Justice for Vincent Simmons

To:  the President of the United States, Barack H. Obama; the Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy; the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder;

We, the undersigned, address a serious and strong request to you. We ask you politely if you want to intervene in a case in which great injustice is done to the 32-year-old case of Vincent Simmons. And we ask you politely if you can order a special investigation be convened by the Department of Justice or the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights. And if it is possible to create a state criminal review commission for wrongful convictions to repair the broken judicial system.
Vincent Simmons is a black man, incarcerated in Angola State Prison in Louisiana and is serving a 100 years sentence. He was accused of raping white twins and convicted purely on the basis of the flawed and conflicting testimonies of the two alleged victims and their cousin. There was no physical evidence of any kind against him. In fact there is no physical evidence that the rapes actually occurred. The twins didn’t knew his name, they referred repeatedly to the perpetrator as “nigger” and they couldn’t identify him because “all blacks look alike” according their statement. Despite all of this they picked Vincent Simmons out of an illegal line up in which he was the only one handcuffed. The identification process included at least one Caucasian man despite the twins clearly indicating that the perpetrator was a black man.
Vincent was arrested in a place which was breathing the atmosphere of racism and corruption.
Two sheriffs from Marksville, among them the one who arrested Vincent, were violating the law themselves. Vincent was shot by one of the police officers during his detainment for allegedly attempting to escape and attack one of the officers. Chargers were never brought up against him for these two events.
Vincent was arrested for aggravated rape and in Louisiana at that time the only penalty on the books for aggravated rape was death. However in the spring of the year that his trial occurred, the US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for aggravated rape was unconstitutional and in Louisiana at that time the only penalty on the books for aggravated rape was death. So the officials changed the charges into attempted aggravated rape without informing the jurors about that and without filing the proper bills. It was changed because if they would try him for the original charges he had to be set free and after changing it they were sure they could put him away for the rest of his life.
The courts denied Vincent to use the Brady claims and the state of Louisiana hide exonerated evidence from the trial jury so Vincent didn’t had a fair trial.
The right to a fair trial is explicitly proclaimed in Article Ten of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution as well as numerous other constitutions and declarations throughout the world.
The District Attorney stated in the documentary “Shadows of Doubt” that the law doesn’t demand that one can get a faultless trial but what the constitution and laws require is that a person on trial must get a FAIR trial. He claims that Vincent had a fair trial. However if this D.A. hide exonerating material like medical reports, a photo from the illegal line-up and conflicting statements from the victims during the trial then you can you can state that he had not a fair trial at all.
The court appointed lawyer accepted classless that Vincent was recognized as perpetrator (while in the statement one of the victims is saying that she will not know him again because “all blacks look alike”).
Even back in 1977 a suspect and his lawyer are entitled to have all the information which is available which can exculpatory the suspect. The court appointed lawyer stated that he never had seen the medical reports and was not aware of the photo line-up and the first original statements of the victims.
However the D.A. says that, especially in serious cases, he always gave the lawyer the complete information of the file. If that is true then why didn’t the lawyer used that? Every lawyer who gets this kind of information has an obligation to use that in a case. Why didn’t he ask questions about that? Is he stupid or ineffective? Or didn’t he see the importance of it? If he had that information then he should have used it because it are spectacular facts and even if a lawyer hate his client he should have used it otherwise it is not a fair trial. How is it possible that the conviction in the case of Vincent Simmons can stand when all the evidence for the jury to base its judgement, wasn’t presented before them? That alone should be enough to throw out any conviction. Only if the jury had convicted Vincent Simmons after he had received what he legally is entitled to have, then one can speak about a fair trial but not now. If it doesn’t work this way the whole system falls apart.
Since there are that many people in prison who didn’t had a fair trial, I think it is time to change the broken system. It would be a good thing to create an independent state innocence commissions with different people in it who have good skills in their own field. They should check out cases like the one of Mr. Simmons and give advise on things like: eyewitness identification and testimony; photo line-ups; suspect interrogation; preservation of biological evidence; forensic technology; defendant's access to case files; the right to competent defence counsel; ethical and legal responsibilities of prosecutors. These are for instance many topics which went wrong in the case of Vincent Simmons.
Vincent always remains his innocence at this crime and even after 32 years he is still fighting to get justice and a fair treatment something what every USA citizens is entitled to have. So with all due respect and urgency we ask you to use your influence to provide Vincent with a fair trial so this night mare for Vincent Simmons will come to a satisfying end.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Justice for Vincent Simmons Petition to the President of the United States, Barack H. Obama; the Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy; the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; was created by and written by Marian Bultman (marianbultman@hotmail.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.