NEW VOICES: Louisiana Governor Announces His Opposition to the Death Penalty

After years of silence regard­ing his views on the death penal­ty, Governor John Bel Edwards of Louisiana expressed his oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in a sem­i­nar at Loyola University in New Orleans. On March 22, 2023, Edwards said, ​“The death penal­ty is so final. When you make a mis­take, you can’t get it back. And we know that mis­takes have been made in sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death.”

Edwards based his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty on his reli­gious faith and said it was ​“for­tu­itous” that a short­age of lethal injec­tion drugs has paused all exe­cu­tions in the state for the past 13 years. Louisiana has car­ried out only one exe­cu­tion in almost 21 years, and that was in 2010. There have been 11 pris­on­ers freed from the state’s death row and exon­er­at­ed since 1973.