March 2, 1995. New Orleans, Louisiana. After leaving a restaurant with his date in the French Quarter, 25-year old Michael Gerardi is fatally gunned down by a trio of robbers. Weeks later, 16-year old Shareef Cousin is implicated in the crime and charged with first-degree murder. Even though Shareef seems to have an airtight alibi, Michael’s date identifies him as the shooter at trial. Shareef is found guilty and becomes one of the youngest people to ever be sentenced to death, but the verdict is surrounded with controversy. It turns out the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office committed egregious acts of prosecutorial misconduct, which included withholding exculpatory evidence, doctoring a tape-recorded interview, and illegally detaining defence witnesses. After nearly three years on death row, Shareef’s conviction is overturned, but Michael Gerardi’s real killers are never found. On this week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly”, we chronicle a senseless murder which led to one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice you’ll ever find.
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Additional Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareef_Cousin
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3126
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,138469,00.html