Edwards bypass foiled in part by progressive DA

Looks like 1^st Judicial District Attorney James Stewart will have to forgo any future George Soros bucks as he joined Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, Democrat 19^th Judicial District Attorney Hillar Moore III, and several other district attorneys in defeating a gambit backed by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

This week, these prosecutors reached a settlement with the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole over its prospective clemency hearings concerning almost the entirety of Louisiana’s death row. Contrary to existing rules, the Board had scheduled to conduct reviews of 20 inmates under capital sentences beginning Oct. 13 through Nov. 27, with perhaps more afterwards. This prompted the suit from Landry and the DAs from all districts with an inmate on the list, except for no party 4^th DA Steve Tew, Republican 21^st DA Scott Perrilloux, and 41^st DA Democrat Jason Williams.

Edwards this spring had signaled, after years of strategic obfuscation and caginess, that he opposed capital punishment. This dog whistle activated anti-death penalty advocates to flood the Board with the requests. The Board, after first refusing to breach its rules, acquiesced to a request from Edwards to conduct the reviews, drawing upon an ambiguity in the rules that allowed the governor to make such requests at any time, even though Landry’s office had opined that this exception was overridden by the scheduling rules except in cases of imminent execution.

Whether the suit provided an excuse for the Edwards-appointed board to rebuff him or it thought its legal position to hold the hearings was untenable, it buckled. The settlement turns the hearings into administrative reviews of records, with the actual clemency reviews occurring no fewer than 60 days after but not before the last day of 2023. With Edwards’ term ending only days later, in effect that means only the first five inmate reviews scheduled could occur and have rendered recommendations for clemency before he leaves office.

Not that those five have any real chance of garnering Board approval. They comprise probably the most heinous and notorious crimes committed of all death row occupants. And it’s highly unlikely that Edwards’ successor would grant clemency even if the Board advised so on any of the other 15. The agreement also limits consideration to just those 20.

In essence, the agreement checkmated the subversive attempt by Edwards and special interests to moot Louisiana law allowing for capital punishment. It also makes Stewart’s membership in the “progressive prosecutors” club rather tenuous.

Stewart won office in a special election in 2015 in part based upon at least giving lip service to that agenda, which argues that typical, by-the-book prosecuting decisions lead to disproportionate incarceration of nonwhites and the poor, so decisions about pretrial detainment and charging or seeking indictments should deemphasize incarceration of, if not pleading down or refusing to prosecute cases involving, disproportionately nonwhites and the poor. Part of that is virulent opposition to capital punishment, as it falls disproportionately on nonwhites and the poor.

Such rhetoric netted Stewart nearly $1 million bucks in spending towards his initial election, much of it coming from Soros initiatives to elect progressive prosecutors. But Stewart hasn’t exactly gotten with the program as far as the death penalty goes. Although in past statements acknowledging great reluctance to ask for capital sentences, he never ruled it out completely and did seek it in one case although the jury couldn’t agree on that sentence and in another initially did so but reversed that when he believed he couldn’t get a jury to agree. And he has continued to defend predecessors’ cases resulting in such sentences, with his joining the suit as the latest manifestation of that.

In his 2020 reelection, Soros money noticeably was absent. Probably now with his latest support of existing capital sentences, it’s definitely off the table, although given he won reelection without difficulty he doesn’t seem to need it. And the fact he did win denotes, as far as the voting public goes, it’s satisfied with his position on the issue that now disappoints and frustrates anti-capital punishment ideologues even as he intermittently reminds the public that he still puts himself in the progressive camp.