Attorney General Liz Murrill is pressing the Louisiana Supreme Court to come up with standards that she hopes will bring to an end the extended appeals of five people facing the death penalty.
Murrill announced Wednesday she is filing writs with the state’s highest court regarding the post-conviction appeals available to persons sentenced to die. She takes issue with convicted defendants waiting decades to pursue relief, which then delays their executions.
Louisiana resumed the death penalty after a 15-year hiatus in March, when Jesse Hoffman, 46, was executed with nitrogen gas. He was convicted in the 1996 kidnapping, rape and murder of 28-year-old Mary “Molly” Elliot. She was abducted in New Orleans, then raped and killed in St. Tammany Parish.
“As I’ve said over and over, the family members of these victims deserve justice,” Murrill said in a statement. “It’s shameful they wait decades to see justice carried out. It serves no valid purpose. … I’m hopeful that the Louisiana Supreme Court will grant review to give clear direction to lower courts and we can finally move these cases forward.”
The attorney general said some district courts have acted on their own to create exceptions to a state law that already provides clear direction for post-conviction relief. State Supreme Court justices are being asked to provide uniform guidance for all courts to follow, Murrill said.
Cecelia Koppel, an attorney who represents clients on death row and directs the Center for Social Justice at Loyola University College of Law, said in a text message that the attorney general’s news release constitutes “meritless grandstanding.”
“The AG’s filings have nothing to do with speeding up cases, but instead seek to confuse, delay, and prevent these individuals from having their day in court,” Koppel said.
Murrill’s writs have been filed in the cases of Antoinette Frank, Robert Miller and Larry Roy, and more filings are planned Monday for David Henry Bowie and Marcus Reed, according to the attorney general’s office.
Frank, a former New Orleans police officer, is the only woman on death row in Louisiana. She was found guilty in the 1995 murders of her NOPD partner, Ronald Williams II, and sibling restaurant owners Ha and Cuong Vu. Rogers Lacaze, Frank’s co-conspirator in the botched armed robbery of Kim Ahn Noodles restaurant, was sentenced to life in prison.
Miller was given the death penality for the robbery, rape and fatal stabbing of his 67-year-old Baton Rouge landlord in 1997. The woman was not identified in court records.
Roy was convicted in the 1993 double murder of his ex-girlfriend’s ex-husband, Freddie Richard Jr., and her elderly aunt, Rosetta Silas, in Cheneyville. A Rapides Parish judge issued a death warrant for Roy in February, setting his execution date for March 29. But the warrant was withdrawn once District Attorney Phillip Terrell was made aware Roy had not exhausted all of his appeals.
Bowie was found guilty in East Baton Rouge Parish of strangling John Smith at Smith’s home after losing all of his money to him in a dice game, according to court records. Police said Bowie used shoelaces and the cord of a clothing iron to murder Smith.
Reed was convicted in Caddo Parish of killing brothers Jarquis, Jeremiah and Eugene Adams in 2010. Police said the fatal dispute was over an allegedly stolen video game console.
The five are among the 54 people facing execution in Louisiana.