NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld a $14 million award to a former Louisiana death row inmate who was exonerated after 18 years in prison. In February 2007, a federal jury ruled in favor of John Thompson, 45, and ordered Orleans Parish district attorney’s office to make the damage payment. Thompson had always insisted he was innocent of the killing of hotel executive Ray Liuzza. Liuzza was gunned down by a robber after midnight Dec. 6, 1984, just around the corner from his apartment building in New Orleans. Prosecutors first tried Thompson in an unrelated attempted armed robbery case and used that conviction to help secure the death penalty in the murder case. In 1999, weeks before Thompson was set for execution, a defense investigator found a laboratory report that showed the blood type of the robber in the first case, found on the victim’s pants, did not match Thompson’s. In a decision issued late Friday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, without dissent, upheld the trial court’s finding that prosecutors had failed — as required by a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued in 1963 — to turn over evidence that might have exonerated Thompson. A state judge reduced Thompson’s sentence to life in prison in 2001, saying the attempted robbery conviction had improperly influenced the jury in the murder trial. He was acquitted of killing Liuzza after a state appeals court ordered a new trial. The case was handled during the tenure of former Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick. Connick could not be located for comment Saturday. The 5th Circuit also ordered the district attorney’s office to pay Thompson’s attorneys about $1 million in legal fees.