Attorney: Killer could have plead insanity
A convicted killer and rapist who held Houma bank employees hostage more than 17 years ago deserves a reduced sentence because his former attorneys failed to present an insanity defense, his legal team argued during a Tuesday court hearing.
An insanity defense wasn't used because former Terrebonne Parish sheriff's deputy Chad Louviere unexpectedly accepted the idea of entering a guilty plea, said his former lead counsel David Stone.
District Judge John Walker continued the hearing, which began earlier this year, to the last week in August.
Louviere received the death sentence for killing a woman and raping four others in a one-day crime spree in October 1996. He is asking the judge to reduce his sentence to life in prison.
Stone said when he joined Louviere's defense team 1997 he looked at a number of defense strategies.
"As I learned the facts of the case, I went through the litany of defenses. Was it self-defense? Was it an accidental killing? The defense that screamed out at me was insanity because of the bizarre set of facts about the crime," he said.
Stone said the unusual behavior Louviere exhibited during his crime spree began around 8:30 a.m. Oct. 17, 1996.
That morning Louviere was off duty but still in uniform when he stopped a woman on Bull Run Road, sprayed her with mace and handcuffed her before driving her to a remote sugarcane field, police said. There, Louviere raped her several times.
Louviere then took her back to her vehicle and gave her 2 options: she could call him again for a date or turn him in to police and he would kill her and her family.
Around 10:30 a.m., Louviere drove to the Argent Bank - now Capital One - at the corner of Grand Caillou and Moffet roads where his estranged wife was an employee.
He walked into the bank with a bag containing an AR-15 assault rifle and ordered 2 male customers out of the building before shooting 1 of the 6 women there in the head. The victim, Pamela Duplantis, was a mother of a 9-year-old girl. He also raped 3 women in the bank.
"There was no indication that anything was wrong with Louviere prior to that day, and then this happened," Stone said. "There wasn't much about it that made a lot of sense. Firstly, he committed so many acts of rape that day, and then he tried negotiating with the FBI for his own release. Something was up."
Stone said an expert was hired to determine whether Louviere could possibly have split personalities.
"He was not an easy client. He had dramatic mood swings that flip flopped constantly, and he always talked about there being a conspiracy against him. All of that coupled with his crimes made me figure that there was something going on there," he said.
The expert told Stone that Louviere did not have a split personality, but his history of mental illness and use of ephedra-laced drugs at the time could lead to a viable insanity defense, he said.
On Dec. 22, 1998, during Louviere's trial, Stone said he discussed the topic of a guilty plea with Louviere, thinking that may cause the state to waive the death penalty and substitute it for life in prison.
"He said 'no,' and then 30 seconds later, he said 'yes.' When he said 'yes,' we threw out the insanity defense. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time," Stone said.
(source: houmatoday)
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