Vincent Simmons

In 2017 Simmons remains incarcerated in Angola, having served nearly 40 years. The Vincent Simmons Project is an organization dedicated to raising awareness about his case and gathering funds for his defense.

In addition, Stack directed and produced The Farm: 10 Down (2009), about the surviving men of the six he had featured, 10 years later. Simmons is featured as one of the survivors and continues to maintain his innocence.

Jonathan Stack, one of the directors and producers of that film, returned to Angola and Avoyelles Parish to explore more about Simmons and his case. He hired a private investigator to talk with Simmons' family, as well as police officials, prosecutor Eddie Knoll (who served until 2003), one juror from the trial, witnesses, and people in the town and parish to understand more about Simmons' life. Two defense attorneys commented on the conduct of the trial and issues with the lack of exculpatory evidence given to the defense. (This was disputed by the prosecutor.) Stack arranged a meeting between Simmons and the Sanders twins who had accused him of rape 20 years before. Simmons is the sole subject of a follow-up documentary Shadows of Doubt: Vincent Simmons (1999), which is now available for viewing on YouTube.

Simmons is one of six subjects of the documentary The Farm: Life In Angola Prison (1998) (shown on HBO). He is the sole subject of a follow-up documentary Shadows of Doubt: Vincent Simmons (1999), which explored his case, its weaknesses, and his severe sentence. He is one of the subjects of The Farm: 10 Down (2009), which returned 10 years later to the survivors among the six men featured in the 1998 film.

Simmons has been featured in three documentaries, one that was focused primarily on him and his case. He is one of six inmate subjects of the documentary The Farm: Life In Angola Prison (1998) (shown on HBO and available on Netflix), which won an Emmy Award and numerous others, and was nominated for an Academy Award. It included a painful scene of Simmons' appeal to the parole board, which turned him down with little discussion, and outright dismissal of evidence with which he tried to show his innocence, including evidence records.

In 1995 Louisiana passed a law imposing the death penalty for rape of children under the age of 10. Its state supreme court review of the law did not evaluate "the troubling way in which the death penalty as a punishment for rape had been used along racial lines–given mostly to black men accused of raping white women–reflected in the fact that 405 of the 455 men executed for rape in the previous five decades had been black." The law was overturned by the US Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), which ruled that the death penalty for child rape was unconstitutional as "cruel and unusual punishment".

He was not granted a copy of these documents until 1993. He learned that the doctor who examined the twins reported that Sharon Sanders' hymen was intact three weeks after the date of the alleged rape and that she was a virgin. According to the report, she told the doctor she was not sure if Simmons' penis had penetrated her. The doctor's report on her and her sister noted that neither had any bruises or signs of physical injury. In violation of the US Supreme Court's 1963 ruling on the prosecution being required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense, the prosecution had suppressed these medical examiner's reports during discovery. Simmons' court-appointed attorney, Harold Brouillette, apparently had made no effort to attain them.

On May 22, 1977, Karen and Sharon Sanders of Marksville, Avoyelles Parish, 14-year-old white twins, reported to family that they had been raped by a black man two weeks before, on May 9. In statements to police, the twins claimed that they, along with their 18-year-old cousin Keith Laborde (revealed to have been 20 at the time), had encountered a black man at the 7-11 in Marksville. They gave him a ride, and he produced a knife and forced all three to get into the trunk of the car. After driving to an isolated location, he took out each twin and raped her separately, then returned the three to town and set them free at the cemetery. The twins said that their attacker threatened to have his buddies come after them if they told anyone. At the time of their statements to the police, the twins did not describe or identify their attacker, saying that "all blacks looks alike."

In Coker v. Georgia (decided June 29, 1977), the US Supreme Court overturned any use of capital punishment as the penalty for rape, ruling that it was "cruel and unusual punishment" under the 8th Amendment to the Constitution. By order of the court, inmates on Death Row for aggravated rape were to have their sentences judicially amended to the next level of severity; in Louisiana, convicted rapists on Death Row had their sentences commuted to a maximum of 20 years in prison. This ruling was made before Simmons' case was tried.

In 1977 the Louisiana legislature amended the death penalty statute, C.Cr.P. 933. R.S. 14:42, by Act 343 of 1977. This law "took effect on September 9, 1977 and provided a new penalty, one other than death." It established a penalty of life for the crime of aggravated rape and imposed a 50-year sentence on those convicted of attempted aggravated rape.

Simmons was tried before a jury of eleven white men and one black woman in July 1977, with counsel by a court-appointed attorney. One of the assistant DAs to Knoll was his wife, Jeannette Knoll. She was elected in 1982 as a state circuit court judge, and in 1996 to the State Supreme Court, from which she retired in 2016.

Beginning in 1977, Simmons filed repeated legal motions to view the evidence file pertaining to his case, which included police reports, arrest reports, victims' statements, trial transcripts, the medical examiner's (coroner) report of his examination of the twins, and other documents.

The United States Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia (1972) had ruled that states' laws on implementing the death penalty were so arbitrary in application as to be unconstitutional and ordered them to be rewritten. Executions of persons on death rows were suspended and the respective state courts were ordered to amend their sentences to the next lower level of severity, generally life imprisonment. The sentences of more than 600 persons on death row were commuted to life; 587 of these individuals were men.

These facts alone might have presented "reasonable doubt" to the jury about the facts of the case. Simmons claims that he is legally entitled to an evidentiary hearing under Brady v. Maryland (1963). In this case the United States Supreme Court held that the prosecution must turn over all evidence that might exonerate the defendant (exculpatory evidence) to the defense.

Vincent Simmons (born February 17, 1952) is a life prisoner at Angola State Prison in Louisiana, where he was sentenced to 100 years in July 1977 after being convicted of the "attempted aggravated rapes" of 14-year-old twin sisters Karen and Sharon Sanders of Marksville. Simmons has maintained his innocence throughout. By 1999 Simmons had filed numerous habeas corpus writs, but had not gained an evidentiary hearing by a Louisiana court. After receiving a copy of his evidence file in 1993, he had found that it contained exculpatory evidence that was not given to his court-appointed attorney by the District Attorney, and that there were inconsistencies in reports and statements of victims and witnesses.