Reading John S News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

In april of 2003, john thompson faced the decision whether to plead guilty and walk away from prison or stand trial and risk the rest of his life behind bars. >> i didn't kill nobody. i'm not pleading guilty to nothing. i got on the phone, my mom said, i want you home. i don't care what those people say, i know you didn't do it, i want you home. i called the attorneys and said, come on, let's do it, it's time for me to be with my family. >> gordon and i went down to new orleans to be there when john got out of jail to have our big celebration. >> i was figuring out where john was going to go a...

Skip to the end. >> the last line read, conviction and sentence reversed. >> i called gordon into my office. i couldn't get the words out. >> i remember it was july 17th, 4:30 in the afternoon, i -- i was tongue tied i said, i couldn't -- he said, new trial? i said yes. we hugged, we were ecstatic. >> as michael and gordon began preparing for the retrial, they got an unsolicited offer from the d.a.'s office, harry connick senior had retired and the new d.a. ran for office on an anti-corruption campaign. now, he wanted to make a deal. >> the district attorney's office was not eager to go and tr...

Challenges. on april 19th of 1999, the final death warrant was issued. we had struck out, failed. he was going to die. >> the state set an execution date. >> we drove to angola. john came into the room. we didn't tell him we were coming but he knew why we were there and he looked at us and said, what's the date? >> we looked at him and said, john, it's may 20th. which was basically a month off. >> i've been around death row at that time long enough to understand what was going on. i was like, wow. it's my time. it's my time. i was trying to be strong. i was trying to, like, understand what was...

So that revealed quite a bit about the prosecutors who had been handling thompson's case. >> my next move is to go to the crime lab and kind of tip off people for the police department you're on to something naughty. i just go in and go, i need to see this old report, please. i didn't get the crime lab report which tells me the blood type is blood b. >> we were incredibly excited because we now knew the perpetrator had type b blood but we didn't know john's blood type. what we did was call john. >> blood type? he said, i don't know. >> he said, you don't know your own blood type? i said, i don...

Very, very different stories in 1985 before the trial as compared to what they said on the witness stand. we began to see how their stories were contrived to secure a conviction of an innocent man. >> there were numerous pieces of evidence inconsistent with john's guilt or consistent with freeman's guilt and that showed that freeman had lied at trial in his testimony on behalf of the state. >> after testifying he saw thompson murder ray liuzza, kevin freeman was given a plea deal and only served ten months in prison. >> we also received leads about potential witnesses who would be helpful. the...