Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 16

Thread: David Brown - Louisiana Death Row

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217

    David Brown - Louisiana Death Row


    Capt. David C. Knapps, 49




    Suspect’s request denied

    Angola 5 defendant sought comments on racial attitudes

    By James Minton
    The Advocate

    ST. FRANCISVILLE — The judge in the Angola 5 first-degree murder cases denied requests Thursday by defendant David Brown’s attorneys to solicit written comments on potential jurors’ racial attitudes.

    Brown, 38, is the only black inmate among the five inmates charged in the Dec. 28, 1999, beating and stabbing death of Louisiana State Penitentiary Capt. David C. Knapps, 49, during an escape attempt.

    Brown’s trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection on Oct. 17. He is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder in Jefferson Parish.

    In another of the Angola 5 cases, retired Orleans Parish Judge Jerome M. Winsberg, who is presiding over the trials, sentenced Robert G. Carley to a life sentence Thursday after a jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision Sunday night on whether he should get life or a death sentence.

    Carley already is serving a life sentence for the 1987 murder of a gas station attendant in St. Bernard Parish. Winsberg told Carley the life sentence in the Knapps murder is to be “served consecutively with any other sentence you are serving.”

    Carley had no comment during sentencing.

    Co-defendant Jeffrey Cameron Clark was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in May.

    Trials for Barry Edge, 51, and David Mathis, 35, are expected next year.

    Jurors for the St. Francisville trials are being chosen in St. Tammany Parish, where white residents make up 83.6 percent of the population, according to the 2010 federal census.

    Clark’s jury had no black members, while Carley’s had one black juror and one black alternate juror.

    Winsberg earlier denied a motion by Brown’s attorneys, Clay Calhoun and Mark Marinoff, to choose the jury in another parish.

    “Race is an unavoidable issue in this case,” Calhoun said Thursday in asking that the jury be told that Brown is the only black man among the defendants.

    Calhoun said jurors may have misperceptions about the Angola prison and should know that “Brown is not part of a black gang that killed a white guard.”

    Potential jurors will meet in Covington on Oct. 13 to fill out a questionnaire to give to attorneys for the state and the defense background information about themselves .

    Calhoun wanted the questionnaire to include several questions he said are designed to gauge the possible jurors’ “racial attitudes and beliefs,” arguing the written questions offer the most sensitive method of determining racial bias.

    “I’ve considered them all, and they’re all denied,” Winsberg said.

    Prosecutor Juliet Clark, of Jefferson Parish, argued against many of the proposed questions, saying they would make the questionnaire more complicated than necessary.

    Winsberg said some of the proposed questions will be allowed, but he also drew the line on asking about potential jurors’ incomes.

    “These people are not applying for a loan,” the judge said.

    http://theadvocate.com/news/854190-6...st-denied.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Jury hears Angola 5 defendant on tape

    ST. FRANCISVILLE — A jury heard a recording Tuesday of Angola 5 defendant David Brown telling investigators that he dragged Louisiana State Penitentiary security Capt. David Knapps into an employee restroom and held the officer while a co-defendant hit him with a mallet.

    Knapps, 49, died in the restroom of the Educational Building at Angola’s Camp D the night of Dec. 28, 1999, during an unsuccessful escape attempt. The inmates took two other officers as hostages, but they were rescued by a security team.

    Brown, 38, is serving a life sentence for second-degree murder in the 1992 shooting death of Harvey Reese, 39, in Marrero.

    Prosecutors from Jefferson and Caddo parishes are seeking the death penalty in Brown’s first-degree murder trial, which began with opening statements Saturday.

    The state is expected to rest its case in the guilt phase of the trial after hearing from two more witnesses Wednesday.

    If the jury of eight women and four men chosen in St. Tammany Parish convicts Brown of first-degree murder, it would hear additional evidence to decide on a life sentence or death sentence.

    Brown told three investigators several hours after the slaying that Knapps was attacked in a hallway and began bleeding from stab wounds and blows to the head from a hard plastic mallet.

    In his statement, Brown said he pulled Knapps into the restroom and held him while the victim suffered additional blows.

    Brown surrendered before security officers stormed the building to rescue the other two hostages.

    State Police crime lab personnel used DNA analysis to determine that Knapps’ blood was found on Brown’s hands, boot shoelace, both boots, long john pants, jeans and a sock, according to testimony Tuesday.

    Defense attorney Mark Marinoff, questioning DNA analyst Carolyn Booker, revealed that Knapps’ blood also was found on at least three co-defendants and three inmates who were in the building but not charged in the case.

    Marinoff also asked questions about the possible contamination of the crime scene by officers and inmates walking about the building.

    In an unusual move, presiding Judge Jerome M. Winsberg allowed the jurors to submit written questions to him, and three jurors took him up on the offer.

