Louisiana Pardon Board Declines to Consider 56 Death Row Clemency Petitions Without Merits Review

On July 24, 2023, the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole set aside all 56 clemen­cy appli­ca­tions filed by near­ly every death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Louisiana last month with­out review­ing the mer­its of a sin­gle one of them. The pris­on­ers asked for their sen­tences to be com­mut­ed to life with­out parole, but the Board made its deci­sion to return the appli­ca­tions based on an advi­so­ry, non­bind­ing opin­ion from the Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Attorneys for death row pris­on­ers have respond­ed by argu­ing that the Attorney General’s office mis­in­ter­pret­ed the lan­guage of the admin­is­tra­tive rules and are urg­ing Governor John Bel Edwards to use his own author­i­ty to allow the appli­ca­tions to proceed.

The peti­tions raised claims of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, severe men­tal ill­ness, racial injus­tice, and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, among many oth­ers. In response to the Board’s deci­sion, Cecelia Kappel, the Executive Director of the Louisiana Capital Appeals Project, stat­ed that “[t]he Attorney General has giv­en the Board a wrong read­ing of its poli­cies in an attempt to steam­roll a legit­i­mate request to have these cas­es heard. These appli­ca­tions are time­ly and point to griev­ous errors in Louisiana’s death penal­ty sys­tem that war­rant com­mu­ta­tion of their death sen­tences to life with­out parole. These cas­es deserve a full and fair review. Stopping the process in its tracks would allow the board­’s inde­pen­dence to be com­pro­mised by the very pros­e­cu­tors who have a vest­ed inter­est in per­pet­u­at­ing this broken system.” 

The wave of clemen­cy appli­ca­tions came after Governor Edwards pub­licly announced that he opposed the death penal­ty. Governor Edwards’s term ends in January 2024. Fifty-one of the appli­ca­tions were filed on June 13^th, and the remain­ing five were filed in the fol­low­ing two weeks. Louisiana has 57 pris­on­ers on death row in total. The Board had ini­tial­ly screened just 13 of the peti­tions for eli­gi­bil­i­ty when AG Landry’s office issued its advi­so­ry opin­ion. The Louisiana Administrative Code — which is an offi­cial com­pi­la­tion of admin­is­tra­tive rules pub­lished by agen­cies and boards in the state of Louisiana but does not include laws passed by the leg­is­la­ture— states that cap­i­tal clemen­cy peti­tions may be sub­mit­ted to the Board with­in a year after the defen­dant has com­plet­ed their direct appeal. But it also con­tains lan­guage assign­ing the Board broad dis­cre­tion in choos­ing which cas­es to review. AG Landry argued that the one-year lan­guage was a require­ment which the Board could only waive in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, such as in a pend­ing death war­rant. After the Board declined to con­sid­er all the appli­ca­tions, AG Landry praised the deci­sion as a vic­to­ry for crime victims. 

Lawyers for the defen­dants and death penal­ty schol­ars argue in response that the one-year lan­guage is per­mis­sive, not restric­tive, and does not block the defen­dant from fil­ing a peti­tion at a lat­er time, nor does it pro­hib­it the Board from hear­ing a peti­tion filed before a death war­rant is issued. They also cite pri­or exam­ples when the Board heard cas­es out­side of the one-year win­dow when there was no pend­ing death war­rant and point to the broad dis­cre­tion of the Board to decide which cas­es it takes. A let­ter signed by more than 250 Louisiana attor­neys and legal schol­ars urges the Board to con­sid­er the clemen­cy appli­ca­tions in light of the evi­dence of the sys­temic flaws in Louisiana’s death penal­ty sys­tem, such as its high cap­i­tal rever­sal rate (more than 80% of Louisiana death sen­tences have been reversed), its exon­er­a­tion rate, the num­ber of death row pris­on­ers with men­tal ill­ness or intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, the racial dis­par­i­ties in Louisiana’s death row pop­u­la­tion, and its geographical arbitrariness.

Governor Edwards has declined to com­ment on what, if any, steps he will take in response to the Board’s deci­sion, although advo­cates have stat­ed that he does have the author­i­ty to direct the Board to hear the cas­es despite AG Landry’s advisory opinion.