The New Orleans District Attorney’s office has decided not to pursue the death penalty in two high-profile murder cases, highlighting a trend in Louisiana away from the use of capital punishment. In a one-week period, Leon Cannizzaro (pictured), the District Attorney for Orleans Parish, announced that his office would not seek the death penalty against Travis Boys, charged with fatally shooting a New Orleans police officer, and Chelsea Thornton, charged with killing her 3-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. According to capital defense lawyer Nick Trenticosta, “prosecutors throughout the state are thinking twice about taking a case to trial for the death penalty.” Defense lawyers say that, in New Orleans, District Attorney Cannizzaro’s office has been taking note of jury verdicts: one death sentence in 19 years. “New Orleans juries are life-giving people,” Trenticosta said. Assistant DA Christopher Bowan, a spokesperson for the Orleans DA’s office, said the office evaluates each prosecution “on a case-by-case basis.” In the Boys case, he said, dropping the death penalty would assure a quicker resolution of the case for Officer Daryle Holloway’s family. Officer Holloway’s mother, Olander Holloway, said, “I just think, at some point in time, this needed to move forward. I think with the death penalty issue, this would’ve dragged on forever and ever.” Bowan did not give a reason for dropping the death penalty against Thornton, who has a long history of mental illness, but noted that Louisiana’s prisons do not have a stock of lethal injection drugs and “there’s no means for carrying out a capital verdict at this point.” No prisoner has been executed in the state since 2010, when Gerald Bordelon waived his right to appeal, and the last contested Louisiana execution was in 2002. Since the turn of the century, the state has carried out three executions, while eight death-row prisoners have been exonerated. In addition, the one case in which an Orleans Parish jury did vote for death—after convicting Michael Anderson for a quintuple murder—was overturned by the courts and later resolved with a plea to lesser charges. In 2016, federal authorities presented evidence that another man had committed the five killings.
(M. Sledge, Orleans DA won’t seek death penalty for Chelsea Thornton, accused of killing her children, The New Orleans Advocate, June 19, 2017; K. Daley, “DA will not seek death penalty for accused cop-killer Travis Boys,” The Times-Picayune, June 16, 2017.) See Louisiana.
