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.

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