BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — As 18-year-old Bobby Gumpright rode his bike home from his bartending job in New Orleans in 1999, he began to concoct a story about why he didn’t have any money. In the throes of addiction and not wanting to admit he had spent his paycheck on drugs, Gumpright lied to his father and said a Black man had robbed him at gunpoint.

The fabrication spun out of control when a detective, armed with photos of potential suspects, asked Gumpright to point to the culprit.

Across town, Jermaine Hudson, a 20-year-old Black man, was pulled over for a traffic stop and taken into custody. He figured he would soon be released to go home to his pregnant wife and 10-month-old daughter.

Instead, he was charged with a crime he didn’t commit.

Even though two jurors didn’t believe Gumpright’s story, Hudson was found guilty by a split jury, a practice that 20 years later would be deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, which acknowledged its origins from racist Jim Crow laws.

Nearly 1,000 people convicted by split juries remain in prison in Louisiana.

Now, 25 years after Gumpright’s lies sent Hudson to prison, the two unlikely friends are sharing their story in a push for legislation to give some of those people a chance to have their cases retired.

A split decision

As Hudson sat in the courtroom in 2001, he grappled with a reality that he didn’t create.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought my life would have been at a standstill … missing out on my kids’ life, on my life,” Hudson told The Associated Press last month.

Two witnesses testified: the officer who responded to the 911 call and Gumpright.

As Gumpright took the stand, Hudson prayed the stranger would acknowledge the wrongful allegation and his nightmare would end.

A prosecutor asked Gumpright, who is white, if he was sure it was Hudson who robbed him. He responded, “110%.”

In a 10-2 vote, the jury convicted Hudson of armed robbery. The judge sentenced him to 99 years in prison.

A practice rooted in racism

At the time of Hudson’s trial, only Louisiana and Oregon allowed convictions if one or two jurors disagreed.

Louisiana adopted the practice in 1898, fueled by efforts to maintain white supremacy after the Civil War. Diluting the voice of Black jurors allowed the often-white majority to determine the outcome.

In 2018, Louisiana voters did away with the use of nonunanimous jury convictions, two years before the Supreme Court ruling.

Of the 1,500 people in Louisiana prisons from split jury convictions at that time, about 80% were Black and most were serving life sentences, according to a Project of Justice Initiative analysis.

Following the high court decision, Oregon’s Supreme Court granted new trials to hundreds of people. But Louisiana’s Supreme Court rejected arguments to apply the ruling retroactively, leaving people like Hudson locked up with scarce legal options or waiting on a miracle.

Waiting 22 years for freedom

Years of Hudson’s life dwindled away as he missed the birth of his second daughter, graduations and other milestones. He prayed Gumpright would “come forward with the truth.”

“This can’t be my final destination. This can’t be the end of my life,” Hudson often thought.

Gumpright tried to numb his guilt with drugs and alcohol, but it never went away. “I was either gonna kill myself or I was gonna come forward,” he told the AP.

In 2021, Hudson was preparing to take a new deal: plead guilty to armed robbery in exchange for a sentence of time served. Just days before the bargain was finalized, Hudson received news he long waited for. Gumpright, who had entered a drug treatment facility, had come clean about his lies.

After spending 22 years behind bars, Hudson was released.

A few months later, Gumpright answered a phone call from a blocked number.

“I bet you never thought you’d hear from me,” Hudson said.

Fixing an injustice

A packed committee room at the state Capitol fell silent last month as a man wearing a suit and tie took to the microphone.

“My name is Bobby Gumpright,” he said, his hand trembling. “I come before you as a citizen of Louisiana. … I’m also a man who lives each day with the consequences of a terrible sin.”

Gumpright told lawmakers his story, the true one. Sitting behind him was Hudson.

The pair first met in New Orleans, six months after Hudson’s release. They have spent the past two years advocating for a bill that would give inmates convicted by split juries the opportunity to ask for a retrial. The measure does not automatically grant a retrial.

The duo say their story is an example of how an innocent man can be imprisoned for decades under an unconstitutional practice and that it’s never too late to right a wrong.

“I couldn’t change the past, but I could refuse to live the lie any longer while injustice continued,” Gumpright told lawmakers. “Louisiana can’t change the past. But Louisiana can refuse to let its injustice live on.”