    Winsberg said he does not solicit questions as a rule but he noted that jurors attempted to ask questions of him while touring the Education Building at Angola Tuesday morning.

    He allowed the attorneys to look at the questions, then placed them under seal.

    St. Tammany juries convicted inmates Jeffrey Cameron Clark, 50, and Robert G. Carley, 43, of first-degree murder earlier this year. Clark was sentenced to death, but Carley’s jury could not unanimously agree on his sentence, and Winsberg sentenced him to another life term as required by law.

    http://theadvocate.com/news/bakerzac...defendant.html

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Jury convicts Angola inmate

    ST. FRANCISVILLE, La. (AP) - A Louisiana State Penitentiary inmate has been convicted of first-degree murder for the stabbing death of a prison guard.

    The Advocate (http://bit.ly/u7UoZ2) reported that the jury of 8 women and four men deliberated just over an hour before delivering the unanimous verdict against 38-year-old David Brown on Thursday.

    Prosecutors from Jefferson and Caddo parishes, acting on behalf of the 20th Judicial District Attorney's Office, are seeking the death penalty against Brown, who is serving a life sentence for a 1992 murder in Jefferson Parish.

    Testimony is expected Friday in the penalty phase of Brown's trial as the jury decides whether to give him the death penalty.

    A unanimous verdict is required for a death sentence.

  4. #4
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Jury sentences Brown to death for 1999 murder

    Inmate, already serving life, to die in killing guard

    ST. FRANCISVILLE - The jury in the third Angola 5 trial voted unanimously Friday to sentence inmate David Brown to death for the 1999 murder of Louisiana State Penitentiary security Capt. David C. Knapps.

    The jury deliberated for about 50 minutes after hearing sometimes tearful testimony from relatives of both the victim and Brown.

    Judge Jerome M. Winsberg set formal sentencing for Nov. 16 at 10:30 a.m.

    Brown, 38, already is serving a life sentence for the 1992 murder of Marrero resident Harvey Reese.

    Brown is the third Angola 5 defendant to stand trial in Knapps' slaying, which occurred during an escape attempt from Angola's Camp D Education Building.

    Prosecutor Hugo Holland said in his opening statement to the jury Friday that members had seven reasons to give Brown the death penalty, including that Brown is a fourth-offense felon - "a murderer and a thief."

    Brown killed a peace officer during the commission of an aggravated kidnapping and during an aggravated escape attempt, Holland said.

    Finally, Brown should die because of the pain he caused to the families of his two murder victims, Holland said.

    Defense attorney Clay Calhoun asked jurors to consider Brown's turbulent childhood as the son of a mentally ill woman who gave birth to Brown when she was 14 years old after spending time in a juvenile prison.

    Carolyn Whitstine, Knapps' sister, testified he was the leader in a family of 11 children, who stepped in to help raise his brothers and sisters when their father died at age 41.

    "He was like a dad to me," Whitstine said, breaking into sobs. "He did not deserve the beating he got and the way that he was murdered."

    Whitstine, then an employee at the prison, went to Camp D when she learned that inmates had taken hostages. She saw officers lead hostages Reddia Walker and Douglas Chaney out of the Education Building.

    "I kept waiting for them to bring my brother out," Whitstine said, adding that her supervisor finally told her, "he didn't make it."

    St. Charles Parish Assistant District Attorney Kim McElwee told jurors Brown was released from prison on parole but killed Harvey two days after his early release.

    Defense witnesses testified that Brown's mother, Katie Brown, was an unruly, mentally disturbed woman who witnessed her father killing her mother and then became pregnant with David Brown when she was 13.

    Katie Brown later had four more children by four husbands and two more children outside of marriage.

    Witnesses said his mother shunned and mistreated him on numerous occasions, including putting a shotgun to his head and leaving her children outside in cold weather or without food.

    "You cannot imagine walking in his shoes and not being here today," Calhoun said in his closing statement.

    Dr. Sarah DeLand, a forensic psychiatrist, testified that Brown suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of his childhood experiences, but state expert Dr. Michael Welner disagreed.

    Welner also disputed DeLand's assessment that the risk of Brown committing further violence in his current secure setting is low.

    "He knows how to navigate his environment," Welner said, adding Brown would try to escape again if given the opportunity.

    http://theadvocate.com/home/1192646-...a-5-trial.html

  5. #5
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Judge declines new trial for Angola 5 inmate

    ST. FRANCISVLLE, — The judge in the Angola 5 first-degree murder trials says a prosecutor erred in questioning a defense witness last month, but the error was not sufficient to warrant a new trial for inmate David Brown.

    The Advocate reports retired Orleans Parish District Judge Jerome M. Winsberg sentenced Brown to death Wednesday for the Dec. 28, 1999, beating and stabbing death of Louisiana State Penitentiary security officer David C. Knapps.

