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A jury last week in Parkland, Florida, recommended that Nikolas Cruz get life in prison for killing 17 people, sparing Cruz from a death sentence after his lawyers argued he had a troubled upbringing. I read a great deal about this case, and I wasn’t impressed with his “upbringing” argument. Hey, life growing up can be tough, but one isn’t excused for such unspeakable, horrific brutality that took place. I would have voted for the death penalty.

Down here in the Bayou State, there’s a clamor for more executions. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry makes no bones about his feelings. More executions — including nitrogen gas, hangings, firing squads, electrocution, and lethal injection. But a federal judge has put all executions in Louisiana on hold for another year.

There is a reason the death penalty is rarely enforced anymore, particularly in the federal judicial system. Many innocent victims are being convicted, based on cover-ups and the withholding of exculpatory evidence by some federal and state prosecutors. A recent study published in the National Academy of Sciences concludes that some 4.1% of inmates on death row are innocent. More than 4%! If that were the rate of airplanes crashing, would you fly?

My alma mater, the University of North Carolina, completed a death penalty study in 2016, and found that in Louisiana, 127 of 155 death penalty cases over the past 40 years ended in reversal, some 10 points above the national average.

Since 2000, there have been only two executions while seven people in Louisiana, about to be put to death, were found to be innocent. The main reason? Prosecutorial misconduct.

Louisiana has taken on the dubious title of having case after case of death row inmates being convicted based on the withholding of evidence that would prove their innocence.

New Orleans has become the cesspool for the innocent being convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to death. One of the most egregious is the case of New Orleanian John Thompson, who was convicted back in 1982 of first-degree murder and given the death sentence. He came within days of being executed after spending 14 years on death row and 18 years total in prison. Five different prosecutors were involved in the case and all knew that a blood test, and other key evidence that showed Thompson was innocent, had been withheld by the prosecution.

On his deathbed and dying of cancer, one of the prosecutors confessed to a colleague that he had hidden the exculpatory blood sample. The colleague waited five more years before admitting that he too knew of the hidden evidence. Thompson, after 18 years, received a new trial, and his lawyers were finally able to produce pieces of evidence that had been kept from Thompson’s defense attorneys, that overwhelming showed he was innocent. The new jury took less than 35 minutes to find him not guilty. The prosecutors involved all should have been disbarred and had to serve jail time themselves.

Hiding evidence that can find the accused innocent is nothing new for prosecutors in New Orleans, both in state and federal court as well as with the FBI. The Innocence Project of New Orleans reviewed a number of convictions over the past 25 years in the city and concluded that prosecutors have a “legacy” of suppressing evidence.

Then there is the chilling case of Dan Bright, convicted and put on death row for a murder he did not commit. Evidence came out years after his conviction that the FBI, thanks to a credible informant, had been in possession of the name of the actual killer all along. Luckily for Bright, because of the unconstitutional withholding of key evidence by the prosecution and the FBI, his conviction was thrown out, and he now is a free man.

Questionable conduct by rogue prosecutors who withhold information that could prove the innocence of an accused is far too prevalent.

Whether one is for or against the death penalty, there is ample evidence that convictions of a capital crime can be a crap shoot based on the whims of some prosecutors who too often withhold evidence that shows the accused is innocent.

In the movie “Shooter," Bobby Lee Swagger sums up how the death penalty is often enforced. In Louisiana. “This is the world we live in, and justice is not always fulfilled!”

Peace and Justice
Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the South and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com. You can also look over a list of books he has published at www.thelisburnpress.com.zzzz

By 1900, communities across south Louisiana were beginning to prosper again after the vicissitudes of the Civil War. Growing commerce brought new comforts that we take for granted today. Railroads and telegraph lines were bringing speedier communications between our towns for better or for worse.

Telephones were also beginning to link communities, but some people, including the editor of the St. Martinville Messenger, still preferred the telegraph.

The newspaper reported in May 1899, “The Western Union telegraph company is erecting a telegraph line from Cade to Arnaudville, and we learn a commercial office will be established in town. This is to be desired because the telephone is not giving satisfaction for the transaction of business, it is a slow process, unsafe, and too public. Business messages require the greatest secrecy which cannot be secured by the telephone.”

Maybe so, but imaginative users found both the telephone and telegraph adaptable to a variety of uses. The Lafayette Advertiser noted about that time that

“Pellerin Bros. have put up in their saloon a black board which records daily the race winners at New Orleans. … The news is received by special telegraph and telephone lines. Bets are occurring daily.”

Communities were also beginning to see electric lines running alongside the telegraph wires, and that brought once-unheard-of conveniences.

The St. Martinville newspaper bragged, for example, “Since we have two ice depots the price of this useful article has come down, and the poorer people can now indulge in the luxury of cool water.”

Until the 1890s, ice was shipped to our small towns from New Orleans, but the price of transportation and the loss by melting made it hard to keep and expensive to buy.

The Planters’ Banner informed its readers in April 1850 that “Mr. S. Carey has just received a hundred tons of ice, and has it nicely packed away in an ice house in Centreville, for the benefit of the people of this parish during the approaching hot weather. He is determined to sell it at a low price, to induce people to buy liberally, that he may secure a business in this line that will pay in future. When the waste by melting between New Orleans and Attakapas is considered, Mr. Cary’s ice will cost but little more than half what New Orleans ice will.”

Mr. Cary’s 1850 ice house was just a well-insulated building; he couldn’t make his own ice.

By 1899, however, ice houses were connected to plants that provided two necessary ice-making ingredients, clean water and electricity.

Those plants also powered bright new street lights that brought a new perspective to a community once the sun went down.

The editor of the Meridional reflected on that change in a little piece headlined “State Street By Lamp Light,” in 1899. It described Abbeville, but the scenes were probably typical in other communities.

“Wednesday night we took a stroll down our main business artery, State street, and found things quite lively,” he wrote. “At the Methodist church … was a blaze of light and prayer meeting was in progress. In the Masonic hall the Knights of Honor were holding forth. At the old Dupy [sic] corner on the open lot

Lucky George had a big crowd with his free show, and further down the street Jas. L. Washington, the child prodigy was entertaining a large audience in the Baptist church. A number of the stores were open and the saloons were in full blast. Safe from observation, the crap shooter and the stud poker gambler plied their vocation and show us that as we assume the bustle of a city its wickedness comes close behind.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.<>i>