018. Mr. Jones spent close to 47 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.
