In December 1983, at the age of 20, Raymond Flanks was arrested for robbing a New Orleans supermarket. He pleaded guilty to that crime, but not before police found a gun on him that they wrongly connected to the fatal shooting of an elderly man named Martin Carnesi.

The state’s case relied heavily on the account of a single eyewitness to the botched robbery that claimed Carnesi’s life: his traumatized widow. Although the suspect she described did not match Flanks’ age or appearance, police put his picture in a photo lineup. She picked him out with the help of a flashlight.

Flanks was tried twice. The first jury deadlocked. The second found him guilty, and in 1985 he was sentenced to life without parole. He wrote to the Innocence Project dozens of times, but he lacked the DNA evidence the organization needed to take his case.

Innocence Project New Orleans agreed to help Flanks in 2020. In their investigation, they discovered that the prosecution had withheld key evidence that might have led police to another man. Louisiana agreed to vacate Flanks’ conviction on November 17, 2022. He walked out of the courtroom a free man after nearly 39 years of incarceration. He’d served most of his time at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, which is better known as Angola.