Sullivan Walter freed after 36 years for New Orleans rape he didn’t commit

Sullivan Walter was just a teenager when he was arrested in connection with a rape during a home invasion in New Orleans.

More than three decades later, a Louisiana judge determined Walter, now 53, was wrongfully convicted for a crime he didn't commit and freed him from prison on Thursday.

The decision by district judge Darryl Derbigny ended the fifth longest wrongful conviction sentence of any juvenile in the US, Nola.com reported, at a time when juvenile sentences, particularly life sentences, are under scrutiny.

The Black man's conviction illustrated the racial bias that plagues the US criminal justice system and has led Black people to be disproportionately wrongfully convicted of sexual assault, murder and drug-related offenses compared with white people.

A 2017 review of nearly 2,000 cases between 1989 and 2016 by the National Registry of Exonerations found that Black people were significantly more likely to later be found innocent after a conviction.

They were also more likely to wait longer for their names to be cleared. In Walter's case, like others, race played a role, the Innocence Project New Orleans legal director, Richard Davis, said in a statement to the Associated Press.

"The lawyers and law enforcement involved acted as if they believed that they could do what they chose to a Black teenager from a poor family and would never be scrutinized or held to account," Davis said. "This is not just about individuals and their choices, but the systems that let them happen."