When Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill took office in January 2024, they moved aggres­sive­ly to restart exe­cu­tions in the state. Gov. Landry signed bills that autho­rized nitro­gen suf­fo­ca­tion and elec­tro­cu­tion as exe­cu­tion meth­ods, increased his own pow­er over the state cap­i­tal defense sys­tem, and lim­it­ed post-con­vic­tion appeals, while AG Murrill moved to take over cap­i­tal appeal chal­lenges from local dis­trict attor­neys. In March 2025, the state con­duct­ed its first exe­cu­tion in 15 years. 

And yet, Gov. Landry and AG Murrill’s oth­er efforts to put pris­on­ers to death have floun­dered in the courts, which have found that the state wrong­ful­ly sought exe­cu­tion war­rants before the pris­on­ers exhaust­ed their post-con­vic­tion appeals. This month, the Louisiana Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly ruled in favor of two pris­on­ers — Marcus Reed and Larry Roy — reject­ing the state’s attempts to dis­miss their appeals and set their exe­cu­tion dates. The court reject­ed the argu­ment that delays in the appeals were inher­ent­ly prej­u­di­cial to the state, in the face of evi­dence that the state itself was part­ly respon­si­ble for those delays. 

Mr. Reed, Mr. Roy, and anoth­er pris­on­er, Darrell Draughn, were among the first peo­ple tar­get­ed with exe­cu­tion war­rants in ear­ly 2025, after the state final­ized its nitro­gen suf­fo­ca­tion pro­to­col. However, courts quick­ly recalled all three war­rants when defense attor­neys object­ed that the men had not com­plet­ed their post-con­vic­tion appeals. These appeals are an essen­tial com­po­nent of due process in a cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, as they are a prisoner’s first oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise con­sti­tu­tion­al claims relat­ed to evi­dence out­side the tri­al record, such as pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct or the inef­fec­tive assis­tance of tri­al coun­sel. It would be ​“unheard of in both this state and the nation” for a pris­on­er to ​“be pushed towards an exe­cu­tion with­out any court hear­ing his state post-con­vic­tion” claims, Mr. Draughn’s attor­neys argued.

After the war­rants were recalled, AG Murrill imme­di­ate­ly moved to dis­miss the men’s appeals. She asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to expe­dite five cas­es for exe­cu­tion last June. ​“In these five cas­es — and many oth­ers — the offend­ers failed to move their cas­es for many years and some­times decades,” she said in a state­ment. ​“Meanwhile, vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers are left with the fear that the con­vic­tion might be vacat­ed and the pain and trau­ma of wait­ing for final­i­ty for decades.” 

However, the evi­dence con­firmed that it was state pros­e­cu­tors who were pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for the delays. When Mr. Reed’s direct appeal con­clud­ed in 2017, he filed a ​“shell” peti­tion — pur­suant to state law and prac­tice — while his attor­neys began work­ing on a more detailed sup­ple­ment to the peti­tion due at the end of 2019. However, before the full peti­tion was filed, the dis­trict attorney’s office motioned to remove Mr. Reed’s lead attor­ney Blythe Taplin from the case. The court grant­ed the motion and stayed the dead­line for the peti­tion, but Mr. Reed was not appoint­ed a new lawyer. Ms. Taplin con­tend­ed that the DA sought to remove her because she had filed records requests with the DA’s office. ​“It’s shock­ing to see that the DA is now ask­ing for an exe­cu­tion war­rant and com­plain­ing about delay, giv­en the role that his office has played,” she told The Advocate. 

Likewise, the ball had been in the state’s court in Mr. Roy’s case. He was sen­tenced to death in 1994. On appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on sev­er­al of Mr. Roy’s claims. In 2004, the par­ties agreed to push back the hear­ing and Mr. Roy moved to sub­poe­na the files of the pros­e­cu­tor who han­dled his tri­al, which the state opposed. The Louisiana Supreme Court ordered the state to file an addi­tion­al brief explain­ing why the files should not be dis­closed. But no brief was ever filed. In a sworn state­ment, one of Mr. Roy’s attor­neys said that a pros­e­cu­tor told her at the time that ​“noth­ing was going to hap­pen in Mr. Roy’s case as long as we were all wait­ing on [the DA] to file his brief.” 