The measure failed last year, but a legislative committee backed a similar bill in April. It still needs approval from the governor, House and Senate, which could debate it this week

People cheered as the bill cleared its first hurdle. Gumpright and Hudson hugged, holding each other up, as they cried tears of joy.

An unlikely bond

Both men said they needed one another to heal.

Hudson wanted to know why Gumpright lied. Gumpright sought forgiveness.

“I’m not the type of man to hold grudges or to hate anyone,” Hudson said. “I have a forgiving heart. And in order for me to really move on I forgave him, because I understood what he was going through.”

Sober for four years, Gumpright, 44, is now an addiction counselor. Hudson, 47, moved to Texas, got married, bought a house, is starting a business and spends time with his two grandsons.

Gumpright attended Hudson’s housewarming and met his family. They text each other words of encouragement every day and keep photos of each other close by.

“My friend? That’s an understatement,” Hudson said about his relationship with Gumpright. “He’s my brother.”

Sara Cline, The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — At the biggest jewelry center in the United States, Alberto Hernandez fired up his machine on a recent day and waited until it glowed bright orange inside before shoveling in an assortment of rings, earrings and necklaces weighing about as much as a bar of soap: just under 100 grams, or 3.2 troy ounces.

Minutes later, the bubbling liquid metal was cooling in a rectangular cast the size of a woman’s shoe. An X-ray machine determined it was 56.5% gold, making it worth $177,000 based on the price of gold that day.

As gold prices soar to record highs during global economic jitters, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gold are circulating through the doors of St. Vincent Jewelry Center in downtown Los Angeles on any given day.

Many of the center’s 500 independent tenants, which include jewelers, gold refiners and assayers, say they have never seen such a surge in customers.

“Right now, we’re seeing a lot of rappers and stuff melting their big pieces,” said Alberto’s nephew, Sabashden Hernandez, who works at A&M Precious Metals. “We’re getting a lot of new customers who are just getting all of their grandfather’s stuff, melting it down pretty much.”

Gold’s current rally comes as President Donald Trump issues ever-changing announcements on tariffs, roiling financial markets and threatening to reignite inflation.

In response, people across the country are flocking to sell or melt down their old jewelry for quick cash, including middlemen like pawn shop owners. Others, thinking their money might be safer in gold than in the volatile stock market, are snapping it up just as fast.

Los Angeles jeweler Olivia Kazanjian said people are even bringing in family heirlooms.

“They’re melting things with their family’s wedding dates and things from the 1800s,” Kazanjian said.

She recently paid a client for a 14-karat gold woven bracelet with intricate blue enamel work that could be turned into a brooch. The customer walked away with $3,200 for the amount of gold contained in the piece measured in troy ounces, the standard for precious metals equivalent to 31 grams.

But Kazanjian doesn’t plan to melt the piece. The real artistic and historical value was a lot more, she said.

“It’s just stunning … and you won’t see that kind of craftsmanship again,” Kazanjian said, adding she has persuaded some customers to change their minds about melting items. “It’s a piece of history, and if you’re lucky enough to inherit it, it’s a piece of your family.”

Businesses on the sales side of the action, offering gold bars and other material, also are working hard to keep up with the frenzy.

“Stuff comes in and it goes right out,” said Edwin Feijoo, who owns Stefko Cash for Gold in Pennsylvania and receives shipments from customers across the U.S. looking to sell their gold. “Everybody’s busy right now.”

Business hasn’t been good for everyone, though.

For some jewelers who source their products from places abroad like Italy, Turkey and China, the combination of high gold prices and added tariffs have cut into profit margins and hurt demand.

“Our profit margins are so razor thin here,” said Puzant Berberian, whose family founded V&P Jewelry inside St. Vincent in 1983. Berberian said he recently paid an extra $16,000 on a package from overseas.

Customers also are feeling “sticker shock” when they can’t afford the things they used to. A chunky, 14-karat gold bracelet weighing about 10 grams (0.32 troy ounces) might have sold for around $600 last year, but now it’s closer to $900, Berberian said.

Some believe those trends could continue, both for consumers and businesses.

