BATON ROUGE, La. — A day after Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards published a letter requesting the state's Board of Pardons hear the case of 56 death row inmates seeking commuted sentences, 20 have been granted hearings scheduled from mid-October through November.
Five of the 20 inmates receiving a hearing date are from the New Orleans metro area, including:
Clifford Deruise, 49, Orleans Parish – Convicted in the November 1995 killings of 20-year-old Gary Booker and 11-month-old Etienne NaChampassak in New Orleans. Deruise shot Booker eight times after Deruise asked him and his companions for a dollar and the men said they had no money. Two days later, Deruise shot and killed Etienne, the infant, in a botched carjacking.
Antoinette Frank, 52, Orleans Parish – New Orleans police officer at the time of the crime, was convicted in the 1995 killing of Ronald Williams II, a fellow officer, during an armed robbery of a restaurant, along with two members of the business owner's family.
Clarence Harris Jr., 61, Orleans Parish – Convicted of first-degree murder for the August 1993 killing of Katie Carlin. He tried to abduct the woman from New Orleans' Central City neighborhood before dawn and gunned her down as she ran away. Harris then dragged Carlin's 11-year-old daughter — who was with her — into his car and drove her back to his apartment, where he raped her.
Jarrell Neal, 46, Jefferson Parish – Convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in the March 1998 shooting deaths of Fergus Robinson and Greg Vickers. Neal was one of three intruders who entered a Metairie home with the intention of collecting an overdue drug debt from a former resident of the house. In addition to firing the shots that killed Robinson and Vickers, the intruders also shot and injured a third person in the home and a pregnant next-door neighbor; they also shot at responding officers.
Emmett Taylor, 48, Jefferson Parish – Convicted of the February 1997 murder of Marie Toscano during a robbery of the Marrero pharmacy where Toscano worked. During questioning, Taylor made a taped confession in which he said the shooting was accidental.
The board said 20 was the maximum number they could take on without impacting their existing case load.
Shortly after the scheduled hearings, the Louisiana District Attorney's Association released the following statement:
"We have just learned that the Pardon Board has opted to schedule at least 20 clemency hearings from September-November. Any time the public we serve perceives a thumb on the scales of justice at any level it erodes their confidence in what we do." — Loren M. Lampert, Executive Director
The complete response posted by WBRZ can be read here.
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