Louisiana

Larry Hudson has been added to DPIC’s Descriptions of Innocence page as a new­ly-dis­cov­ered death row exon­er­a­tion. Mr. Hudson was tried and sen­tenced to death for a rob­bery-homi­cide in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1967, when he was 19 years old. He was exon­er­at­ed in 1993, when he was 46 years old.

At an August 15, 2023 ral­ly orga­nized by The Promise for Justice Initiative, a group opposed to the death penal­ty and which advo­cates for greater change in the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem, fam­i­ly mem­bers of vic­tims and pris­on­ers and death row exoneree Shareef Cousin called on the Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole to grant the 56 clemen­cy appli­ca­tions that have been sub­mit­ted by pris­on­ers on death row. ​“Part of clemen­cy is real­ly about giv­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to the sur­vivors of these crimes to work on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, to work on the…

Gary Tyler was just 16 years old when he was charged with shoot­ing a white stu­dent in 1974 and sen­tenced to death, a crime that, many wit­ness­es agree, he did not com­mit. Mr. Tyler, then a sopho­more in high school in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, was rid­ing a school bus that was attacked by a seg­re­ga­tion­ist mob. In the chaos, some­one fired a shot that killed a 13-year-old white boy, Timothy Weber. After Mr. Tyler, who is Black, spoke to one of the deputies, he was arrest­ed for alleged­ly disturbing…

On August 9^th, with the use of his exec­u­tive author­i­ty, Governor John Bel Edwards (pic­tured) asked the Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole to return the 56 clemen­cy appli­ca­tions filed by death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in Louisiana to its dock­et for con­sid­er­a­tion and set them for hear­ings. The Board of Pardons will now have until January 2024, when Gov. Edwards offi­cial­ly leaves office, to decide whether to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for near­ly all of the state’s death row pris­on­ers. Earlier this year, Gov. Edwards expressed his oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, stat­ing that…

In a July 31 Letter to the Editor, Demetrius Minor, the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty crit­i­cizes the Louisiana Pardon Board deci­sion to decline review of clemen­cy peti­tions filed by near­ly every death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Louisiana. 

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…

As Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (pic­tured) con­sid­ers the clemen­cy peti­tions filed by 51 of the state’s 57 death row pris­on­ers, advo­cates and jour­nal­ists have not­ed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Louisiana’s death penal­ty sys­tem and that of Illinois, where Governor George Ryan com­mut­ed the sen­tences of all 167 peo­ple on death row in 2003. Both states have had high num­bers of death row exon­er­a­tions stem­ming from sys­temic mis­con­duct, death sen­tences in both states are con­cen­trat­ed in a small num­ber of juris­dic­tions, and both gov­er­nors have expressed seri­ous per­son­al con­cerns about the…

On June 13, 2023, 51 of the 57 peo­ple on Louisiana’s death row filed clemen­cy appli­ca­tions with the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, ask­ing Governor John Bel Edwards to com­mute their sen­tences to life with­out parole. The clemen­cy appli­ca­tions describe flaws in the indi­vid­ual cas­es – includ­ing men­tal ill­ness and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, inno­cence claims, and offi­cial mis­con­duct – but cumu­la­tive­ly por­tray a death penal­ty sys­tem marked by sig­nif­i­cant sys­temic prob­lems. The board­’s mem­bers, all of whom are appoint­ed by Edwards, will weigh the appli­ca­tions indi­vid­u­al­ly and then send their…

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.”

According to the Louisiana Public Defender’s Office, the state spent $7.7 mil­lion on the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of defen­dants in death penal­ty cas­es just in 2022. That total does not include the costs of pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and oth­er crim­i­nal jus­tice per­son­nel. The state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 13 years and has had only one exe­cu­tion in the past 21 years. State offi­cials have attrib­uted the most recent exe­cu­tion delays to dif­fi­cul­ties obtain­ing the drugs need­ed for lethal injec­tion and has stopped set­ting exe­cu­tion dates.