Sentences commuted in two St. Mary cases

Two men convicted in St. Mary Parish -- one in a murder case that had roots in Oklahoma, and the other in a Morgan City armed robbery -- received sentence commutations this month after hearings before the Louisiana Pardon Board.
The 25-year sentence for Travis Lee Miller, convicted in the 2010 home invasion and armed robbery in July 2010 at a Bowman Street home, was commuted to 15 years. Miller was released on good time Dec. 21.
Miller had been sentenced in 2011.
The sentence of Danny Ray Lee, who is serving life without parole in the 1994 killing of an Oklahoma woman in a Baldwin cane field, was commuted to 99 years. While the difference between natural life and 99 years may seem inconsequential, the commutation creates the possibility that Lee will someday be eligible for parole.
Media accounts have placed Lee and Miller among more than 50 pardons issued by Gov. John Bel Edward between October and December, the waning days of his administration.
But according to the Pardon Board, Lee and Miller received commutations, which are only reductions in sentences. Pardons generally represent forgiveness and restore civil rights, such as the right to vote or run for office, that would otherwise be lost after a felony conviction.
In the Miller case, he was convicted after a Bowman Street resident said he awoke to find three men demanding money at gunpoint as the resident’s roommate slept in another room, court records say. The men, Miller among them, stole $1,000 and other items.
Miller was arrested by Morgan City police in September 2010, two months after the crime. He was originally charged with armed robbery, armed robbery with a firearm, simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
In March 2011, District Judge James McClelland accepted an agreement in which Miller pleaded guilty to the armed robbery and armed robbery with firearm counts. He was sentenced to 20 years on the first count and five years on the second.
In an unsuccessful bid for a post-conviction reduction in sentence, Miller’s attorney argued that his client had been abusing drugs for 11 of his 22 years at the time of the robbery.
But in prison, the petition said, Miller had obtained his high school equivalence degree, had completed a technical college course in carpentry and was enrolled in a community college business course.
The defense attorney argued that Miller was eager to support his family.
Miller had also become a Distinguished Voice in the Toastmasters public speaking program, the attorney said, and had completed a course in rabbinical Judaism.
One of the investigators who worked on the case was then-Sgt. Chad Adams, who is now Morgan City’s police chief.
Adams said Wednesday that he hopes Miller has been rehabilitated.
“Unfortunately,” Adams said, “as governors are leaving office, they tend to pardon a lot of inmates into the community, and people are victimized by people who re-offend.”
In the Lee case, Lee and another man were accused of taking Marie Tibbals, 25, from Oklahoma to Louisiana, where Lee choked her to keep her from revealing the existence of an Oklahoma drug lab, according to an account from the time in the Oklahoman newspaper.
Tibbals’ body was found in a field a mile west of Baldwin.
The newspaper quoted then-Sheriff Huey Bourgeois as saying that Tibbals went willingly to the Baldwin field, so Lee couldn’t be charged with first-degree murder.
In Louisiana, first-degree murder is a homicide committed with the intention to kill or cause bodily harm, committed in the presence of one or more aggravating circumstances. First-degree murder is punishable by death or mandatory life in prison without parole.
Conviction for second-degree murder, also an intentional homicide, brings a mandatory life sentence without parole.
Another St. Mary conviction figured in a controversy over clemency for death row inmates in the summer and fall.
Fifty-six death row inmates, including Donald Leger of St. Mary, sought to have their death sentences commuted to life in prison.
Leger was convicted in 2001 in the shooting death of Troy Salone.
According to media accounts, Leger had attacked his former girlfriend, a mother of four, before binding her and threatening to kill her. At gunpoint, Leger put her in her minivan and drove toward a place where he said he would dump her body in water, according to a state Supreme Court ruling in response to a Leger motion.
The woman escaped and fled to a Franklin home. Leger went to another nearby home where he demanded that Troy Salone and wife Evelyn tell him where his ex-girlfriend was. When they couldn’t tell him, he shot them both. Evelyn Salone survived.
In July, the Louisiana Pardon Board rejected the 56 requests for clemency, Leger’s among them, based on advice from Attorney General Jeff Landry.
The governor wrote a letter to the Pardon Board, asking for hearings to be set in the cases. The Pardon Board began to comply, but opposition erupted from district attorneys, Landry and others.
They accused the governor of misusing the rules governing pardons and clemency. Edwards countered by accusing Landry of being ignorant of the rules.
Among those opposed to the clemency requests was Evelyn Salone.
“The governor is stepping over things that are already in place, which should be criminal also,” Salone was quoted as saying by the Louisiana Radio Network in August.
“If I had my way and I could, I’d charge him for breaking the law, for trying to break the law. That’s just me,” said Salone.