Orleans Parish D.A. Will Not Run for Re-Election, Tenure Tainted By Office Misconduct in Death-Penalty Cases

After 12 years as Orleans Parish, Louisiana District Attorney, Leon Cannizzaro (pic­tured) has announced that he will not seek re-elec­tion and will be retir­ing as D.A. at the end of this term. Cannizzaro’s tenure in office was marked by his aggres­sive defense of pri­or offi­cial mis­con­duct in cap­i­tal cas­es, mis­con­duct by his office while he was District Attorney, and rev­e­la­tions that Orleans Parish pros­e­cu­tors had rou­tine­ly issued fake sub­poe­nas and threat­ened impris­on­ment to coerce vic­tims and wit­ness­es to coop­er­ate with law enforcement.

When Cannizzaro became D.A. in 2009, the office was fac­ing a civ­il rights law­suit by death-row exoneree John Thompson, who had been framed for a mur­der and for an unre­lat­ed rob­bery that made him eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty in the mur­der case. A fed­er­al court jury award­ed Thompson $14 mil­lion in dam­ages, but Cannizzaro appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, after he lost that appeal, to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a con­tro­ver­sial 5 – 4 deci­sion by Justice Clarence Thomas that Supreme Court ana­lyst Dahlia Lithwick called ​“one of the mean­est Supreme Court deci­sions ever,” the Court over­turned the ver­dict, declar­ing that the pros­e­cu­tors were immune from suit for actions under­tak­en in their pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al capac­i­ty. Nevertheless, the suit exposed ram­pant pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct in the Orleans Parish DA’s office that con­tin­ued through­out Cannizzaro’s tenure.

In April 2020, the Fifth Circuit ruled against Cannizzaro in a civ­il rights law­suit chal­leng­ing the D.A.’s prac­tice of issu­ing ​“fake sub­poe­nas” and fal­si­fy­ing infor­ma­tion to obtain mate­r­i­al wit­ness arrest war­rants to pres­sure vic­tims and wit­ness­es to pro­vide favor­able tes­ti­mo­ny in parish homi­cide and oth­er pros­e­cu­tions. The court ruled that absolute immu­ni­ty was lim­it­ed to con­duct with­in ​“the judi­cial con­text” and that Orleans Parish pros­e­cu­tors’ manip­u­la­tion of sub­poe­nas and war­rants ​“falls into the cat­e­go­ry of inves­tiga­tive con­duct for which pros­e­cu­tors are not immune.” 

All five Orleans Parish death-row exon­er­a­tions, and all eleven death-row exon­er­a­tions in the state since the 1970s, have involved offi­cial mis­con­duct, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by per­jury or false accu­sa­tion. At least ten death-sen­tenced Orleans Parish pris­on­ers have had their death sen­tences over­turned as a result of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, includ­ing Michael Anderson, the last per­son sen­tenced to death under Cannizzaro’s administration.

Cannizzaro’s announce­ment that he would not run came on July 24, 2020, less than 90 min­utes before the end of the qual­i­fy­ing peri­od to appear on the elec­tion bal­lot. His deci­sion threw the parish elec­tion into disarray.

Allegations of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct have been ram­pant across Louisiana. The use of fake sub­poe­nas had gone on for decades under sev­er­al Orleans Parish dis­trict attor­neys and had expand­ed to oth­er parish­es before being exposed by a New Orleans pub­li­ca­tion, The Lens, in April 2017. At that time, a spokesper­son for Cannizzaro said that the “[t]he dis­trict attor­ney does not see any legal issues with respect to this pol­i­cy.” However, Orleans Parish pros­e­cu­tors imme­di­ate­ly stopped issu­ing the orders, fol­lowed quick­ly by pros­e­cu­tors in two oth­er Louisiana parishes.

On June 8, 2020, Iberia Parish pros­e­cu­tors dropped mur­der charges against Roy Verret after a defense DNA ana­lyst dis­cov­ered that pros­e­cu­tors had switched DNA sam­ples tak­en from the mur­der weapon and from Verret’s wash­ing machine and used the mis­la­beled sam­ple as evi­dence to arrest Verret. At the time of his April 19, 2017 arrest, police and Iberia Parish pros­e­cu­tors assert­ed they were ​“99.9 per­cent cer­tain” that Verret had com­mit­ted the mur­der. They lat­er said they had acci­den­tal­ly switched the DNA samples.

On June 24, 2020, a fed­er­al dis­trict court in Louisiana allowed a civ­il rights law­suit filed by for­mer death-row pris­on­er Michael Wearry against Louisiana police and pros­e­cu­tors to pro­ceed to tri­al. Wearry had charged that a detec­tive in the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office, act­ing in con­cert with local District Attorney Scott Perrilloux, had ​“pull[ed] a 14-year-old boy out of school on at least six occa­sions to intim­i­date him into offer­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny at a mur­der tri­al.” Wearry alleged that the boy’s tes­ti­mo­ny had been ​“con­coct­ed whole­sale by th[e] detec­tive and pros­e­cu­tor and care­ful­ly rehearsed.” Law enforce­ment had used ​“scare tac­tics” to ensure the boy’s coop­er­a­tion, the suit assert­ed, includ­ing remov­ing him from class ​“to view the mur­der victim’s bloody car.” 

Relying on the Fifth Circuit’s rul­ing against Cannizzaro in the fake sub­poe­na case, the dis­trict court reject­ed the dis­trict attorney’s and the detective’s argu­ment that their con­duct con­sti­tut­ed legal advo­ca­cy for which they enjoyed absolute immunity.