D.A. won’t prosecute Merritt Landry for shooting 14-year-old

19th May 2014   ·   0 Comments

Less than two weeks after local news broke about Marshall Coul­ter’s arrest and images of the brain-damaged teen unlawfully entering another home in Faubourg Marigny, were aired, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro an­nounced that he will not prosecute Merritt Landry, WWL-TV reported.

Landry, a City of New Orleans employee, is the Marigny homeowner who shot 14-year-old Marshall Coulter in the head last summer after finding the teen in his backyard. He had jumped a fence and was in his backyard last summer.

Cannizzaro said that the recent arrest of Coulter on burglary charges “irreversibly damaged” any case they might have had against Landry.

“As the District Attorney for the parish of Orleans, I am ethically obligated not to charge an individual against whom I do not possess evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed a crime. Such evidence does not exist in this case,” Cannizzaro said in a statement.

New Orleans police arrested Landry after the shooting last July. Coulter was unarmed, but Landry contended he was defending his home and family inside.

Landry’s attorneys said they were pleased with the decision.

“We just now hope that Mr. Landry and his family can go on with the rest of their lives,” said Kevin Boshea, told WWL-TV..

Defense attorney Roger Jordan told WWL-TV that Landry didn’t ever want to be in a position to have to shoot anyone. “When it came to the person that he shot (he said) he prays for him every day.”

Coulter was hospitalized for severe head injuries, but recently the teen was arrested on burglary charges.

A videotape of Marshall Coulter retrieving keys from a Marigny home mailbox and sitting on the porch until police arrived has been shown repeatedly on local television news broadcasts.

A number of residents and leaders have questioned the teen’s mental capacity after being shot in the head and suggested that Coulter needs mental health care, not prosecution at this point.

Community activists have also questioned the timing of the news story and the D.A.’s announcement last week. “The timing is definitely suspect,” W.C. Johnson, a member of Community United for Change and host of local cable-access show “OurStory,” told The Louisiana Weekly in a recent interview. “The D.A. had almost a year to decide what to do about this case but couldn’t make up his mind until this story broke. Merritt Landry should already be serving time for shooting this misguided, troubled teenager in the head.

“Nothing that was reported last week takes away from the fact that Merritt Landry committed an unwarranted act of violence,” Johnson added.

Because it occurred shortly after the acquittal of George Zimmer­man, the Florida Neighborhood Watch leader who gunned down 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, the early-morning-shooting of Coulter touched off a fiery debate between Landry supporters who defended his right to protect his family and civil rights leaders and community activists who believed the use of deadly force was unnecessary.

The NOPD report said Coulter was unarmed and at least 30 feet away from Landry when he was shot and arrested Landry on attempted second-degree murder charges. Landry told police that he thought Marshall Coulter had a gun.

The controversy was raised to another level after Orleans Criminal Court Judge Franz Zibilich, a family friend who represented Landry’s brother in a drug-related case, allowed the homeowner to bond out of jail after only several hours.

A grand jury recently failed to bring charges against Landry and Cannizzaro said that the recent arrests of Landry made it nearly impossible to think that would change now.

“In an effort to obtain an indictment of Merritt Landry, my office presented an in-depth and thorough case to the Grand Jury,” Cannizzaro said. “They pretermitted the case, which means that nine jurors could not agree to either charge or not charge Landry with a crime. Following Coulter’s most recent burglary arrests, any case that this office had against Landry was irreversibly damaged.”

“The district attorney assumes that no one in this community recognizes the fact that Merritt Landry broke the law when he shot an unarmed 14-year-old boy who was more than 30 feet away from him and his family in the head,” Ramessu Merriamen Ana, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly Friday. “It’s not a complicated case. No one has the right to shoot anyone who poses no immediate threat to them in the head.

“No matter how many homes and yards he broke into, Marshall Coulter did not deserve to be shot in the head like an animal,” Aha added.

“This sends a dangerous message to both homeowners and Black youth,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly Friday. “It tells homeowners that they can get away with shooting Black children as long as they can make people believe that they were scared, and it tells Black youth that the criminal justice system places little value on the lives and well-being of Black children. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

This article originally published in the May 19, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.