Indeed, noth­ing else hap­pened in either case before Louisiana sought the new exe­cu­tion war­rants in 2025. Local jour­nal­ists sug­gest­ed that these long peri­ods of inac­tiv­i­ty were com­mon in Louisiana cap­i­tal cas­es in the 2000s and 2010s, when the state stopped con­duct­ing exe­cu­tions due to a lack of lethal injec­tion drugs. Before Jessie Hoffman was put to death with nitro­gen gas in March 2025, the state’s last exe­cu­tion was in 2010, of a man who had waived his appeals. The state’s last exe­cu­tion before that was in 2002. 

To suc­ceed in dis­miss­ing the men’s post-con­vic­tion appeals, the state had to prove that due to ​“events not under the con­trol of the state which have tran­spired since the date of orig­i­nal con­vic­tion,” the state was ​“mate­ri­al­ly prej­u­diced” in its abil­i­ty to chal­lenge the post-con­vic­tion peti­tion. AG Murrill con­tend­ed that the 8‑year delay in Mr. Reed’s case and the 21-year delay in Mr. Roy’s were inher­ent­ly prej­u­di­cial to the state. 

But in two unan­i­mous deci­sions this month, the Louisiana Supreme Court dis­agreed. A dis­trict judge had ruled in favor of Mr. Roy and found that ​“the prej­u­dice was in the State’s con­trol,” and the Louisiana Supreme Court denied the state’s appeal of that deci­sion on February 3. Chief Justice John Weimer con­curred that the judge had ​“cor­rect­ly reject­ed the state’s asser­tion that the pas­sage of time is per se prej­u­di­cial.” The court elab­o­rat­ed its posi­tion on February 12 when it reversed a low­er court’s judg­ment against Mr. Reed. Since the law ​“explic­it­ly refers to events ​‘which have tran­spired,’ it dis­tin­guish­es between the pas­sage of time and those events them­selves,” the court rea­soned. The ​“state must show both that dis­crete events occurred (e.g., a par­tic­u­lar wit­ness died) and that such events were indeed mate­ri­al­ly prej­u­di­cial to the state…we find no such show­ing was made.” 

Both men now have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue their post-con­vic­tion appeals. Mr. Roy has argued that his tri­al attor­ney was inef­fec­tive by fail­ing to object when pros­e­cu­tors moved to strike every Black prospec­tive juror and fail­ing to con­tact fam­i­ly mem­bers who could have tes­ti­fied to Mr. Roy’s sub­stance abuse as a mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor. Mr. Reed’s claims include that he act­ed in self-defense, that some­one else par­tic­i­pat­ed in the shoot­ing in his case, and that his tri­al attor­neys failed to effec­tive­ly cross-exam­ine state wit­ness­es who received favors in exchange for their testimony. 

However, under new leg­is­la­tion endorsed by AG Murrill and signed by Gov. Landry last year, cap­i­tal defen­dants will face stricter time­lines and lim­its on their appeals going for­ward — and the attor­ney gen­er­al will play a greater role in the process. The new law states that the pris­on­er ​“is respon­si­ble for seek­ing a rul­ing on his appli­ca­tion and purs­ing [sic] his claims,” and “[f]ailure to active­ly seek a ruling…shall con­sti­tute aban­don­ment of the appli­ca­tion,” result­ing in dis­missal. An appli­ca­tion is con­sid­ered ​“aban­doned” when the pris­on­er does not file any plead­ing relat­ed to it for two years. The law fur­ther states that when a pris­on­er ​“fails to time­ly seek a hearing…or fails to pur­sue claims for a peri­od of two years after fil­ing an appli­ca­tion, the delay caused by inac­tion shall be pre­sumed as prejudicial.” 

“I fear that the attor­ney general’s involve­ment in these cas­es is unnec­es­sar­i­ly politi­ciz­ing them, and caus­ing con­fu­sion because her office is not famil­iar with the record or the his­to­ry,” said Ms. Taplin, now rep­re­sent­ing Mr. Roy, last year.

AG Murrill made the same argu­ment on prej­u­di­cial delay — that the state supreme court has now twice reject­ed — in sev­er­al oth­er pend­ing cas­es. Those cas­es include Antoinette Frank, the only woman on death row in Louisiana. Ms. Frank’s attor­neys have argued that the jury nev­er heard about dev­as­tat­ing abuse she expe­ri­enced as a child, or how those expe­ri­ences mir­rored an abu­sive dynam­ic with her code­fen­dant. AG Murrill drew crit­i­cisms and ethics con­cerns for hir­ing her husband’s pri­vate law firm to assist in fight­ing Ms. Frank’s appeal. 

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