An Innocent Man Who Imagined the World as It Should Be – by Jesse Wegman – NYT

“In the end, John Thompson got to live 14 years as a free man — the same number he spent on Louisiana’s death row, condemned for a 1984 murder he didn’t commit.Seven times the state set a date for his execution. Weeks before the seventh, in 1999, a private investigator hired by his lawyers discovered a crime-lab report that prosecutors had hidden from the defense, and that led eventually to Mr. Thompson’s exoneration in 2003.Some exonerees are so relieved to be out of prison that they never look back. That was not Mr. Thompson. After his release (the jury at his retrial acquitted him in 35 minutes), Mr. Thompson set out to hold to account the prosecutors and other officials who had fought for so long to kill him.”