Man Wrongly Imprisoned Walks Free : Juror’s Crusade Helps Clear Name and End 17-Month Confinement

Napoleon Winchell Cotton said he was innocent. His mother said he was innocent. Even one of the 12 jurors who convicted him of armed robbery said Cotton was innocent when a judge sentenced him to spend six years in state prison.

But none of it mattered. Until Monday.

Cotton, a 26-year-old ex-boxer, walked out of Los Angeles County Jail a free man Monday night, 17 months after he was locked up for a crime that the court now says he did not commit.

Tears and an Embrace

It took four days to process the paper work necessary to free him from the justice system that now says it convicted the wrong man. At 6:35 p.m., Cotton walked from the holding cells into the arms of his mother and the juror who first helped send him to prison and then to clear his name. They held each other for several minutes and cried. No one spoke.

“From the time I was arrested until this date it’s been 17 months. They can never repay me for that,” Cotton said finally through his tears. “ I want to tell kids how easy it is to get into something and how hard it is to get out.”

Evidence that surfaced during an unrelated Huntington Beach murder investigation suggests that three other men were responsible for stealing $75,000 from the Long Beach Naval Station on Feb. 11, 1988, and nearly $39,000 from a courier at the Queen Mary/Spruce Goose on Jan. 11, 1988, investigators say.

Prosecutor Has Doubts

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kirk Newkirk, who prosecuted Cotton, said that in 16 years of lawyering he has never seen a case like it.

“It’s Byzantine,” Newkirk said. “Personally I still believe he’s guilty. But I don’t want somebody sitting over there in state prison if there is some reasonable doubt of his guilt.”

What might have been an uneventful robbery case turned bizarre almost from the day Cotton was arrested in Gulfport, Miss., on April 28, 1988.

Even when offered a deal that would have assured his release within three months, Cotton refused, telling his lawyer: “If you were my dad, would you have me plead guilty to a felony I didn’t commit?” Deputy Public Defender Larry Thaxton said.

But at his trial, four eyewitnesses identified him as the man who committed both robberies. Prosecutors said he had worked for the very armored transport company that was held up, that it was an inside job, that Cotton had quit in a hurry days before the crime, never returning his uniform or claiming his last paycheck.

Cotton said he was in Mississippi when the robberies occurred, even admitting he was running drugs at the time, his lawyer said.

The defense argued that the eyewitness testimony was rife with inconsistency. One witness said Cotton was holding a gun. Another said he was not. One said Cotton was the older of two robbers. Another said he was the younger.

Juror Changes Her Mind

The jury convicted Cotton of the Naval Station robbery and failed to reach a verdict on the second charge.

A few days later, a juror named Wini Jackson changed her mind.

Prosecutors acknowledge that jurors sometimes have second thoughts, but Jackson made hers a crusade. She pleaded with the court to set aside the verdict. She filed a declaration renouncing her vote of guilty and asked for a new trial. She called FBI agents and private investigators and copied police reports never shown to the jury. She met with Cotton in jail and took to reading him the Scriptures on the phone several times a week.

“My life stopped,” said Jackson, a 45-year-old community affairs officer with the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services. “It’s not that I was obsessed with it, but if I’ve done something wrong, I cannot rest until it is right.”

Sentenced to 6 Years

Prosecutor Newkirk dismissed her protests, saying that if every juror’s doubt was acted upon, the justice system would “achieve meltdown.” On May 3, Long Beach Superior Court Judge Eugene J. Long sentenced Cotton to six years at Chuckawalla State Prison in Blythe.

Then, several weeks later, police and FBI agents working on a Huntington Beach murder stumbled upon a man who said he drove the getaway car in the holdups for which Cotton was blamed. The man claimed he had never seen or heard of Napoleon Cotton.

The district attorney’s office decided the new information posed enough reasonable doubt to reverse the conviction.

FBI agents would not discuss the case or release the names of the three new suspects. The judge signed the reversal order Friday and later refused to comment. Denis Petty, head deputy district attorney in Long Beach, said the new suspects already face other more serious charges and prosecution of the robberies “would not be worth the effort.”

Cotton’s release was delayed Monday when he was mistakenly put on a bus for the Long Beach courthouse. His mother and Jackson waited in the bleak jailhouse reception room sipping Cokes. When it appeared the release would be delayed another day, Jackson called the governor.

Going Home to Mississippi

Cotton says he is going home to Mississippi to be a truck driver and “think some.”

His mother, Earnest Cotton, said the family is considering filing a lawsuit against the state for wrongful imprisonment. She wondered aloud what could possibly compensate her son for 17 lost months.

Meanwhile, one of the eyewitnesses who named Cotton was recently shown a package of photographs that included the faces of the men FBI agents now say are responsible for the robberies. The defense attorney said the witness still picked out Napoleon Cotton.

Misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, defense attorney Thaxton said. He said justice was ultimately served. But Newkirk, still refusing to concede Cotton’s innocence, said the facts of the case are “so muddy” that the truth might never be known.