Louisiana inmate freed after 30 years

Jet, August 11, 1997

Thirty years ago, when Hayes Williams was 19, he was accused of involvement in the murder of a White New Orleans service station manager.

Williams recalls being scared and alone. By all accounts, the teenager was not given all of the facts when he was told that he could accept a sentence of life in prison or take his chances with the electric chair.

He pleaded guilty and was sent to Angola, one of the nation's roughest prisons.

Today, Williams is free. A judge tossed out the guilty plea after Williams spent years trying to get anyone to listen to his story.

A New Orleans psychiatrist, Dr. Ellen MacKenzie, read a newspaper article about his plight in 1992 and started the "Free Hayes Williams Committee."

"I thought that I would never get out," he said in The Dallas Morning News. "I did nothing to get sent there, yet there I was in hell. I thought I was going to die in there."

Faced with reconstructing the case after 30 years, the district attorney dismissed the murder charge.

A court document reveals that a supplemental police report may have helped to clear Williams. But it was never shown to his attorney. It reveals that the only person who placed Williams at the scene was the man believed to be the shooter. Two other men involved in the case were freed from prison years ago.

Now, he's looking forward to getting a job, and he said he probably won't sue the state although he's been robbed of 30 years. He said he could have been watching his three daughters grow up during that time.