DA Hillar Moore files injunction to halt clemency hearings for death row inmates

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore is doing everything he can to halt Governor John Bel Edward’s efforts to move forward with clemency hearings for death row inmates.

On Tuesday, September 12, district attorneys from across the state, along with family members of victims who died at the hands of death row inmates, delivered an injunction to a judge that aims to prevent the clemency hearings from happening. Moore filed the injunction.

Each person in opposition hopes the injunction will stop the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole from setting the hearings. Among them was Wayne Guzzardo and his wife Carol, who both have spoken out against repealing the death penalty in the state legislature.

“I just don’t know where he’s coming from. He seems more for the crooks and the thugs than he is for the victims,” said Wayne in reference to the governor.

“The torment that it brought to my life and the darkness is indescribable,” Carol said.

Moore’s filing impacts the cases dealing with inmates from Baton Rouge. However, the director of the District Attorney’s Association said there will be additional filings in all of the death row clemency cases.

“We are obviously supporting the efforts of the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office in these two cases, and we will monitor the process. We have DA’s from all over the state here today who have cases that are coming up in the next week or so,” Loren Lampert, the director of the District Attorney’s Association.

An attorney with the Louisiana Capital Appeals Project put out a statement, saying in part, “This lawsuit is just another baseless attempt to block the pardon board and Governor Edwards from taking a close look at Louisiana’s broken death penalty system. Mr. Moore is well aware that these cases involve serious problems, including innocence, intellectual disability, serious mental illness, racism, youth, and egregious prosecutorial misconduct.”

The case has been assigned to Judge Don Johnson, and according to the district attorney, by law, the court has two to 10 days to set the matter before a hearing.

Watch the complete press conference held by Moore and others below:

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore said he filed an injunction Tuesday, September 12, to halt clemency hearings for inmates on death row.

Moore released the below statement about the injunction filing:

Today my office filed a petition for injunctive relief against the Louisiana Pardon Board seeking to void the Board’s decision to set several death row defendants for commutation hearings and ensure that any further decisions are in accordance with established law, rules, and policies. The petition clearly outlines the proper authority of the Governor and Pardon Board and the procedures which the law requires they must follow to set and hold hearings on commutations. This process has not been followed for this special group of inmates who are incarcerated for the worst of offenses. The petition is based on facts and law and not on conjecture or politics. This petition is not about the propriety of the death penalty, nor an attack of the Pardon Board or Governor, but simply about following the rule of law and not advocating end runs around the law which undermine our system of justice and put individuals’ values before others’ rights. The petition represents the real death row of victims killed over the past several decades and whose families are still living with their loss. Their death row is not at Angola but scattered around the various parishes of our state. This is about their rights and voices who have been shuttered or given less meaning than those who have been fortunate to live and now fight for a sentence reduction, without any acknowledgement of their wrongdoing as they seek even further relief from the system.
A fair assessment of the facts and circumstances reasonably suggests that, following the Governor’s announcement of his support for the abolition of the death penalty, lawyers and private firms met and planned an organized effort to prepare for the eventual mass filing of these applications on the same date. The filing of these applications was for the benefit of individual defendants and to the emotional detriment of victims’ families, and it appears that the timing of the filings was calculated to take advantage of an individual’s personal opinion during the term of his position as Governor. In any event, and despite the extreme measures, the coordinated efforts could not side step the applicable policies and procedures and/or avoid the limitations on individual exercise of gubernatorial power. Stated differently, the extensive coordinated efforts could not overcome the insurmountable obstacles that prohibit consideration of the applications, nor can they otherwise provide a valid basis for the granting of the requests by the Governor in an expedited manner. Temporal constraints, along with compliance with the Pardon Board’s policies and procedures, including open meetings, notice requirements, and background investigation, simply does not allow for consideration of these applications.
To expect that the Pardon Board could investigate and hear claims related to 56 of the worst crimes in Louisiana History in 3-4 months when any 1 of these would normally take a year or more is reckless. It is important to remember that victims have ZERO recourse to a wrongfully granted clemency while these convicted killers have had and will have multiple bites at the apple.
Acknowledging its limitations, the Pardon Board correctly and justly denied and returned all the applications as untimely only to be then be put in the precarious position of having the Governor of the State of Louisiana—the individual elected to uphold the law and who personally appointed these Honorable Board members—urge the Pardon Board to set commutation hearings for the individuals whose applications were dismissed. This is not fair to the victims nor to this esteemed Board.
Respectfully, it is evident that, after the Pardon Board voted to return the applications, the Governor sought to nevertheless impose his personal opinion by virtue of an end run attempt to dictate further consideration of these matters by the Board, despite the applicable law and related judicial proceedings, contrary to the will of the citizens of this state, and without regard for the victims or their families. Justice and fairness require that there be defense against such conduct.
We look forward to presenting the facts surrounding the proceedings that have taken place in these selected death row cases, as compared to the regular order of business in all other cases to show the expedited and special attention that these defendants have been afforded.
EBR District Attorney Hillar Moore

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