Female with Ville Platte roots plays role in release of wrongfully convicted man

A female with Ville Platte roots recently played a major role in the release of a man who spent 36 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.
The woman playing a part in the release of Archie Williams, is Kinasiyumki Kimble, also known as Kina.
Kimble is the daughter of Ville Platte native Phylis Galllow Kimble and Odell Kimble of Oakdale. She is an Oakdale High graduate, who earned a graduate degree from Grambling State University and a law degree from Southern University’s law school.
The opportunity she was presented to change the course of one man’s future, who had been accused of rapping and stabbing a woman in her Baton Rouge home, was a result of her position as the 19th Judicial District Court Commissioner.
In her role as commissioner, a position she earned back in 2018, she was afforded the opportunity to order fingerprint testing on prints that were found at the scene of the crime that occurred in December of 1982.
According to The New York Times, at the time of Williams’s trial, it was known that the fingerprints from the scene were not his; however, he was still found guilty.
Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar C. Moore, III, ran the fingerprints through a national database again in 2009, but there was not match.
With the ever changing and upgrading database, a match was found for the fingerprints when Kimble ordered the testing be done again, which took place on Tuesday, March 14.
The New York based media outlet, reported that within hours of testing the fingerprints collected at the crime scene a match came back to a serial rapist.
Under Louisiana law, Williams will be entitled to a maximum of $250,000 for is wrongful incarceration.
The case that sent the innocent man to prison for more than half of his life, rested mostly on the fact that the victim identified Williams in a lineup as her rapist.
In an article from The New York Times, it states the prosecutor in this case. Jeff Hollingsworth, told jurors, “Mr. Williams’s face was seared in the memory of the victim.”
However, Williams’s lawyer, Kathleen S. Richey, told the jury that the victim described a different man. She explained the description was of a taller man, and that the victim had misidentified the placement of a scar. Richey’s main focus however was the fact that the fingerprint did not match the defendant’s.
Today, it appears her argument was correct, and the individual the fingerprint matched went on to commit an attempted rape and burglary, as well as four other rapes in 1985 and 1986.
The New York Times article stated, “Mr. Williams said he bore no grudge against the victims for wrongly identifying him at the trial 36 years ago.” He said, “God does not let me hold grudges anymore.”