Word: prejean
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There was nothing abstract about Roemer's words. The human life in his hands was that of Dalton Prejean, 30, a semiretarded killer scheduled to die in the electric chair shortly after midnight on Friday morning. Prejean was just 17 when he murdered a state trooper in 1977. His execution would be the first under a 1989 Supreme Court ruling permitting states to impose capital punishment for acts committed by 16- and 17-year-olds...
...When Prejean lost his final legal appeal as expected Thursday evening, only the Governor, with his power of clemency, could spare him. "If it were just a question of law, there wouldn't be the anguish involved," said Roemer, lapsing into near biblical cadences even as he glanced at his watch to see if was time to pick up his nine-year-old son Dakota and take him to baseball practice. "The law having been writ, a human stands under the tree. The courts having ruled, I stand with him. I have to make a decision...
...with such decisions. On the day he took office in 1988, there was an execution scheduled for that evening -- a grotesque welcome-to-power gift orchestrated by the outgoing Edwin Edwards, whom Roemer had defeated. "He knew that would affect me," the Governor recalls. He allowed it to proceed. Prejean was the fourth man to die in the electric chair during Roemer's two years in office. Last August, however, Roemer at the last minute blocked the execution of Ronald Monroe because of lingering doubts about his guilt. A lawyer close to the Monroe case cracked last week, "There...
...Prejean's guilt was never in dispute. Early on the morning of July 2, 1977, Louisiana state trooper Donald Cleveland stopped Prejean and his brother Joseph on a routine traffic violation. As Cleveland began to frisk the argumentative Joseph, Dalton crept behind the car, pulled out a pistol and fired two shots into the trooper's head. Prejean had also killed a taxi driver during an aborted robbery when he was 14. "I'm not bloodthirsty," insisted the officer's widow Candy Cleveland the morning before the execution. "But what kind of person am I supposed to be? I have...
...murder of a police officer in this state is a crime punishable by death," he said. "So on behalf of 780 state troopers, and thousands of police officers who put their lives on the line every day, the execution will proceed." That hard line brushed aside mitigating circumstances: Prejean was remorseful and semiretarded, with partial brain damage and a history of abuse as a child. He was also a black juvenile convicted by an all-white jury...