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September 27, 2012

James Edward Smith and his grandmother, Laura Neal
James Edward Smith and his
grandmother, Laura Neal

Man Released from Prison After Serving 19 Years for a Crime He Didn’t Commit

by Frederick H. Lowe
Los Angeles Criminal Court Judge Patricia Schnegg on Monday overturned the conviction of James Edward Smith, 37, who served 19 years in prison for a 1993 murder he did not commit after an eyewitness to the shooting admitted to Smith’s lawyer that he had lied.

Judge Schnegg vacated the conviction after Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Marc St. Hippolyte said that new evidence of Smith’s innocence undermined confidence in his conviction, which was based on false eyewitness testimony.

Smith was released at 8:30 pm and went to live with his 79-year-old grandmother, Laura Neal. Neal took out a second mortgage on her home to pay a previous attorney $65,000 to represent her grandson, Deirdre O’Connor, Smith’s lawyer, tells The NorthStar News & Analysis.

The private lawyers failed to investigate Smith’s innocence; they missed numerous filing deadlines and, ultimately, lost Smith’s file and forgot about the case entirely,” she added. "The lawyers told Smith they were looking for the eyewitness, and they could not find him, but they weren’t looking. The case, however, is not cut and dried. It is, rather, a tale involving incompetent lawyers, police pressuring an eyewitness to identify an innocent person and the eyewitness later recanting his testimony, which can’t be heard over the clanging of jail cell doors.

Smith is entitled to about $750,000 from California for his years of illegal confinement. “He wants to find a job. He is very smart, and he loves to read and write,” said O’Connor, founder and executive director of Torrance, Calif.-based Innocence Matters, a nonprofit organized in 2010 to prevent wrongful convictions and to honor the truth.

The biggest thing Smith wants to do right now, however, is to drive.

“He wants a driver’s license so bad,” O’Connor said. “He needs a birth certificate to get his driver’s license so we will have to get him his birth certificate.”

Smith, a member of a Los Angeles street gang, was 18 when he was sentenced to prison for the September 9, 1993, shooting death of DeAnthony Williams. Landu Mvuemba identified Smith as the gunman in the drive-by shooting, although Smith said he was visiting his grandmother when he shooting occurred.
Deirdre O'Connor
Deirdre O'Connor
A court-appointed trial lawyer did nothing to protect Smith.

“What Mr. Smith lacked was an effective trial lawyer. There were phone records, time sheets and taxi receipts, which would have confirmed his alibi. Sadly, his trial lawyer never bothered to obtain those records or interview the critical alibi witnesses,”O’Connor said.

Neal then mortgaged her home to hire a private attorney. They were more expensive, but ineffective and not interested in their client.

"The private lawyers failed to investigate Smith’s innocence; they missed numerous filing deadlines and, ultimately, lost Smith’s file and forgot about the case entirely,” she added. "The lawyers told Smith they were looking for Mvuemba and they could not find him, but they weren’t looking. Mvuemba is in an out of prison and he always lived at the same address when he wasn’t in prison."

Smith called O’Connor who had gained national attention because she was an attorney for Troy Davis.

“Luckily he reached me on a day when I had time to talk,” O’Connor said. “He gave very specific answers to my questions.”

O’Connor and her assistant, Jess Farris, easily located Mvuemba in prison. They visited him. “We barely got comfortable in our chairs when he blurted out that he lied under pressure from the police.”

Mvuemba said he attempted to recant his testimony before Smith’s 1994 trial, and he recanted his testimony while in prison. The police sent two investigators from internal affairs to the prison, but nothing came of it.

O’Connor thanked St. Hippolyte for his integrity throughout the case. She also did not want to blame Smith’s first set of defense lawyers for their failures.

“We have to address our propensity to take short cuts in gang cases,” she said. “Usually if you’re a black gang member and a crime is committed and if you don’t have video tape to provide you with an alibi, the police say 'you’re it!'"

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