On February 8, 1975, following the lineups, police arrested Simmons and Roberts, and they were charged with capital murder. However, Simmons testified that on December 30, 1974, he was in Harvey, Louisiana and spent the day playing pool with friends. His alibi was confirmed by four witnesses.

In January 2023, Simmons’s attorneys Joseph Norwood and John Coylefiled filed an amended application for post-conviction relief which cited the failure of the prosecution to disclose the police report which said that Brown had initially identified other two men and noted that in fact Brown had identified four other individuals during the eight lineup procedures. The motion also noted that in addition to the four witnesses who testified at the trial that Simmons was in Harvey, there were two other witnesses present who were to testify similarly but they did not after Simmons’s defense lawyer denied their testimony as cumulative. The petition included affidavits from five more people who said that they saw Simmons in Harvey at the time of the crime.

So convicted despite plenty of eyewitnesses saying he was somewhere else at the time. In addition, even the trial prosecutor thought he may have been wrongfully convicted:

In 1995, Robert Mildfelt, the trial prosecutor, wrote a letter to Simmons saying that the only witness [Brown] who identified him had wanted to think about the identification “overnight.” He wrote that Brown had described Simmons as more than six feet tall and over 200 pounds, “a physical description greatly different from Mr. Simmons [sic] stature at the time.

No word on why he put the man on trial with no evidence putting him at the scene and plenty of evidence putting him miles away. But really, we can all guess the reason.