Page 10 - Patrick Quinlan News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Upon learning of the hidden blood evidence, judge quinlan grew furious with connick. >> he said he was going to hold a hearing in open court, to try to determine exactly how this had happened. he wanted all the citizens of new orleans to see. >> at the hearing, attorneys questioned the key prosecutors involved with thompson's case, including jim williams, the man with the little electric chair on his desk. a colleague testified that williams was given the blood results, but williams denied it. >> williams' story is that he never received it, he never saw it, and so at the end of the day, the c...

>> the jury took only 35 minutes to agree on a verdict. >> the jury files back in, whenever a jury comes back, you're looking at every juror trying to look for some hint. and it seems like an eternity, >> and the heart meanwhile now is racing faster and faster and breathing is becoming increasingly challenging. >> this was the most agonizing moment either of us have had in our careers. and in our personal careers. then the judge asked that the verdict be read aloud. a powerful new dell 2-in-1 laptop, and durable new stellar notebooks, so you're walking the halls with varsity level swagger. tha...

But he was thought of as being fairly aggressive as well. it was a stated policy in his office to provide the defense the minimum amount of information required by law and nothing more. we talked about the right way to handle this, and rather than hold a big press conference and point the finger at the district attorney's office, we thought the first right step was to go to mr. connick himself. >> connick's reaction initially was that he wanted some time to think about it. we told him he had a matter of two, maybe three hours. we have an execution date in less than two weeks. and we said, if y...

Liuzza. >> michael and gordon now believe they had a strong case for a new trial. >> we had an evidentiary hearing in front of judge quinlan. and quinlan vacated the death sentence but he refused to vacate guilt. >> judge quinlan refused to grant a new trial. >> we were devastated. >> it was wonderful to have john thomson spared from execution, we were still looking at a man in his 30s who was going to be facing the rest of his life in jail. >> so you're going to take the death penalty back and give me a life sentence? i was scared to death even more so now. you tell me i'm never going home ag...

>> michael and gordon appealed the judge's decision, they knew this would be thompson's last chance for a new trial. >> john's going to go free or spend the rest of his life in prison. >> arguments were basically two fold. first, that carjacking conviction had been used to keep john from being able to testify in his own defense in the murder case. and secondly, we argued that all of the evidence that we had amassed had shown that john thomson was innocent of the liuzza murder. >> michael and gordon filed their appeal in february of 2002. five months later they received the decision. >> i'll ne...