Attorney General Jeff Landry, a leading Republican candidate in the Louisiana governor's race, says his office will fight a historic batch of clemency requests filed Tuesday on behalf of most of the state's death row prisoners.
The 51 total clemency applications filed with the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole ask Gov. John Bel Edwards to soften prisoners' sentences to life-in-prison — the only sentence reduction available to death penalty prisoners. The board, whose members Edwards appoints, would need to greenlight the requests before the governor can approve them.
“I oppose clemency for all of these offenders who were given valid death sentences by juries of their peers," Landry said in a statement. "My office will formally oppose their applications.”
Landry's opposition highlights the political pressure surrounding the applications. Edwards, a Democrat, is set to leave office early next year, leaving what's seen as a limited window for the prisoners' attorneys to argue their cases before his term closes.
If Edwards grants the requests, it would mark a major shift in the way Louisiana regards the death penalty. The avowedly Catholic governor, who descends from a long line of parish sheriffs, had long held his tongue about the practice. But in the final months of his governorship, Edwards recently came out in full-throated support of abolishing capital punishment.
Asked Tuesday how the governor would respond to the appeals, Edwards spokesperson Eric Holl said only that applications recommended by the Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole are reviewed by the governor "on a case-by-case basis before a final decision is made."
Almost all Louisiana death row inmates asked Governor John Bel Edwards to spare their lives on Tuesday morning.
Edwards first voiced his anti-death penalty views at a talk at Loyola University in New Orleans in March. Attributing his position to his Catholic faith, he said it has been "fortuitous" for his governorship that a shortage of lethal injection drugs paused executions in the state.
A few weeks later, Edwards in his state-of-the-state address called on the Legislature to pass a bill sponsored by Rep. Kyle Green, D-Marrero, that would have abolished the death penalty. That effort proved ill-fated as the bill died near the end of the legislative session in a House committee that had recently become more conservative.
The governor's anti-death penalty stance is far from the mainstream in Louisiana politics. Landry often touts a tough-on-crime message on the campaign trail and has called for executions to start again.
Landry's office issued an opinion earlier this year supporting governors' authority to grant clemency. In that opinion, an assistant attorney general wrote that "only the governor may grant pardons and commutations because this is an exclusive, constitutional power of the executive branch of the State of Louisiana, and not the judicial branch.”
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards speaks during a press conference after the 2023 legislative session ends ‘sine die’, Thursday, June 8, 2023, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
Some prosecutors around the state questioned the motives of the requests and want the pardons and parole board to reject them.
John Sinquefield, a chief deputy attorney general and a former prosecutor in Calcasieu, East Baton Rouge and Orleans Parishes, voiced a view that's common among Louisiana prosecutors: Sentencing decisions belong in courtrooms.
“I would hope very much that [the pardon board or governor] would not even consider this and leave it to the judicial process,” said Sinquefield, who has prosecuted at least a dozen death penalty cases in Louisiana. “The death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst.”
East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore described the move as a "last-minute effort to try to repeal the death penalty." He wondered if the pardon board could even fit the cases onto its docket before Edwards leaves office, saying, "I don't know how the pardon board will be able to do this."
There are currently 57 people sentenced to die in Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections Custody. Three more are held on death row but have had their convictions or sentences reversed.
The clemency applications filed Tuesday with the pardons and parole board detail a range of mental health conditions the death row prisoners have, as well as a slew of alleged instances of prosecutorial or judicial mishandling of their cases.
Louisiana newspaper and court records are replete with recent stories of men, often Black, who are sentenced to die, but who have later been found innocent and ordered freed by the courts. A disproportionate three-quarters of Louisiana death row prisoners are people of color, according to the Capital Appeals Project.
Louisiana last carried out an execution when Gerald Bordelon was voluntarily put to death in 2010 for the murder of his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Courtney LeBlanc. Prior to Bordelon's execution, the state had not put anyone to death since 2002.
Staff writers Jacqueline DeRobertis and John Simerman contributed to this report.
