BATON ROUGE - A Baton Rouge family is fighting what they consider the wrongful conviction of their loved one nearly 20 years ago. 

In 2007, Cori Williams was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting Raymond Jones. He was sentenced to life without parole. 

Jones and Williams had been fighting after Williams claimed Jones had cut the line at Ragusa's Meat Market on Gus Young. After the initial several swings, Jones bit off part of Williams' ear.

According to Williams and other witnesses, as Jones retreated, he yelled at his friend to get his gun.

Before that could happen, Williams pulled out his own gun and shot into Jones' car. He and his passenger were wounded as they drove off, and Jones later died.

Silent surveillance video captured most of the altercation, except for maybe the most important detail: Did Jones threaten Williams with a gun first?

Before that fateful night, 26-year-old Williams was your average family man.

"Growing up, everybody already knew not to mess with Cori because they knew they would have to deal with me or my sister," Camika Williams, his sister, said.

A basketball star at Capital High School and voted 'most likely to succeed,' Williams was planning to enroll in college to become a P.E. teacher. He had never been in trouble with the law.

"Cori never had a fight in his life. That was Cori's first fight he ever had," Williams said.

His niece, Cabrea Lee, says despite nearly 20 years in prison, he hasn't let it harden his heart.

"His freedom, of course, was taken, but the person — who he is — that has not changed him," Lee said.

Williams' family says his freedom was taken unjustly when he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

"What I'm allowed to say is he was wrongfully convicted," Lee said.

Family members expected Williams to be found innocent due to self-defense, or at worst, be convicted of a lesser charge like manslaughter.

"It was so hurtful because we couldn't do anything to help him," Camika said.

The victim, 26-year-old Raymond Jones, was a barber and father. He was the brother of state representative C. Denise Marcelle.

Though he had an extensive criminal history, his family said he was trying to change. Toxicology tests taken after his death showed he was drunk and high on Ecstasy at the time of the fight.

Williams was quickly developed as a suspect in Jones' death due to the surveillance video and the number of witnesses that night.

Williams did not contact police until it was publicly announced that he was a suspect, but afterward, he turned himself in with his attorney.

During his two-hour interrogation with BRPD, Williams says more than 25 times that he thought Jones had a gun.

Two witnesses corroborated William's version of events in their interviews with police the next day. Only one of them testified in the trial, which was held a year later.

Before the trial, Williams was offered a deal: plead guilty and serve 40 years. He declined.

Prosecutors called half a dozen witnesses who said Williams was the aggressor in the fight, including one woman who admitted she could not see without her glasses and wasn't wearing them the night of the shooting.

Williams' defense wasn't that he didn't shoot Jones, but rather that he was acting in self-defense after having part of his ear bitten off and believing that Jones had a gun. 

According to his defense attorney, there were only 12 seconds between Jones biting his ear and William's firing the shots.

After an hour and a half of deliberation, 11 out of 12 jurors found Williams guilty of murder.

"When they said that, I screamed so loud, my momma pushed me out the courtroom because I was screaming and I was crying," Camika said. "She was telling me to get myself together. It was very hurtful because I could not believe it. I at least would have thought that he could have gotten self-defense."

Williams' case is strikingly different from a recent case where the "self-defense" argument won over the jury.

In 2020, Jace Boyd shot and killed Danny Buckley in the parking lot of Trader Joe's on Perkins Road.

Boyd claimed Buckley, a panhandler, was hassling a pair of women for money, and when Boyd told him to stop, Buckley became "aggressive." Buckley never touched Boyd because he shot him from several feet away. 

Boyd's defense was that he feared for his safety, and a jury believed him, choosing to convict him of a lesser charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 18 months with credit for time served and got out in seven. 

Williams has no chance at parole. 

"My momma just turned 70 years old in February. I would love to see him come home before my mom leaves this world," Camika said.

In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court found non-unanimous jury convictions unconstitutional. In Louisiana, it only applies to cases after 2018. 

Because Williams' conviction was 11-1, his family was holding out hope that a bill by Senator Royce Duplessis, which would provide post-conviction relief for non-unanimous jury convictions before 2018, would be signed into law this past legislative session. The bill did not advance past the House. 

"We didn't stand a chance almost...and I say 'we' because we stand as a family behind him. We don't say 'I', 'he', just us. One falls, we all fall," Lee said.