Orleans Parish DA extracted 2019 guilty plea from Elvis Brooks despite knowing it had withheld exculpatory fingerprint evidence
On October 15, 2019, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office, then led by Leon Cannizzaro, secured a guilty plea from Elvis Brooks to a reduced manslaughter charge -- roughly two weeks after an internal meeting in which a prosecutor from Brooks's original 1977 trial admitted, per a memo Brooks's legal team later found, that fingerprint evidence excluding Brooks had never been turned over to the defense. A court vacated the plea and the underlying 1977 conviction in 2022 after finding the withholding, but the Louisiana Attorney General has since fought to reinstate the case and block Brooks's compensation claim.