A Kentucky woman who was unjustly convicted and sentenced for the murder of a man in 2008 was just awarded nearly $3 million after she sued a city government and its detectives, alleging they framed her for the killing.
Johnetta Carr is one of the youngest female exonerees in the U.S. Her case goes back to January 2006, when she was arrested for the robbery and murder of Planes Adolphe. She was 16 at the time.
Planes Adolphe’s Murder Case and Carr’s Conviction
In October 2005, Adolphe, a cab driver and Haitian immigrant, was found dead in front of his apartment building in Louisville, Kentucky.
Investigators say that his wrists and feet were bound with tape, and he was strangled with an electrical cord. His cellphone and wallet were stolen, and his cab was found abandoned a few miles from where his body was recovered.
According to Carr’s lawsuit, she and 36-year-old Adolphe had been dating for only two months, and the teen had never visited his apartment.
Despite there being no physical or DNA evidence tying Carr to the murder, detectives arrested her as well as two other innocent teenagers — Carla Sowers and Shawndric Williams.
Carr had an alibi for the night of Adolphe’s murder that multiple people could attest to — she was at a sleepover with several people, including Sowers and Williams.
However, according to the complaint, detectives fed multiple people fabricated statements that would ultimately pin the robbery and murder on Carr.
During Sowers’ hours-long interrogation, she maintained her innocence and insisted she knew nothing about the murder. But the detective resorted to coercive tactics and fed her false statements to repeat that would implicate Carr and Williams for the crime, the complaint states.
Another detective who later spoke with a female witness at the sleepover also allegedly fed her a fabricated statement, saying that she could not say whether Carr left the house that night while everyone was sleeping.
After Carr was jailed at a juvenile facility, detectives began obtaining reports from jailhouse informants, one of whom claimed that Carr confessed that she, Williams, and Sowers were all involved in the robbery and murder.
That informant later admitted that detectives told her to lie about what Carr said. Sowers also recanted her statements.
During her interrogations, Carr maintained her innocence and her alibi.
Her complaint stated that during the interview, one detective was “aggressive” with her, “threatened to put her in jail for life,” and called her a “a murderer, a b—h, and a wh—e, and “refused to let her call her mother.”
The lawsuit states that the detective delivered false testimony to a grand jury, and Carr was formally indicted in April 2006.
After spending two years in a juvenile facility, she took an Alford plea in May 2008 to second-degree manslaughter, first-degree conspiracy to commit robbery, second-degree conspiracy to commit burglary, and tampering with physical evidence. An Alford plea allows defendants to plead guilty to charges without admitting to criminal acts.
Carr was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She was released on parole in December 2009 and completed parole in June 2018. In total, she spent more than 12 years either in jail or on parole.
According to Carr’s lawsuit, in the days after Adolphe’s murder, one of his friends told detectives that a man named Steve Louis was the culprit they were looking for. A witness told police that Louis allegedly threatened to kill Adolphe and learned that someone else helped him carry out the killing. Another witness also informed detectives that Louis was threatening people who were talking to police about the murder.
When police interviewed Louis, he shifted the blame to Carr and said that he thought she was somehow involved, leading police to investigate her, the complaint states. He was fatally shot in 2012.
Carr’s Exoneration, Federal Lawsuit, and $2.9 Million Award
After petitioning Gov. Matt Bevin about her case, Carr was pardoned in December 2019.
The following year, she filed a federal lawsuit against Louisville, Jefferson County, and several detectives and officers on their combined police department, alleging investigative misconduct, malicious prosecution, and violations of her constitutional rights.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, a judge dismissed the lawsuit in July 2021, a decision that Carr appealed.
In June 2022, a federal court of appeals reversed the dismissal and reinstated the lawsuit.
In June 2023, the defendants formally denied her allegations in an official court filing, asserted their rights to immunity, and claimed that Carr failed to sufficiently state her claim.
Carr finally recently settled the case with the city for $2.9 million.
Since her exoneration, she has publicly advocated for Kentucky to start providing restitution to exonerees. The state is one of 12 states that don’t compensate citizens who were wrongly convicted and later exonerated.
A bill that just cleared Kentucky’s state house earlier this year would award exonerees $65,000 for each year they were in prison, $32,500 for each year they were on parole, and a tuition waiver to any college in Kentucky.
