Desk report: After 43 long years of wrongful imprisonment – 26 of which were spent on death row — Johnny Gates walked out of the Muscogee County Jail a free man. Mr. Gates was welcomed back to freedom at Friday afternoon by his loving supporters, including his attorneys with the Southern Center for Human Rights ( SCHR) and the Georgia Innocence Project.
SCHR press release said that Mr. Gates entered an Alford agreement with the State, in which he maintains his innocence of the charges, and the State agreed to his immediate release. Mr. Gates’s Alford agreement and release follow a recent decision by the Georgia Supreme Court, which unanimously affirmed Muscogee County Superior Court Judge John Allen’s 2019 order vacating Mr. Gates’s convictions and granting him a new trial on the basis of new, exculpatory DNA evidence. Judge Allen’s order also found “undeniable” and “overwhelming” evidence of race discrimination in the prosecution’s tactics during jury selection. In order to obtain an all-white jury, the prosecution’s own notes labeled prospective white jurors with a “W” and Black jurors with an “N.”
In Mr. Gates’s own words: “I’ve fought for 43 years for this day. I always had faith it would come, even when others weren’t sure. I am an innocent man. I did not commit this crime. I thank God that I am here, and I am happy to be free.”
Sara J. Totonchi, Executive Director of Southern Center for Human Rights ( SCHR) said, “Today’s hard-fought victory was brought about by the work of generations of attorneys and advocates over the past four-plus decades. In addition to Mr. Gates’s attorneys, Patrick Mulvaney and Katherine Moss of SCHR and Clare Gilbert of Georgia Innocence Project, he has been helped and represented by some of our dearest friends and heroes: Ron Tabak, George Kendall, Gary Parker, and Mary Sinclair.”
