Exonerate Ronald Long

Please sign this petition to hold the NJ Conviction Review Unit accountable

By Ronald Long

I spent the last 36 years locked up for a crime I didn’t commit. This week I went to court to request DNA testing and other evidence to prove my innocence. The result can go a couple of ways. Superior Court Justice Patricia Wild could agree and order the DNA testing or she could agree with the state and deny the testing, in which case I would have to apply for another appeal.

I was asked why does this hearing matter so much to me since I’m already out of prison, and I guess that’s a good question. Well, I’m the guy who’s been helping other people for years and years and years as a ‘jailhouse lawyer.’ In prison, I became of the best so-called jailhouse lawyer in the New Jersey prison sentence. I wrote thousands of briefs and got hundreds of cases overturned. I would get everybody out, except me. I am the guy that other people come to for that type of fight, and I always tell them ‘don’t give up.’ So now I say I will never give up.

I’m fighting not only to exonerate myself but also to help other innocent people who are still locked up. They don’t have any help. So I can’t give up. Giving up has never been an option for me. I’m going to court and I know all the kind of tricks they use in the courtroom to build a false narrative. But this is going to be different because I know the case and because I kept the case alive in litigation. So it’s very important to me. It matters a lot to me and it matters for all the other people who are dependent on me.

I was a merchant marine waiting for my next ship in 1982. I went to Atlantic City to visit family while I waited. While I was there, somebody told the Atlantic City police that they saw me with a 25-caliber handgun, which is true. But I wasn’t caught with a gun and I never had anything to do with any crimes. That year, I was indicted on charges that I shot a man in his apartment and killed a liquor store employee.

In the middle of my 1985 trial, a cop came in and said they found a Newport cigarette butt that was left by the killer at the scene of a third shooting at a gas station in Atlantic City. They said it was the same gun that shot the other two men. I was charged with that third shooting, but that charge was later dismissed because the witness said I wasn’t the person who shot him. But when I went to trial on the other two shootings, the evidence in that third shooting was re-introduced. That’s the moment I knew I was going to be convicted. They used all of my county jail receipts to prove that I smoked Newports.

The prosecution’s first excuse for not testing that cigarette butt for DNA: They told the court that they didn’t have to provide it because they said I confessed to my fellow inmate. But then that confession was thrown out. Later, prosecutors said they lost the evidence, and nobody was required to look for it.

Prosecutors also lied to the jury, telling them that the cigarette butt was tested for any evidence of DNA and came back negative. It was never tested. There’s a new word coined by the courts for this, it’s called ‘dry labbing’ - giving reports for evidence that hasn’t been tested.

But it would take me over 20 years to get the lab reports and the receipts for evidence. And I was a pest. I used the New Jersey Open Public Records Law and I got records on microfiche that had been suppressed for years. I found the receipts. Now we know where the evidence is.

Several of my friends, they endured the nightmare of wrong convictions. I ride on their shoulders and people will ride on my shoulders. The last case in New Jersey that was of significance was that of Eric Kelley and Ralph Lee. That’s the catalyst of forming the New Jersey Attorney General’s conviction review unit. The DNA on that case was on a hat. I’m seeking DNA on a cigarette butt and on the evidence involving bullet shell casings.

The DNA is not mine, but I also want to know who it belongs to because there were other people who were suspects in this case. There is viable evidence to prove my innocence.

The state has always fought to block me from getting DNA testing. The Atlantic County prosecutor’s office, to be specific, has always fought with different excuses to block DNA testing. Why? Because they never want to admit that they got it wrong. They never wanted to admit that they put an innocent person in prison.

And I’m here to tell you that I am just one person but there are many, many more, hundreds of people in prisons in the New Jersey/New York area, sitting in prison and innocent.

Ronald Long was paroled Dec. 13, 2018 after being incarcerated for the death of Albert Compton on Dec. 11, 1982 in Atlantic City, and the shooting of another man several hours earlier. He has maintained his innocence during the 36 years that he was incarcerated.

The above was taken from an article published at https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/09/im-an-innocent-man-who-spent-36-years-in-prison-a-dna-test-will-prove-it.html

Ronald Long is supported in his bid for exoneration by former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey