Louisiana

Timeline

1901 — The ante­bel­lum plan­ta­tion prop­er­ty Angola which was lat­er used by for­mer Confederate Major Samuel Lawrence Jones to run a con­vict leas­ing sys­tem, is con­vert­ed into Louisiana State Penitentiary. The Louisiana State Penitentiary is now used to house male death row prisoners.

1946 — At 17, Wille Francis sur­vives a botched exe­cu­tion by elec­tric chair. After his appeal failed in the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Francis was returned to the elec­tric chair in 1947 and executed.

1990 — Dalton Prejean is exe­cut­ed in Louisiana by the elec­tric chair for a crime he com­mit­ted at age 17. Mr. Prejean was con­vict­ed by an all-white jury and had brain dam­age, with an IQ of 71.

2001 — Michael Ray Graham Jr. and Albert Ronnie Burrell are exon­er­at­ed from death row after seri­ous pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house snitch led to their wrongful convictions.

2008 — In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al state-statute that allowed death sen­tenc­ing for the rape of a child, where the vic­tim did not die.

2010 — The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections sues every inmate on Louisiana’s death row in an effort to block them from chal­leng­ing the state’s lethal injection procedures.

2012 — Damon Thibodeaux is freed from Louisiana’s death row after 15 years at Angola once new DNA evi­dence was tested.

2013 — A fed­er­al mag­is­trate rules that the Louisiana Department of Safety and Corrections must reveal the details of the state’s lethal injection protocol.

2014 — One week in advance of a sched­uled exe­cu­tion, Louisiana obtains hydrocodone from a phar­ma­cy at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital after false­ly claim­ing the med­ica­tion was need­ed for a ​“med­ical patient.” Hydrocodone is one of the drugs used in Louisiana’s lethal-injection protocol.

2015 — A Louisiana fed­er­al judge delays five exe­cu­tions until 2016, fol­low­ing state offi­cials’ strug­gle to deter­mine how to con­duct exe­cu­tions using lethal injec­tion. The Department of Safety and Corrections’ sup­ply of lethal injec­tion drugs has now expired.

2016 — Louisiana delays exe­cu­tions until 2018 after a new court order issued with the con­sent of the par­ties in fed­er­al pro­ceed­ings chal­lenges the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Louisiana’s lethal injec­tion process. Louisiana’s pro­to­col allows for either a one-drug exe­cu­tion using pen­to­bar­bi­tal, or a two-drug exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure using mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone, but the state does not have the drugs nec­es­sary for either option.

2017 — Rodricus Crawford is exon­er­at­ed from Louisiana’s death row amid evi­dence of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al over­charg­ing, and his innocence.

2018 — A Louisiana fed­er­al court judge orders anoth­er years of stayed exe­cu­tions to allow the pro­ceed­ings to con­tin­ue in the death row pris­on­ers’ chal­lenge to the state’s lethal injection protocol.

2023 — The Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole sets aside all 56 clemen­cy appli­ca­tions filed by near­ly every death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Louisiana with­out review­ing the mer­its of any of them. The peti­tions raise claims of severe men­tal ill­ness, racial injus­tice, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, among many others.

Famous Cases

Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51 (2011)

John Thompson was con­vict­ed of rob­bery and mur­der, and spent 18 years in prison, 14 of which were spent on death row, before being exon­er­at­ed. Shortly before Thompson’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion, an inves­ti­ga­tor dis­cov­ered that pros­e­cu­tors had hid­den blood evi­dence that exonerated Thompson.

Mr. Thompson sued the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office, the District Attorney, Harry Connick, in his offi­cial and indi­vid­ual capac­i­ties, and sev­er­al assis­tant dis­trict attor­neys in their offi­cial capac­i­ties under 42 U.S.C § 1983 in a Louisiana fed­er­al dis­trict court. The jury award­ed Mr. Thompson $14 mil­lion against Mr. Connick in his official capacity.

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion, the US Supreme Court held that a pros­e­cu­tor’s office could not be held liable for the ille­gal con­duct of one of its pros­e­cu­tors when there has been only one vio­la­tion result­ing from that defi­cient train­ing. In dis­sent Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan argued that the evi­dence ​“estab­lished per­sis­tent, delib­er­ate­ly indif­fer­ent con­duct for which the District Attorney’s Office bears respon­si­bil­i­ty under §1983.”

Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 US 407 (2008)

Kennedy v. Louisiana barred the death penal­ty from being used in non-homi­cide offens­es. In a 5 – 4 deci­sion the Court held that the Eighth Amendment bars states from impos­ing the death penal­ty for the rape of a child where the crime did not result in the child’s death. The major­i­ty opin­ion found that apply­ing the death penal­ty in such a case would be an exer­cise of ​“cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment” in vio­la­tion of a nation­al con­sen­sus on the issue.

Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325 (1976)

Stanislaus Roberts v. Louisiana was one of the five death penal­ty cas­es the Supreme Court decid­ed on July 2, 1976 when it ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penal­ty did not invari­ably con­sti­tute cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. However, in a 5 – 4 vote, the Court declared that Louisiana’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute, which made the death penal­ty manda­to­ry for cer­tain mur­ders was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it did not allow for con­sid­er­a­tion of mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors or the exer­cise of mer­cy to spare a defen­dan­t’s life. The Supreme Court took up anoth­er Louisiana case in 1977 to deter­mine whether a manda­to­ry death sen­tence could be imposed in the lim­it­ed cir­cum­stance of the mur­der of a law enforce­ment offi­cer dur­ing the per­for­mance of his or her offi­cial duties. In a 5 – 4 deci­sion in Harry Roberts v. Louisiana, 431 U.S. 633 (1977), the Court held that the pro­hi­bi­tion against manda­to­ry death sen­tences encom­passed mur­ders of police officers.

Notable Exonerations

Curtis Kyles was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1984 after his first tri­al end­ed in a hung jury. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed his con­vic­tion in the case Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995). The Court cit­ed pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct: the state had with­held cru­cial infor­ma­tion about a paid infor­mant who may have been the actu­al mur­der­er. He was retried three times, but each jury dead­locked. After Kyles’ fifth tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors dropped the charges against him. He was released from prison in 1998.

Other Interesting Facts

Intellectual dis­abil­i­ty (for­mer­ly known as men­tal retar­da­tion) is deter­mined by the jury in the penal­ty phase of a cap­i­tal tri­al fol­low­ing con­vic­tion for first-degree mur­der: http://​www​.legis​.state​.la​.us/​l​s​s​/​l​s​s​.​a​s​p​?​d​o​c​=​1​91015

Sister Helen Prejean began her work against the death penal­ty in Louisiana when she vis­it­ed Patrick Sonnier on Death Row at Angola and accom­pa­nied him to his exe­cu­tion. Her account is doc­u­ment­ed in the book and movie Dead Man Walking.

Resources

• Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
• Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana – Provides indi­gent cap­i­tal defen­dants with rep­re­sen­ta­tion in state post-con­vic­tion and fed­er­al habeas corpus
• Capital Appeals Project – Provides indi­gent cap­i­tal defen­dants with rep­re­sen­ta­tion on direct appeal
• Louisiana Capital Assistance Center – A resource cen­ter for indi­gent cap­i­tal defense at the trial level
• Department of Corrections
• Prosecutors
• Victims’ ser­vices

Louisiana Execution Totals Since 1976