BATON ROUGE — A man who spent 45 years, 18 months and three days in prison for a crime he did not commit is now facing the possibility of losing his sight.
Wilbert Jones was 19 years old when a judge sent him to prison in 1973 for raping and kidnapping a Baton Rouge nurse, a crime he repeatedly insisted he never committed.
Louisiana’s Innocence Project later proved to a court that Jones had been wrongfully convicted. At the time of his release, he had spent more time in prison than any other recognized wrongfully convicted person in the United States, according to the Louisiana Innocence Project…