USA - Louisiana. Judge Jerome Winsberg overturned the death sentence of David Brown, 41, Black

Retired Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Jerome Winsberg overturned the death sentence of David Brown. Brown, 41, Black, was one of the "Angola 5," a group of Angola State Penitentiary lifers who were convicted of killing a prison guard, Capt. David Knapps, 49, during a failed 1999 escape attempt. Judge Winsberg ruled today that prosecutors withheld a confession by another of the accused killers until after David Brown went on trial in 2011, according to Brown's attorneys. He ordered a new sentencing hearing. A state prison inmate had given a statement saying Barry S. Edge told him that only he and a 3rd man, Jeffrey Cameron Clark, committed Knapps' murder. The statement emerged only when prosecutors turned it over before Edge's trial last year. Edge, the last of the 5 to stand trial, was convicted of 1st-degree murder, but a jury fell 3 votes shy of a unanimous verdict on the death penalty, leaving Edge to serve a new life sentence. Brown was already serving a life sentence for 2nd-degree murder in a 1992 killing. Knapps was killed during an escape from the Educational Building of the prison's camp. A 6th inmate was shot and killed in the escape attempt. Juries convicted 4 of the 5 inmates who were prosecuted for the killing, sending 2 of them, Brown and Clark, to death row. Edge, Robert Carley and David Mathis received life sentences.