A Louisiana appeals court has thrown out two 30-year-old murder convictions against a New Orleans man, ruling that authorities failed to turn over key evidence tied to one of the city’s most notorious corrupt police officers before his 1995 trial. Manuel Nelson, now 56, had been serving two life sentences for the July 1994 killings of Edward Elbert “Little” Wynn and William Henry “Peewee” Jones, both shot inside the Florida housing development within six days of each other.
The Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal issued its ruling on Wednesday, granting Nelson’s writ application and reversing a February denial from the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, according to NOLA.com. Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Robin Pittman had previously ruled that Nelson failed to show the undisclosed evidence would probably have produced a different verdict, but the three-judge appellate panel of Paula Brown, Dale Atkins and Rachael Johnson disagreed, finding that authorities withheld contemporaneous police notes, supplemental reports, a previously undisclosed ballistics report, post-conviction witness statements and FBI wiretap transcripts. Per court filings reviewed by NOLA.com, the court found that the involvement of former NOPD officers Len Davis and Sammie Williams in the original investigation raised, in the panel’s words, the specter of corruption.
Nelson was tried and convicted of both murders at once in 1995, but wiretap recordings captured Davis and Williams discussing the killing of Peewee Jones and a shooting two days later in which Nelson himself was the victim. Per one wiretap cited by the appeals court, Davis and Williams agreed that Nelson’s co-defendant, Lawrence Peters, had committed one of the killings alone — with Davis confirming that Peters killed the man by himself, and Williams, when asked, simply replying “yeah.” Peters is currently serving a life sentence. The appeals court also found that Williams tried to blame the killing on Nelson, and that per a Sammie Williams wiretap, it was Peters who killed Jones.
A Star Witness With Ties to the Lead Detective
The case against Nelson leaned heavily on testimony from a state star witness who, according to the appeals court findings, was dating the lead New Orleans police detective at the time of the trial. That same witness had initially told police she was asleep during one of the murders before later identifying Nelson. A different witness said the lead detective pressured her to identify Nelson as well. The appeals court also noted that Williams was at the scene of one of the killings before emergency responders arrived, in the days after the shootings in July 1994…