Baton Rouge DA asks judge to halt death row clemency pleas | Courts
Baton Rouge District attorney Hillar Moore has asked a judge to halt a handful of clemency applications filed by Louisiana prisoners sentenced to death, escalating an attack by prosecutors on a historic effort that would all but empty the state’s death row.
Documents Moore filed Tuesday in 19th Judicial District Court aim to block the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole from holding clemency hearings for three death row prisoners whose cases originated in East Baton Rouge Parish. But the challenge will likely come to include more defendants and could ultimately try to block all 20 clemency hearings pending before that board.
“We don’t contest that the governor has the authority to commute. We don’t contest that the parole board has the authority to recommend commutation. We do contest that these folks are not eligible, and that the rules must be followed,” Moore said on the East Baton Rouge Parish courthouse steps, where he stood with the surviving families of several death row prisoners’ victims.
The court challenge ramps up an ongoing political battle over the applications’ future — and it shows the legal stakes of the unprecedented push for clemency, which could impact how people in the state’s penal system request leniency going forward.
Attorneys filed clemency applications in June on behalf of 51 of the 57 people awaiting execution on Louisiana’s death row, asking the board to instead grant those people life-in-prison sentences, without the potential for parole. They have since filed five more applications, bringing the total number of requests to 55 after attorneys withdrew an application for death row prisoner Jarrell Neal. An appeals court threw out Neal’s capital conviction last month after ruling his attorney failed to present crucial evidence at trial that may have raised doubts about his guilt.
The board has set hearings for 20 of the 55 prisoners. The three prisoners named in Moore’s injunction are Quincy Broaden, Henri Broadway and Todd Wessinger.
Since June, the Louisiana District Attorneys’ Association and attorney General Jeff Landry — the leading Republican candidate for governor and an avid supporter of capital punishment — have fiercely protested the requests, saying the applications skirted procedure and have harmed victims’ family members who they say were caught unaware by the effort.
Moore criticized the prisoners’ attorneys for seizing on what he described as a limited political window before the term-limited Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who recently came out in support of abolishing the death penalty, leaves office early next year.
“The filing of these applications was for the benefit of individual defendants and to the emotional detriment of victims’ families, and it appears that the timing of the filings was calculated to take advantage of an individual’s personal opinion during the term of his position as governor,” Moore said.
The pardon board tabled all 55 clemency requests several weeks ago after Landry issued an opinion saying prisoners can’t file requests after a procedural deadline has passed.
But, wielding a power he holds as governor, Edwards directed the board to reschedule the hearings, which it swiftly did for 20 of those prisoners. Other cases had been struck from the docket due to eligibility rules.
Moore’s lawsuit could face an uphill battle because state law gives the pardon board sweeping authority and discretion over how it drafts, implements and changes its rules for hearing cases. The prisoners’ attorneys strongly deny that the clemency requests — or the way the board is considering them — have violated any existing procedures.
From right, EBR district attorney Hillar Moore speaks alongside Wayne Guzzardo and Kimen Lee, Tuesday, September 12, 2023. Also present at the 19th JDC are sheriffs and district attorneys from across the state after Moore filed a petition Tuesday to halt a push for clemency by Louisiana prisoners awaiting the death penalty, escalating an attack by prosecutors on the historic effort that would all but empty the state’s death row.
“DA Moore’s lawsuit failed to identify any violation of the law,” said Cecelia Kappel, executive director of the Capital Appeals Project, which led a group of prisoners’ attorneys in filing the requests.
“As the Louisiana Supreme Court recently emphasized, the governor has expansive and exclusive authority over clemency,” Kappel added. “The governor’s action here was fully within his broad authority to docket capitol cases, just as other governors have done in the past, including Governor Foster.”
In a text message, pardon board director Francis Abbott said Tuesday afternoon that the board’s staff has “not had an opportunity to review the filing with legal counsel.”
Relatives of some victims on Tuesday said the way the process has unfolded has deepened their suffering.
“I’ve been dealing with this for 30 years,” said Warrick Dunn, a former NFL player and Catholic High graduate whose mother, Baton Rouge police officer Betty Smothers, was murdered in 1993. One of her killers, Henri Broadway, remains on death row.
“It’s disrespectful, and it affects all of us,” he said of the requests.
A shortage of lethal injection drugs has stopped Louisiana from executing anyone since 2010.
If Edwards grants the clemency requests, it would mark a historic turn in the way Louisiana regards the death penalty. Governors have granted only two such requests from death row inmates since Louisiana instated the death penalty in the 1970s.
Louisiana newspaper and court records are replete with stories of men, often Black, who are sentenced to die, but are later found innocent and ordered freed by the courts.
Following Moore’s press conference, some Louisiana faith leaders issued statements of support for Edwards’ request to the pardon board.
“Faith and forgiveness have an essential role to play in this matter. Hate and vengeance must be given up for healing to occur for everyone,” said the Rev. Dan Krutz, a Baton Rouge-area clergyman. “Please allow the clemency process to go forward. It is the right and just thing to do.”
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