The quest to do away with Louisiana’s death penalty
11th February 2019 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
It’s been nearly 15 years since Dan Bright was exonerated of murder and released from prison, but he still looks over his shoulder when he leaves his parents’ home in the Lower Ninth Ward.
Bright, who spent four years on death row and nine overall in a Louisiana prison after being wrongly convicted of the murder or Murray Barnes, can’t walk down the street without worrying whether New Orleans Police Department officers will spy and harass him. At times, Bright even fears for his life.
“When I’m driving and I see a cop car, I get nervous,” Bright said. “Every time, they’ve pulled me over and harassed me. They unbutton their gun holsters. I can see [the anger] in their eyes, in their demeanor. Every time I see them with a gun…”
Despite overwhelming evidence proving Bright’s innocence – his original defense attorney was incompetent and drunk, the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office withheld key FBI documents that named the true killer, facts that undermined the State’s primary witness’ credibility – law enforcement officers haven’t stopped treating him like a murderer.
“Some of them think I got off on a technicality,” Bright said. “Even with all the evidence pointing to my innocence, they think it was just a technicality.”
Often Bright’s only solace comes from his family and close friends.
“I’m accepted in my community,” he said. “Everyone gets along here. My neighbors know I’m not a murderer. We’re very close-knit. Everyone knows everyone, and they know about police corruption. This neighborhood knows the truth.”
That stigma of being on death row has lingered for 15 years for Bright. On top of the often excruciating hell he went through in prison at Angola, his wrongful conviction continues to disrupt and undermine his attempts to stay on the straight and narrow.
Bright openly acknowledges that before going to prison in 1996, he was waist deep in a criminal culture that made him a local drug kingpin, entangled in a life that began before he was a teenager and continued until he was convicted of Bright’s murder.
So he understands that people who don’t know much about him or his story view him with disdain or distrust. That scorn only becomes magnified even more by being branded as a one-time death-row inmate.
“I can’t even get a job,” he said.
“Even though I was exonerated, who wants to hire someone who was on death row?” he asked rhetorically. “Who wants to have a death-row inmate next to them all day? They worry if I have mental problems.”
(Requests to NOPD spokespersons for responses to Bright’s comments were not returned last week.)
But despite the financial hardships, Bright said he has steadfastly continued to leave his criminal life in the past. He was a drug dealer, but he isn’t anymore. And he isn’t, and has never been, a murderer. Bright said he has paid his dues – even ones he was unfairly forced to pay – and now just wants a fair shake.
“I would like to stop being pre-judged,” he said. “I’d like people to get to know me first.”
But Bright knows that realistically, that day might never fully come. In the meantime, he said flatly, life can be very bleak. “It’s very shitty,” he said. “It’s hard.”
For that reason, Bright has been watching the ongoing debate in Louisiana about the possible repeal of the death penalty in this state, and he’s seen how, in just about every legislative session in Baton Rouge, a repeal bill is filed but inevitably falls by the wayside or is outright defeated.
“I think it should be abolished,” he said. “It’s long overdue. It’s cruel and unusual punishment.
“But it’s political,” he added. “It’s all political. We don’t want to engage with the issue. People don’t really want to hear anything about it.”
Damon Thibodeaux, another former death-row inmate in Louisiana who was likewise exonerated, was wrongfully convicted in 1996 of killing his step-cousin, spent 15 years in solitary confinement on death row before being exonerated in 2012.
Thibodeaux has fared better than Bright and other exonerees, become a long-distance truck driver and moving to Texas since his release. But the sting remains for Thibodeaux, who has eyed the Louisiana death-penalty debate from afar and, like Bright, has built up a hardened cynicism over the years.
In a phone interview from on the road in New York state, Thibodeaux called previous attempts at repealing the death penalty “more of a political stunt than anything else.”
He said the Louisiana death-penalty debate has simply become a political football.
“[Legislators] are just punting it around, back and forth,” he said, “and they’re forgetting the people in the middle of it. They need to take it seriously. It’s always politics that kills it. If we could get the politics out of it, [lawmakers] can actually look at its merits.”
“It’s not fair or just,” he added.
