Reginald Adams, 61, was released Monday after spending 34 years in a New Orleans prison for a 1979 murder he did not commit. According to Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, Adams’ case stemmed from “intentional prosecutorial misconduct” and a false confession that was coerced by two New Orleans police detectives who helped convict Adams.
Adams was wrongfully convicted in October 1980 of first-degree murder of Cathy Ulfers, the wife of former New Orleans Policeman Ronald P. Ulfers Sr. Although Ronald Ulfers had been a suspect in his wife’s murder in 1979, he was never charged with the crime. Shockingly, Ulfers would later be convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his second wife.
Evidence against Adams was based entirely on his false confession—which was widely inaccurate and inconsistent with the known facts of the murder— to Detectives Martin Venezia and Frank Ruiz while in custody of the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s office. Additionally, then-prosecutors Ronald Bodenheimer and Harold J. Gilbert Jr., who had failed to turn over a supplemental police report in Adams’ trial, were “fully aware of the additional suspects as well as the recovery of the murder weapon and other physical evidence and that their handling of this case amounts to intentional prosecutorial misconduct,” according to a spokesman for District Attorney Cannizzaro. “I will not tolerate intentional misconduct on the part of police or prosecutors,” apologized Cannizzaro to Adams on behalf of the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office.
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