Anti-death penalty advocates applauded after Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Wednesday directed the state Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole to consider the clemency petitions of the vast majority of death row inmates in the state.
Fifty-six out of 60 death row inmates filed a mass appeal of their death sentences in June after the governor publicly expressed his opposition to capital punishment.
The pardons board refused to set hearings on the cases in late July after Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry wrote an opinion claiming the petitions were invalid because they were filed more than a year after the inmates' most recent appeal hearings.
In recent weeks, groups including the Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI) have stepped up pressure on Edwards to use his executive authority to call for hearings on the petitions.
"Thank you to all who have joined these efforts and added your voices," said PJI on Thursday, noting that it will take more work to advocate for the incarcerated people who have requested that their sentences be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The inmates who filed petitions include LaDerrick Campbell, who was permitted to represent himself during his capital murder trial despite having been diagnosed with schizophrenia and showing signs of paranoid delusions, and Jimmie Duncan, who was convicted using bite-mark evidence, which has since been discredited by forensic experts.
In his letter to the board on Wednesday, Edwards wrote that Landry's interpretation of state law as prohibiting a clemency hearing "at any time outside of the one-year window after a direct appeal denial is misguided and yields a result that is both absurd and illogical."
"We must consider further the imperfect nature of the criminal justice system and the actual innocence that has been proven far too often after imposition of the death penalty," said Edwards.
Nine people have been exonerated from death row in Louisiana since 1999.
The board now has until January 2024, when the term-limited Edwards will leave office, to consider the petitions.
