John Edward Smith, 38, is expected to be released after serving 19 years in prison Monday afternoon. Prosecutors are not expected to oppose Smith’s petition for release in the hearing before a California Superior Court judge. Smith has been represented by pro bono attorneys from Innocence Matters (here). Attorney Deirdre O’Connor formed the group after becoming convinced Smith was innocent of the 1993 drive-by shooting in Los Angeles that killed one man and injured another.
Smith was convicted on the testimony of a sole witness, who has recanted. “I never got a good enough look to ever make an ID of the shooter,” Landu Mvuemba said in a Los Angeles Times report (here). “The cops laid out the whole story line telling me who did it and how…I felt a lot of pressure to go along with it.”
AP correspondent Linda Deutsch’s article published in the Mercury News (here) reported that Mvuemba said the police told him that other witnesses had identified Smith as the shooter that took the life of his friend DeAnthony Williams. Mvuemba tried to take back his testimony before trial but the case went forward and he felt pressured to testify.
According to the LA Times report, “Smith’s court-appointed attorney never presented alibi evidence that would have shown that he was miles away at his grandmother’s home with his girlfriend at the time of the shooting…The original prosecutors on the case also withheld witness statements and other evidence pointing to another man who could have committed the killing, the attorneys wrote [in the petition].”
Smith was an admitted gang member but had always claimed he was not involved and not at the scene of this crime. He and Mvuemba have passed multiple polygraph tests.
O’Connor, who praised the district attorney’s office for working to get to the truth once they were alerted to the problems in the case, has noted, “The system should not take short cuts in gang cases.”
Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor who works with that university’s innocence project commented in a Huffington Post article (here) on the challenge of exonerating gang members. “Gang members are easy targets,” she said. “They are the usual suspects. This is a story we hear repeatedly. Witnesses say what they think authorities want to hear. It’s terrifying to see people wrongly convicted but also to see the carnage on our streets. Police react to that carnage.”
The handling of this case as described by Smith and Mvuemba echoes other wrongful convictions involving those who were “easy targets.” DNA-proven wrongful convictions have taught that it’s a slippery slope to rush to judgement and have tunnel vision in any case for any reason. We fall far short of the promise of our justice system to provide justice for all when expediency trumps the search for truth, especially in cases involving the disfavored or disenfranchised, those viewed by someone in authority as of lesser economical, social, intellectual, or cultural position.
In this case, John Edward Smith, who was 18 when convicted, is looking forward to reuniting with his family, getting a job, and starting his life anew, according to O’Connor.
Wrongful Convictions Blog 
Do you have any offices in Florida?
Thank you
The case reflects ineffective counsel & has ruined my son’s life.