Elvis Brooks, a 69-year-old New Orleans man who spent decades in prison after a wrongful manslaughter conviction, has been denied compensation from the state of Louisiana. Brooks was relying on a Louisiana program that allows the state to compensate people who have been wrongfully convicted. Although Brooks was eligible to get up to $480,000 under the program, he hasn’t received compensation, ProPublica reported.
Why hasn’t Elvis Brooks received compensation after being wrongfully convicted?
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is fighting back against Brooks’ claim, saying the New Orleans man is still guilty and he cannot receive any money. According to ProPublica, Murrill is still pushing the court to reinstate a manslaughter charge against Brooks.
“She knows people are innocent but she doesn’t care,” Brooks said about Murrill, per ProPublica. “She wouldn’t want nobody to do this to one of her loved ones.”
In the past two years, Murrill has blocked 23 claims from people who have been seeking compensation for wrongful convictions.
“I can’t think of an attorney general who has been quite as aggressive in trying to prevent people from getting compensation,” Jeffrey Gutman, a professor emeritus at the George Washington University Law School, told ProPublica.
Some of the men who have been denied compensation were exonerated through DNA or blood evidence. In some cases, the court found that police fabricated the evidence.
What’s next for Elvis Brooks?
Although Brooks filed his application more than two years ago, a district court judge still hasn’t heard his case. But he vows to keep fighting for himself.
“It’s miserable and it’s frustrating, the games they play,” he said. “But if they think I’m going to give up, wave the white flag, they got me wrong.”
Herbert Larson, an attorney representing exonerees, told ProPublica that the process to compensate exonerees is supposed to take months, not years.
“If they’ve got DNA evidence that points at somebody else, if they’ve got fingerprints that point at somebody else, if it looks like sloppy police work, then we should pay the money and not spend the next two years litigating it,” Larson said. “That’s not a very effective use of time and money on the part of the attorney general.”
Brooks was arrested at age 19 in 1977 after a man named Cecil Lloyd was shot to death during a robbery at a bar. Police arrested the 19-year-old without any physical evidence linking him to the murder. Several people also said Brooks was at a family party during the shooting. However, three other white witnesses reviewed a photographic lineup and picked Brooks as the suspect. The jury later found him guilty of first-degree murder.
Forty years later, Brooks cleared his name with DNA evidence. While he is now free, the 69-year-old still aims to get his compensation.