Thibodeaux and others hope one or more state legislators will propose an abolishment bill during the upcoming legislative session that begins April 8 and runs through June 6, but it would still face a slew of challenges.
Such a bill was essentially nixed in 2018 by the House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee, and while Gov. John Bel Edwards has made moves toward considering outlawing capital punishment, State Attorney General Jeff Landry continues to vociferously support and advocate for the death penalty despite the prevalence of wrongful convictions and exonerations.
Both the Attorney General’s Office and the Governor’s Office did not return requests for comments last week.
At this point, use of the death penalty is on hold in Louisiana – while the Pelican State remains one of 30 states in the U.S. to allow capital punishment, the state has not carried out execution since 2010, and the process has been halted since 2014 as a result of controversy and legal action regarding the state’s lethal injection protocol and fairness.
Last July, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick agreed to a 12-month extension of an order temporarily delaying all executions in Louisiana. Although 67 people remain on death row in the state, Michael Cahoon, coordinator for LA REPEAL, said only one death sentence was imposed in 2018, down drastically from a high of 12 in both 1995 and 1997. Cahoon said that sharp downward also provides hope for the future to abolition forces.
As other states continue to make moves toward abolishing the death penalty – with the prevalence of wrongful convictions and a shift in public opinion regarding the concept of cruel and unusual punishment – advocates of repeal remain steadfastly optimistic about the chances of abolishment here, and several non-profit and community organizations continue their efforts to sway opinion, both in the state legislature and the general public.
“The legislature has had some close votes in committee [in past years],” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national pro-abolition advocacy group. “And with the state’s continued financial crisis and prosecutorial misconduct, this state may be close to abolition. I don’t think we can predict when it will come, but there’s a sense that it will come eventually.”
He added that last fall’s successful electoral effort in Louisiana to eliminate non-unanimous juries in felony cases, including capital trials, reflected another significant trend – bi-partisan movements coalescing around justice issues.
Still, Dunham said, many district attorneys offices continue to undermine efforts to reduce capital punishment and engage in reckless pursuit of the death penalty through prosecutorial misconduct that has reached “epidemic levels in Louisiana.” The harsh views and questionable vehemence of some DAs, he said, ignore what’s becoming more and more obvious to others.
But, he said, “When an electorate insists on honest, fair prosecution that follows the law and respects individual rights and be fair, that will go a long way in reducing the use of capital punishment.”
Cahoon said his LA REPEAL entered the new year with renewed vigor and believes that capital punishment in the state may be on its last legs. He said LA REPEAL is gearing up for what promises to be a protracted, heated but hopefully successful battle in 2019, one that would make Louisiana a leader in the region.
“I fully believe that Louisiana will be the first Southern state to repeal the death penalty,” Cahoon said, pointing out the state’s 85-percent reversal rate in death sentences. “The people of this state, when they look at the history of the death penalty, both the horrible and hopeful parts of history, see what sets Louisiana apart from the rest of the South.”
He said LA REPEAL continues to lobby Louisiana lawmakers on behalf of the innocent, and he said the group has seen significant support for abolition, or at least willingness to listen fairly to the arguments.
Still, Cahoon acknowledged, “This is an issue that is controversial and requires some political courage.”
Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office spokesman Ken Daley noted that current District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro has invoked the death penalty infrequently, Cannizzaro has pursued capital punishment only three times in 10 years, with the last one coming in 2011.
“This office continues to work in accordance with the will of citizens, as expressed in laws passed by Louisiana’s state legislature and governor,” Daley added.
Daley also said the DA’s Office has no comment on Dan Bright’s specific circumstances because Bright wasn’t prosecuted under Cannizzaro’s watch. “We have no comment on a case that was fully adjudicated in all courts under a previous administration,” Daley said.
Meanwhile, Dan Bright sits in his parents’ house, watching after his grandchildren, caring for his aging parents and trying to not go stir crazy. “I’ve gone from reading law books [in prison] and debating laws to debating with my grand-daughter about SpongeBob,” he says with a smile.
Bright has already published one book about his life experiences, “The Story of Dan Bright,” to positive reviews, and he’s written manuscripts for four more. He also tours the country on speaking engagements to tell his story and enlighten listeners nationwide.
This article originally published in the February 11, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
