Cleared of a life prison sentence and facing no retrial, Eddie Triplett will spend his first Thanksgiving in 13 years as a free man, after his release Tuesday from the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
He took a middle seat and kept it upright, peering around in the dark as the bus rolled into New Orleans late Tuesday. Then he walked through a night drizzle, stopped at a Tulane Avenue gas station for a $1.89 burger -- "Prices are high, ooh, man!" -- and grabbed a cab the rest of the way to his mother's house on Green Street, a block from the spot he last sniffed freedom.
Cleared of a life prison sentence and facing no retrial, Triplett will spend his first Thanksgiving in 13 years as a free man, after his release Tuesday from the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
He plans to watch football, he said Wednesday.
Triplett, 51, was sentenced to life in 1999 as a four-time felon under the state's habitual offender law. But U.S. District Court Judge Helen "Ginger" Berrigan
overturned the cocaine possession conviction in late September, ruling that former District Attorney Harry Connick's office failed to turn over a police narrative that contradicted the trial testimony of a pair of NOPD officers.
District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro last week declined to retry the case. Cannizzaro told the Times-Picayune that it was clear prosecutors in the case violated Triplett's rights by failing to turn over evidence favorable to him. The two officers, Jeffrey Keating and Edgar Staehle, also lied on the stand, Cannizzaro said.
Both officers remain on the force. Keating is a 14-year veteran. Staehle has been with NOPD for 18 years, according to city records.
"At this time, both officers have not been reassigned," Deputy Chief Arlinda Westbrook, head of NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau, said in a statement. "I am currently working with the district attorney's office to gather all information so I can determine the appropriate next steps that should be taken."
John McCusker, The Times-Picayune'I believe they owe me,' Triplett says. 'They took my life because they didn't pay attention. No one was hearing me.'Ironically, the lead prosecutor at Triplett's trial, Andre Jeanfreau, is now one of two FBI agents who were assigned in September to work within the Public Integrity Bureau. FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne said Jeanfreau has been "assigned to matters back at the FBI office" pending a review.
The other prosecutor who argued the case, Stephen Huber, heads a private law practice in New Orleans. He declined to comment until he could review the record of the case.
The case is the latest in a series of documented instances from the Connick era, which ended in 2003, of prosecutors failing, whether intentionally or not, to turn over evidence later deemed exculpatory, including in three cases that have reached the U.S. Supreme Court in the last 16 years.
Berrigan found that prosecutors in Triplett's case failed to give his defense attorney a police report with a narrative indicating that Keating and Staehle stopped a man they identified as Michael Cola at exactly the same time and place they arrested Triplett.
The report says the officers spotted Cola on a bicycle and arrested him in the 8900 block of Green Street after seeing him grab a plastic bag with white powder from his pocket and stuff it in his mouth. The officers repeatedly testified at trial, however, that it was Triplett and Triplett alone who they found there with cocaine.
Given the discrepancy, Berrigan found that "no reasonable fact-finder would have found (Triplett) guilty of the underlying offense."
For Triplett, Berrigan's decision and Cannizzaro's refusal last week to retry the case marked the end of a long, tenacious press by Tripplet, who sent away for district attorney case files and lodged appeals with the help of a prison lawyer, paying the cost for the files on the 16 cents an hour he made punching license plates.
"You got to give some things up -- cigarettes. Got to lock up on eating snacks," said Triplett, donning a new Saints Super Bowl T-shirt, clean blue prison jeans and black dress shoes. After Berrigan's ruling, he said, "It was hair-pulling. Every time I look around: 'What are they waiting on?' I can't say I'm angry. Right now I'm feeling joy."
Triplett, who had two drug convictions and a burglary conviction before the 1998 arrest that led to his life sentence, said he plans to sue over his conviction and lost years.
"Oh yeah. I believe they owe me. They took my life because they didn't pay attention. No one was hearing me," he said. "Right now I'm worth a dime if I got a dime in my pocket."
He said he has already spent the $10 from the Department of Corrections.
Any attempt to collect damages could be an uphill battle for Triplett. A 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court majority in March found that the DA's office couldn't be held responsible for failing to train prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence based on a single case, and that John Thompson, who spent 14 years on death row before a private investigator discovered a hidden blood report shortly before his scheduled execution, failed to prove a pattern of misconduct.
In the meantime, Triplett, a lean former roofer with thin, gray hair, is reconnecting with family, including his two children, now ages 31 and 29, and their mother, Christy McFarland.
In her dining room in Algiers Point on Wednesday, McFarland stared at Triplett across a few feet and a dozen years.
"It's like he's a new person. I've got to begin again with him," she said. "He's new to me right now."
The free world is somewhat new to Triplett as well, he said.
"I'm going to try to find me some work and stay out of trouble," he said, "Keep myself away from junk going around."
