Suzanimal
04-06-2015, 12:35 PM
By Radley Balko
A couple of years ago, I wrote about the ongoing problem of prosecutor misconduct, using Louisiana as the poster state to explain why even egregious misconduct not only isn’t punished but also is often incentivized. The story began with an interview with John Thompson, a man wrongly convicted of two crimes and sentenced to death. Thompson was eventually exonerated, and now runs a non-profit that helps the wrongly convicted reintegrate into society. But Thompson’s name is also on a landmark Supreme Court decision that denied him compensation for his conviction. I bring the piece up because it discusses the macabre culture of death that pervades some prosecutor offices in Louisiana.
Thompson was up against a prosecutorial climate that critics had long claimed valued convictions over all else, one that saw a death sentence as the profession’s brass ring.The New York Times reported in 2003 that prosecutors in Louisiana often threw parties after winning death sentences. They gave one another informal awards for murder convictions, including plaques with hypodermic needles bearing the names of the convicted. In Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans, some wore neckties decorated with images of nooses or the Grim Reaper.
One of Thompson’s prosecutors, Orleans Parrish Assistant District Attorney James Williams, told the Los Angeles Times in 2007, “There was no thrill for me unless there was a chance for the death penalty.”
Williams kept a replica electric chair on his desk. “It was hooked up to a battery, so you’d get a little jolt when you touched it,” recalls Michael Banks, one of Thompson’s attorneys. In 1995, Williams posed with this mini-execution chair in Esquire magazine. On the chair’s headboard, he had affixed the photos of the five men he had sent to death row, including Thompson. Of those five, two would later be exonerated and two more would have their sentences commuted.
Williams is no longer in office. But as James Gill writes in the New Orleans Advocate, the bloodlust persists in other parts of the state.
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/06/in-louisiana-prosecutor-offices-a-toxic-culture-of-death-and-invincibility/
A couple of years ago, I wrote about the ongoing problem of prosecutor misconduct, using Louisiana as the poster state to explain why even egregious misconduct not only isn’t punished but also is often incentivized. The story began with an interview with John Thompson, a man wrongly convicted of two crimes and sentenced to death. Thompson was eventually exonerated, and now runs a non-profit that helps the wrongly convicted reintegrate into society. But Thompson’s name is also on a landmark Supreme Court decision that denied him compensation for his conviction. I bring the piece up because it discusses the macabre culture of death that pervades some prosecutor offices in Louisiana.
Thompson was up against a prosecutorial climate that critics had long claimed valued convictions over all else, one that saw a death sentence as the profession’s brass ring.The New York Times reported in 2003 that prosecutors in Louisiana often threw parties after winning death sentences. They gave one another informal awards for murder convictions, including plaques with hypodermic needles bearing the names of the convicted. In Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans, some wore neckties decorated with images of nooses or the Grim Reaper.
One of Thompson’s prosecutors, Orleans Parrish Assistant District Attorney James Williams, told the Los Angeles Times in 2007, “There was no thrill for me unless there was a chance for the death penalty.”
Williams kept a replica electric chair on his desk. “It was hooked up to a battery, so you’d get a little jolt when you touched it,” recalls Michael Banks, one of Thompson’s attorneys. In 1995, Williams posed with this mini-execution chair in Esquire magazine. On the chair’s headboard, he had affixed the photos of the five men he had sent to death row, including Thompson. Of those five, two would later be exonerated and two more would have their sentences commuted.
Williams is no longer in office. But as James Gill writes in the New Orleans Advocate, the bloodlust persists in other parts of the state.
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/06/in-louisiana-prosecutor-offices-a-toxic-culture-of-death-and-invincibility/