NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans man is slowly inching closer to justice. Sullivan Walter was wrongly convicted and then sentenced for a crime he didn't commit. Nearly four decades later the state is awarding him compensation for their mistake which cost him his entire youth.
WWL Louisiana's Eleanor Tabone met Sullivan Walter when he was first exonerated in 2022, and she caught up with him again.
Sullivan Walter said, "I lost my father while in prison, I lost my mother while in prison. I lost my closest sibling while in prison, my sister, she was dear to me. And I loved her dearly and there's not a day goes by that I don't grieve."
For 36 long years, Sullivan Walter prayed one day he'd see the sun as a free man. "The best thing about being home is the fact that I'm able to actually live my life, you know, as a free person," he said. 36 birthdays, and 36 Christmases he spent incarcerated.
"Considering the amount of time I served in prison, to have to adjust to technology, in a way things is done in everyday life makes life very complicated."
Convicted at 17, he lost his entire youth. According to the Innocence Project New Orleans this is the longest known wrongful incarceration of a juvenile in Louisiana history and the fifth longest in U.S. history.
"I hadn't even developed maturely to actually decide what I actually wanted to do in life. I was I was I was a child, I was a child."
Now the 55-year-old is free. Walter said, "My biggest fear was dying in prison."
Sullivan Walter was convicted of a 1986 rape. His lawyer, Christopher Murell described that Walter didn't even resemble the actual perpetrator, saying, "The rapist had jerry curls he had a beard; he was somebody that broke in and committed this crime... at the time of the rape, Mr. Walter had a shaved head essentially did not have long hair and Mr. Walter didn't start growing facial hair till his 20s."
A rape he didn't commit. Walter said, "To be in prison and charged as a rapist was a hurting thing. Because to be for a man to be charged as a rapist is a degrading thing... That's not something that no man should desire to do, to commit the act of rape... therefore, that was something that hurt me to the core."
Murell said, "Is clearly owed and justly owed to somebody who spent most of their life in prison." Murrell says while compensation is a win, it's not enough. "He has two choices, which is either receive a $250,000 one-time payment or receive $400,000 over ten years at $40,000 a year and that's the cap, and the judge additionally awarded $80,000 for all the lost education and training."
According to IPNO Louisiana's compensation rate for those wrongly incarcerated is the 4th lowest in the nation. The national average is $68,000 annually. Murell said, "When you count inflation, obviously that is not worth $400,000 over the course of 10 years."
Walter said, "It does not replace the amount of time that has been taken away from me unjustly." He went on to say, "I can't get the years that I lost back is impossible."
Now happily married, and employed, Sullivan Walter is catching up on everything he missed. He's embracing a future that was once wrongly snatched from him in the first place.
Sullivan Walter's legal team says the state Attorney General's office is appealing the compensation, so he won't be awarded compensation until that appeal process is over. WWL Louisiana reached out to the AG's office and is yet to hear back.
If you'd like to help Sullivan Walter get back on his feet, here's his GoFund Me.
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