Should the Death Penalty in Louisiana Be Repealed?

By Calcasieu Staff
Published January 21, 2019

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Should the Death Penalty in Louisiana Be Repealed?

Should Louisiana Get Rid of the Death Penalty?

A recent post in two local Facebook groups, Sulphur-Calcasieu Information Station and Sulphur-Carlyss Information Station, brought up the death penalty in Louisiana and suggested it should be repealed. The post by Lelan J. LaBorde in the public group shared an article written by Rev. J.L. Franklin, executive director of the Louisiana Community Coalition For Action Inc. The article shared information about Louisiana’s error rate in capital cases as well as the number of people exonerated since the year 2000, as well as other information about the death penalty in the state.

As with many similar subjects, there were people on both sides of the debate.

Currently, 20 states and the District of Columbia have death penalty bans and 30 states have the death penalty. The last execution in Louisiana was in 2010, and a lawsuit that challenged the state’s lethal injection protocols has put executions on hold since 2014.

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Should the Death Penalty in Louisiana Be Repealed? Poll

An excerpt from the article in the post can be found below, along with a link to the full post by Lelan J. LaBorde in Sulphur-Calcasieu Information Station.

Excerpt:

Even if you support the idea of the death penalty, the reality is Louisiana’s death penalty is broken. We have the highest error rate in capital cases in the country, with the rate rising from 81 percent to 85 percent in 2018. Since 2000, death row has shrunk from 90 to 67 individuals — but not for why you might expect. During that period eight people have been exonerated due to evidence of their innocence and seven have died on death row as a result of suicide or medical problems; only two have been executed, one of whom volunteered for his execution.

We saw last November, when 64 percent of Louisiana voters chose to eliminate non-unanimous jury sentences, that we have an appetite for fixing what doesn’t work in our justice system. This trend is reflected across the country: over the last four years voters have removed prosecutors in 11 of the 30 most prolific death-sentencing counties. Here in Louisiana we saw Caddo Parish voters reject pro-death penalty policies.

Read the full post about abolishing the death penalty in Louisiana.