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ACLU of Louisiana
Contact Information
Website: www.laaclu.org/
Phone: (504) 522-0617
Address: P.O. Box 56157
New Orleans, LA 70156-6157
Contact: Joe Cook
Death Penalty Statistics
Executions since 1976
27
Executions before 1976
632
Innocent people freed from Death Row
8
Number on Death Row Now
88 people
Location of Death Row (men)
Angola
Location of Death Row (women)
St. Gabriel
Crimes Eligible for the Death Penalty
First Degree Murder; Aggravated Rape of Victim Under Age 12; Treason
Last Three Executions
Leslie Martin: May 10, 2002
Feltus Taylor: June 6, 2000
Dobie Gillis Williams: January 8, 1999
Read about Ryan Matthews (as reported by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now), who is reason alone for Louisiana to place a moratorium on executions and study it's broken death penalty system.
A Louisiana court released 24-year-old Ryan Matthews from house arrest after exonerating him of a 1999 murder charge. Matthews was 17 when the 1997 murder of a grocery store owner took place and has served 5 years in prison. He was convicted based on questionable eye-witness testimony even though his DNA did not match that on a ski mask worn by the murderer and found at the scene. The mask was retested after Matthews' lawyers heard in 2003 that a convicted murderer, Rondell Love, had bragged to fellow inmates in a Louisiana state prison that he had committed the murder.
Five new DNA tests demonstrated that Matthews had no connection to the murder. Matthews had been under house arrest since April on a $105,000 bond. On Monday, Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick asked District Court Judge Henry Sullivan to vacate the bond.
Matthews is the 115th death row inmate to be exonerated in the past 25 years and the seventh cleared in Louisiana since 1981 -- one of three who had been sentenced to death for crimes allegedly committed while they were juveniles. Last month, the American Bar Association and dozens of other groups, including 48 nations, filed amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court case Roper v. Simmons arguing that juvenile offenders do not have the "heightened moral culpability that the Supreme Court requires for the imposition of the death penalty." The Supreme Court has not considered the applicability of the death penalty to juveniles for 15 years.
