All 56 Louisiana Death Row Clemency Petitions Turned Away for Being Ineligible

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — After nearly every death row inmate in Louisiana asked for clemency en masse, the state's pardon board turned away all 56 petitions this week.

Francis Abbott, executive director of Louisiana’s Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that none of the applicants are currently eligible. That decision was based on an opinion filed last week by Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican and gubernatorial candidate, who found that the board can’t waive a policy requiring a clemency petition to be filed within a year of a judge ruling on an appeal, as reported by The Advocate.

Exceptions are allowed in some extenuating circumstances, notably if an execution date is near. However, Louisiana does not have any execution dates scheduled and the last lethal injection in the state occurred over a decade ago.

“Louisiana was failed by our appointed officials this week,” Promise of Justice Initiative, a New Orleans-based organization, said in a press release urging Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards to step in and set hearings for the clemency petitions. “The State has been given a chance to commute death row to life sentences. Louisiana can still choose life over death, dignity over violence. To choose right over wrong.”

Over the spring, Edwards — who is unable to seek reelection this year due to consecutive term limits, opening a huge opportunity for Republicans to win the seat in a reliably red state — voiced his support, for the first time, to eliminate capital punishment. He urged lawmakers to get rid of the death penalty, saying it was “inconsistent with Louisiana’s pro-life values, as it quite literally promotes a culture of death.”

The bill to abolish the death penalty failed during Louisiana’s legislative session, which ended in June. The 56 clemency petitions were filed shortly after in June. The death row prisoners asked for their punishments to be changed from death penalty to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Cecelia Kappel, the executive director of the Louisiana Capital Appeals Project and an attorney for several of the prisoners, said that there are “systemic flaws” to the death penalty in Louisiana. She cited racial disparity, death-sentenced prisoners with evidence of intellectual disability and “prosecutorial misconduct” that has resulted in inmates being exonerated in recent years.

All clemency applications are reviewed by the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole. Any applications recommended to the governor by the board members — all of whom were appointed by Edwards — are “reviewed on a case-by-case basis before a final decision is made,” said Eric Holl, a spokesperson for the governor's office.

However, the board never conducted hearings on the applications, returning them after an administrative screening, The Advocate reported. Whether or not the governor will direct the board to hear the cases remains to be determined.

Only two clemency requests have been granted by Louisiana governors since the state instated the death penalty in the 1970s. Louisiana has held 28 executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Sixty people sit on Louisiana’s death row, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections told The Associated Press in late May.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, July 28, 2023

_____________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW US ON:

CONTACT: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder

In March, the Knesset approved legislation that calls for the execution of Palestinians convicted by a military court of killing Israelis Israeli authorities are preparing a prison wing—replete with an execution chamber—designated specifically for Palestinian prisoners convicted of murder, Israel’s i24NEWS channel reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved legislation in March that calls for the execution of Palestinian prisoners convicted by a military court of murdering Israelis.

Florida executes William Frances Silvia

Florida executed its 13th death row prisoner of the year Tuesday evening amid the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty championed by Governor Ron DeSantis. William Frances Silvia, 61, who was convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and injuring his mother-in-law in 2006, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving the lethal three-drug injection at Florida State Prison. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Silvia was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up. He remained relatively motionless with his eyes and mouth open throughout most of the execution while a priest sat at his feet and prayed.

Alabama executes Jeremy Williams

Tennessee and Oklahoma have put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men in one day. Tennessee and Oklahoma put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other Thursday, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men by lethal injection in one day for the first time since 2010. The Tennessee man was executed for killing a maid at a motel in 1985, and the Oklahoma man for killing his girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, a man was put to death Thursday evening for killing a 5-year-old girl he had paid her mother to abuse.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Spared execution eight times, oldest inmate in US dies at 101 after 76 years behind bars

Francis Clifford Smith was given his last meal eight times. But after being spared execution each time, he went on to be regarded as the longest-serving prisoner in the US before dying in June at 101 years old. Convicted of murder in 1950 when he was 25, he always maintained his innocence, those who knew him told the BBC. Andrius Banevicius, the public information officer for Connecticut's Department of Correction, recounted how Smith used to feed the birds while in Osborn Prison, earning him the nickname The Birdman of Osborn.

Cartoons about Capital Punishment

More cartoons about capital punishment HERE

Alabama is trying a death penalty bait-and-switch

For a decade, Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee has been clear that he does not want to be executed by lethal injection . But that is what awaits him on September 17 . He faces that prospect because the state has been enjoined from using nitrogen hypoxia , the alternative execution method he preferred, to put him to death. Having failed to show that its nitrogen hypoxia protocol is constitutionally acceptable, Alabama wants a do-over to force Lee to die by lethal injection as a result of its own failure. It should not get one. Alabama should only be able to put Lee to death if it can fix nitrogen hypoxia’s constitutional defects.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

Tennessee executes Darrell Hines

The state has spent millions of dollars over decades to execute a seriously ill man who was already incarcerated. The state of Tennessee executed death row inmate Darrell Hines Thursday morning, according to an advocacy group. No formal announcement of the execution has been issued by state leaders yet. The execution was slated for 10 a.m. Thursday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. [DPN update] Hines was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. CDT. His last meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, corn, fries, biscuits, a chicken sandwich, chocolate chip cake, and sweet tea.

The 'Black Widow' shakes Iran: 10 death sentences for a serial killer who killed 12 men

Kolthum Akbari, an Iranian woman widely dubbed the “Black Widow,” was convicted of serial murders of elderly men she married, often temporarily. Official accounts generally center on 11 murders (plus one attempted murder), though Akbari herself gave varying figures and investigations suggested she had many more marriages. The sentencing occurred primarily in September 2025 in Mazandaran Province, with ongoing reporting and updates into 2026. The 56- to 59-year-old killer confessed to killing at least 11 elderly men after temporarily or officially marrying them; Iranian authorities have linked her to additional marriages and possible further victims.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog