BATON ROUGE -- Saturday, Aug. 2, is the last full day to see a powerful display at the East Baton Rouge Main Library on Goodwood Boulevard.

It's 23 busts of inmates across Louisiana and one bust from Mississippi that were eventually exonerated after spending years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

Among those 24 men, they were incarcerated for a combined 668 years.

"They have allowed conversation to happen in our community that I couldn't have even imagined. We have watched people stand here and cry," the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition's Alexis Anderson said about the exhibit.

Each one of the men was exonerated by the Innocence Project, with 23 of them being exonerated by the Innocence Project New Orleans. A 24th bust was recently added that was made for Michael Anthony Williams, who was incarcerated for almost 24 years. Williams was exonerated by the Innocence Project in New York.

The sculptures, made from hydrostone, were created by Baton Rouge artist Becky Gottsegen.

"The exhibit is really to bring awareness to what's happening and the injustices in Louisiana, and I'm sure all over the country," Gottsegen said.

Gottsegen got the idea after the president of the Innocence Project New Orleans' board of directors asked her to do a portrait of Jerome Morgan, one of the men featured in the exhibit who spent nearly 20 years in prison. After attending an Innocence Project fundraiser, she decided on a broader project.

"My husband and I went to the Gala in New Orleans, and I decided that I was going to sculpt all of the men, so I started that project and ultimately ended up doing 23, Gottsegen said.

Gottsegen told WBRZ that the busts on display at the EBR Main Library are copies, with the original busts going to the men themselves.

The display features multiple men from East Baton Rouge. One of them is named Archie Williams, who was incarcerated back in the early 1980s at the age of 22.

"I was coming from a friend's, I was going to my mother's apartment, I was staying with my mother, and the police just surrounded me. They told me to get on the ground, and I was like, 'Get on the ground for what?' I didn't know what was going on," Williams said.

Williams was convicted of attempted murder, aggravated rape, and aggravated battery. He would spend the next 36 years and 2 months at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Williams wrote a letter to the Innocence Project in the 1990s, which soon began to re-examine his case. By 1999, the Innocence Project started requesting that the prosecution share more evidence, including other fingerprints lifted from the scene.

"It took 20 years to get that testing," Williams said.

In 2019, the 19th JDC commissioner ordered the prosecution to submit the fingerprints to a new FBI fingerprint database. The database matched the fingerprints to someone other than Williams. On March 21, 2019, Williams was finally exonerated.

Williams says that many become sad when they hear his story, but he wants people not to feel sorry for him.
"In my time in prison, I really had peace with God and I looked to God for the answer, the solution, and I do believe and trust in God," Williams said.

Since its inception in 2001, the Innocence Project New Orleans said it has freed or exonerated nearly 50 people.
As for the display, it was originally supposed to be taken down on Friday.

"We decided that we would wait and take it down over the weekend, and so now it's coming down on Sunday," Gottsegen said.