Customers hoping to buy bullion “think gold will go up” even more, according to Sam Nguyen, whose business, Newport Gold Post Inc., has bought and sold gold and other precious metals at St. Vincent for five years. While gold has cooled from its record high of $3,500 per troy ounce, Nguyen thinks it could reach $4,000 to $5,000 by year’s end.

Jeff Clark agrees. The founder of The Gold Advisor, which provides investment advice, said he wouldn’t be surprised if gold prices continue rising since the metal is considered a haven for people to park their money when there is anxiety about a possible recession.

“History shows it has gone much higher in the past,” Clark said, referring to a frenzy in the 1970s when the average price of gold increased 17-fold amid double-digit inflation rates. “If the fear and uncertainty continues in the general populace, the prices are going to keep going up.”

Jaimie Ding, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller says President Donald Trump is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, he says the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government.

Such a move would be aimed at migrants as part of the Republican president’s broader crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The Constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters outside the White House on Friday.

“So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

What is habeas corpus?

The Latin term means “that you have the body.” Federal courts use a writ of habeas corpus to bring a prisoner before a neutral judge to determine if imprisonment is legal.

Habeas corpus was included in the Constitution as an import from English common law. Parliament enacted the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which was meant to ensure that the king released prisoners when the law did not justify confining them.

The Constitution’s Suspension Clause, the second clause of Section 9 of Article I, states that habeas corpus “shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”

Has it been suspended previously?

Yes. The United States has suspended habeas corpus under four distinct circumstances during its history. Those usually involved authorization from Congress, something that would be nearly impossible today — even at Trump’s urging — given the narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus multiple times amid the Civil War, beginning in 1861 to detain suspected spies and Confederate sympathizers. He ignored a ruling from Roger Taney, who was the Supreme Court chief justice but was acting in the case as a circuit judge. Congress then authorized suspending it in 1863, which allowed Lincoln to do so again.

Congress acted similarly under President Ulysses S. Grant, suspending habeas corpus in parts of South Carolina under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, it was meant to counter violence and intimidation of groups opposing Reconstruction in the South.

Habeas corpus was suspended in two provinces of the Philippines in 1905, when it was a U.S. territory and authorities were worried about the threat of an insurrection, and in Hawaii after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, but before it became a state in 1959.

Writing before becoming a Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett co-authored a piece stating that the Suspension Clause “does not specify which branch of government has the authority to suspend the privilege of the writ, but most agree that only Congress can do it.”

Could the Trump administration do it?

It can try. Miller suggested that the U.S. is facing “an invasion” of migrants. That term was used deliberately, though any effort to suspend habeas corpus would spark legal challenges questioning whether the country was facing an invasion, let alone presenting extraordinary threats to public safety.

Federal judges have so far been skeptical of the Trump administration’s past efforts to use extraordinary powers to make deportations easier, and that could make suspending habeas corpus even tougher.

Trump argued in March that the U.S. was facing an “invasion” of Venezuelan gang members and evoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime authority he has tried to use to speed up mass deportations.

His administration acted to swiftly deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua to a notorious prison in El Salvador, leading to a series of legal fights.

Federal courts around the country, including in New York, Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania, have since blocked the administration’s uses of the Alien Enemies Act for many reasons, including amid questions about whether the country is truly facing an invasion.

If courts are already skeptical, how could habeas corpus be suspended?

Miller, who has been fiercely critical of judges ruling against the administration, advanced the argument that the judicial branch may not get to decide.

“Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases,” he said Friday.

That statute was approved by Congress in 1952 and there were important amendments in 1996 and 2005. Legal scholars note that it does contain language that could funnel certain cases to immigration courts, which are overseen by the executive branch.

Still, most appeals in those cases would largely be handled by the judicial branch, and they could run into the same issues as Trump’s attempts to use the Alien Enemies Act.

Have other administrations tried this?

Technically not since Pearl Harbor, though habeas corpus has been at the center of some major legal challenges more recently than that.

Republican President George W. Bush did not move to suspend habeas corpus after the Sept. 11 attacks, but his administration subsequently sent detainees to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, drawing lawsuits from advocates who argued the administration was violating it and other legal constitutional protections.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that Guantanamo detainees had a constitutional right to habeas corpus, allowing them to challenge their detention before a judge. That led to some detainees being released from U.S. custody.

___

Associated Press writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report.

