Three months ago, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told an audience at Loyola University that he supported abolishing the state’s death penalty because it’s “so final. When you make a mistake, you can’t get it back. And we know that mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death,” according to nola.com.
Now, 51 of the 57 people on Louisiana’s death row are asking Bel Edwards, whose term is up this year, to act on his beliefs and commute their death sentences to life in prison. Nola.com reports that the clemency petitions filed by the Capital Appeals Project with the state Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole are based on a “range of mental health conditions” all of the individuals have. The petitioners include 50 men and the only woman on death row.
Because of a shortage of lethal injection drugs, the state hasn’t executed anyone since 2010, and that was the first in eight years. Still, the state legislature has repeatedly defeated any attempt to repeal the death penalty, and Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is running for governor, is an outspoken supporter of state killing and issued a statement vowing that his office will oppose all of the clemency petitions.
However, the pardons and parole board members are all Edwards appointees, and they will be charged with reviewing each application, deciding whether to grant a hearing and passing their recommendations to the governor, offering some hope that Edwards will have the political and moral courage to commute the petitions and save 57 lives.
As he said in March at Loyola, citing his Catholic faith, as nola.com reported, “being pro-life has got to mean more than the issue of abortion.”