← All Cases / Episode #294
The Case of Jarvis Ballard
📻 Episode #294
🎙️ Hosted by Guest Host Patrick Pursley
📅 Sep 26, 2022
About This Episode
On January 10, 1998, a 60-year-old woman was robbed and sexually assaulted in her home in Violet, LA. Upon his arrest, Ulysses Pierre implicated his cousin, Jarvis Ballard, in the crime. After severe abuse from detectives, Ballard produced a confession and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for aggravated rape.
Case status as carried in this site's original 2026 profiles. Independent record verification is rolling out episode by episode — statuses are being re-checked against court and registry sources and date-stamped as verified.
The Case
On January 10, 1998, a 60-year-old woman was robbed and sexually assaulted in her home in Violet, LA. Upon his arrest, Ulysses Pierre implicated his cousin, Jarvis Ballard, in the crime. After severe abuse from detectives, Ballard produced a confession and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for aggravated rape.
Patrick was wrongfully convicted for a 1993 murder in Rockford, IL, for which he spent nearly 24 years in prison. Remarkably, he ended up writing the law that set him free. Patrick and Jarvis met for the first time in person at the 2022 Innocence Network Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Their shared experience of mistreatment by the criminal justice system gave them a lot to talk about.
https://ip-no.org/what-we-do/free-innocent-prisoners/client-profiles/jarvis-ballard/
https://www.gofundme.com/f/jarvis-ballard-freedom-fund
This episode is part of a special series in our Wrongful Conviction podcast feed of 15 episodes focused on individual cases of wrongful incarceration, guest hosted by formerly incarcerated returning citizens and leading criminal justice advocates, award-winning journalists and progressive influencers.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
In Their Own Words — transcript excerpts
Short excerpts from the episode's official published transcript, with timestamps — listen from these moments, or read the full transcript via the podcast's own platforms.
00:03:48“Speaker 2: and what you experienced. Speaker 5: Well, I grew up with a single mother of two. Speaker 5: My father got killed me nineteen eighty two. He was murdered, Speaker 5: shot nineteen times, ten and the eight. Speaker 3: So the word how were you wouldn't go curb.”
00:14:12“Speaker 4: and not only that, we have the highest exoneration rate Speaker 4: per capita in the country. And so when you put Speaker 4: those numbers together, you wonder what is really going on Speaker 4: here in the South. The fact of the matter is, Speaker 4: you know, Jarvis was represented by a public defender system”
00:24:19“Speaker 5: let what happened to us, you know, distraw so have Speaker 5: us to the point where we got a lot of Speaker 5: hate and bitterness in us. We don't do that. We Speaker 5: describe for better. And he teaches me that every day Speaker 5: and that's the journey. I'm all right now, I really”
Listen to the Episode
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