Will Weissert, The Associated Press

President Donald Trump and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry have discussed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow challenging U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy in next year’s Republican primary, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The Republican governor’s promotion of a new challenger to Cassidy reflects unease within Trump’s base about the two-term senator. Cassidy voted to convict Trump in Trump’s 2021 impeachment trial over the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And Cassidy, who is a medical doctor, expressed doubts about Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the nation’s health secretary before voting to confirm Kennedy.

Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and have a favorable electoral map in the 2026 midterms to help them keep control. But Cassidy is among several GOP senators up for reelection next year who are facing challenging primaries over past moves to distance themselves from Trump.

For the senator, “the biggest hurdle is going to be the impeachment vote. That’s what he has to overcome. And I don’t think he has the mindset to say, ‘I made a mistake,’” said Eddie Rispone, the Republican nominee for Louisiana governor in 2019 and a Cassidy supporter. “And Louisiana is a big Trump state.”

Landry, a close Trump ally, spoke last month with the president about Letlow as a potential Senate candidate, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation. They were granted anonymity to share contents of a conversation they were not authorized to discuss publicly.

A spokesperson for Letlow declined to comment on a potential campaign for Senate or the discussion between Landry and Trump. Landry’s office declined to comment.

Landry, elected in 2023, has been advocating for Letlow to consider a run, according to the people who confirmed their April conversation about Letlow. A Senate seat would be a safe bet for a Republican given that Trump received 60% of the vote in carrying Louisiana last year.

Republican insiders describe Landry and Cassidy not as close, but as having a cordial working relationship despite a difference in their feelings of loyalty to Trump, which creates some distance between Cassidy and segments of the party base in the state.

“Senator Cassidy delivers conservative results for the people of Louisiana,” Cassidy spokesperson Ashley Bosch said in a statement. “He’s worked hard to support the President’s agenda and we’re confident voters will re-elect him next year.”

Letlow is a three-term Republican representative from northeast Louisiana. She won the seat in a special election in March 2021 after her husband, Luke, had been elected but died of complications from COVID-19.

Letlow sits on the influential House Appropriations Committee. Her district was a mostly rural swath of northeast Louisiana when she arrived in Congress. It has shifted as a result of a redistricting map ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 and now also include parts of metropolitan Baton Rouge, where Cassidy lives.

Cassidy already faces one major challenger, Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming, a former congressman.

Some Republican activists in the state condemned Cassidy for his 2021 vote to convict Trump, a vote Cassidy said afterward he was “at peace” casting.

The state Republican executive committee voted unanimously to censure Cassidy. The Republican committee in Bossier Parish, which includes the city of Shreveport in northwest Louisiana, adopted a censure measure describing Cassidy as “an object of extreme shame” and called for his resignation.

Trump revived his public contempt for Cassidy a year ago after the senator spoke out when the then-former president promised to pardon those convicted in connection with the Capitol riot; Trump did that after taking office in January.

In an April 2024 post on Truth Social, Trump called Cassidy “one of the worst Senators in the United States Senate” and a “disloyal lightweight.”

Louisiana’s new congressional primary election system also could be a wrinkle for Cassidy.

Until the new system was adopted this year, congressional candidates from all parties seeking the same office ran on the same ballot regardless of party affiliation. In these so-called jungle primaries, only a candidate who received 50% of the vote would win the office outright. If no one reached the threshold, the top two finishers would face each other in a runoff.

Next year, only voters who note Republican affiliation on their voter registration — and those who affiliate with no party — will be able to participate in the GOP Senate primary. The effect is seen as a potential challenge for Cassidy, who had benefited from the less-partisan nature of the old system.

“It does tighten it a little bit for him, because you do have the far-right Republicans — for them, it’s going to be hard to forgive him for that impeachment vote,” Rispone said.

Still, Cassidy has a clear fundraising advantage, with more than $7.4 million in his campaign account at the end of the first quarter. Cassidy has also begun laying the campaign groundwork in Louisiana and is expected to announce his candidacy formally in the coming weeks.

And in a sign things might not be as bad with Trump as they were, Cassidy received different sort of recognition from the president at an economic event at the White House this month.

“We have some great people, great senators, here,” Trump said. “Bill Cassidy, thank you, Bill.”

Thomas Beaumont, The Associated Press