Interesting account of mass clemency efforts on behalf of those on Louisiana’s death row

In this post last month, I noted the notable news that almost all “of the 57 people on Louisiana’s death row have asked Gov. John Bel Edwards to spare their lives, a historic request made after Edwards broke his silence on how he views capital punishment and pushed lawmakers to outlaw the practice.”  Writing here at Bolts, Piper French has an extended follow up reviewing the clemency effort. The piece is fully titled “The Death Penalty on Trial in Louisiana: Petitions filed on behalf of dozens of people on death row are asking the governor for mass clemency, and showcasing the injustices that undergird capital punishment.”  I recommend this article in full, and here is an excerpt:

Clemency is often conceived of as a discrete and individual mercy — as an exception, the opposite of policy.  On death row, we picture it as an eleventh-hour decision to spare a person’s life following efforts by advocates to highlight the tragic or unjust circumstances of their case.  But here, the petitioners say that in highlighting people’s stories, they’re not trying to persuade public officials to handpick which of the 57 is most deserving of mercy.

Instead, they’re hoping to showcase the systemic disparities that undergird each of their cases.  What if clemency were a form of policy, they ask — not an individual act, but a collective response to the barrage of injustices that have made the state’s death row a cross-section of its poorest and most marginalized groups?

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that executing someone with an intellectual disability is unconstitutional, a criterion that fits 40 percent of the people on Louisiana’s death row.  Thirty-nine of the 57 have been diagnosed with brain damage or serious mental illness.  Three quarters are people of color, the vast majority of them Black.  Many allege prosecutorial misconduct and sorely deficient legal support.  “We are executing the most vulnerable people in our population,” said Calvin Duncan, an exoneree who served as a jailhouse lawyer to many on death row for about 19 of the 28 years he spent wrongfully locked up.

Time is running out.  Edwards leaves office in early January, and the frontrunner to succeed him staunchly supports the death penalty.  The next few months will determine whether Edwards translates his philosophical opposition to capital punishment into action by trying to speed up the process and by commuting every death sentence he can before his term is up.

The petitioners must first convince the Louisiana Board of Pardons, which must recommend cases to the governor before he can grant clemency and has already signaled the process may be lengthy, though Edwards, who has appointed the board’s five current members, can ask the board to consider capital cases in a meeting.  His office did not respond to a direct question about whether he would do so.

Not only is this a last-ditch effort to forestall the state executions of these 57 people — it’s also a call for Louisiana to end the use of the death penalty once and for all, in keeping with the growing number of states that have abandoned the practice.  In the last six years, five state legislative attempts to repeal capital punishment have failed.