    Knapps, a captain at Angola's Camp D, was killed during an escape attempt by six inmates. Responding officers shot one of them to death.

    "Justice was served," lead prosecutor Tommy Block said after the sentencing hearing. Assistant district attorneys from Jefferson and Caddo parishes are prosecuting the surviving five inmates on behalf of the 20th Judicial District Attorney's Office.

    A St. Tammany Parish jury convicted Brown of first-degree murder on Oct. 27 and sentenced him to death the next day.

    Defense attorneys Clay Calhoun and Mark Marinoff argued Wednesday for a new trial because they said prosecutorial misconduct occurred when Caddo Parish Assistant District Attorney Hugo Holland introduced hearsay statements Brown allegedly made to his Angola guards.

    While the manner in which the statements were introduced was "reprehensible," Winsberg said, the totality of the evidence against Brown was enough for the jury to opt for the death penalty.

    Brown is the second of the five defendants to receive the death penalty.

    http://www.theadvertiser.com/article...WS01/111180330

  6. #6
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Lawyers: Evidence withheld in trial

    Attorneys appealing the conviction and death sentence of Angola 5 defendant David Brown are seeking a new trial, saying prosecutors withheld evidence and one of the trial attorneys had a conflict of interest.

    Meanwhile, after a status conference Wednesday, the judge overseeing the Angola 5 cases postponed the trial of the next defendant until Sept. 24 without disclosing the reason.

    A jury picked in St. Tammany Parish convicted Brown, 39, of first-degree murder Oct. 27 in the 1999 slaying of security Capt. David C. Knapps at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The same jury voted unanimously to give Brown the death penalty.

    Knapps, 49, was slain when six inmates tried to escape from the Angola prison’s Camp D. Prison officers killed one of the six, and the other five were indicted for first-degree murder.

    Appellate attorneys William M. Sothern and Letty S. DiGiulio said in their motion that prosecutors from Jefferson and Caddo parishes, who are trying the cases for 20th Judicial District Attorney Sam D’Aquilla, were sitting on a statement during the trials of Brown and Robert G. Carley that “fundamentally altered the state’s theory of the case regarding the relative culpability” of the defendants.

    Prosecutors interviewed former Angola inmate Richard Domingue, 45, on June 8 at Hunt Correctional Center, where Domingue told them that defendant Barry Edge had confided that he and inmate Jeffrey Cameron Clark had decided on their own to kill Knapps when the escape plan began to unravel.

    “Critically, the evidence highlights a break in the action from the time when Mr. Brown left a still-alive Capt. Knapps in the (employee) bathroom with Edge and Clark and when they decided to kill Capt. Knapps,” Sothern and DiGiulio wrote.

    Domingue’s statement about Edge’s purported confession would have been particularly useful in the penalty phase of Brown’s trial because his defense team tried to show that Brown did not have specific intent to kill Knapps.

    “Active suppression of exculpatory evidence is not simply reversible error; it is the worst imaginable form of misconduct,” the motion says.

    Prosecutors have asked for time to answer the motion, and no hearing had been set Thursday.

    Prosecutors told Edge’s attorneys, Nelvil Hollingsworth and Fred Kroenke, in early February that they intended to use Domingue as a witness in Edge’s trial, which was then scheduled to begin Feb. 27 with jury selection.

    Hollingsworth and Kroenke won a trial delay to April 23, arguing they needed additional time to investigate Domingue’s background to gauge his veracity.

    Kroenke told presiding Judge Jerome M. Winsberg that prosecutors unfairly waited until the month of the trial to tell them about Domingue, knowing that Edge’s defense is based on minimizing his role in the slaying.

    A week after winning the trial delay, Hollingsworth was arrested at Angola after an officer found a small amount of marijuana in his jacket. Hollingsworth pleaded “no contest” to a misdemeanor.

    Before Wednesday’s status conference and the unexplained announcement for the delay until September, the judge and attorneys in the case had expected to begin Edge’s jury selection on April 23. The delay also applies to the case of defendant David Mathis.

    Sothern and DiGiulio also argue in their motion that Brown attorney Mark Marinoff had a conflict of interest in the trial because he was employed by the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Defender’s Office, where Hollingsworth was his supervisor.

    “The simultaneous representation of multiple codefendants with adverse defenses by employees of a single public defender’s office created an impermissible conflict of interest….” their motion says.

    In addition to Brown, the state has tried Clark and Carley. A jury sentenced Clark to death, but another jury could not agree on a unanimous death verdict for Carley.

    http://theadvocate.com/home/2502382-...hheld-in-trial
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  7. #7
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Louisiana prosecutors bend the rules again seeking a death sentence

    By James Varney
    The Times-Picayune


    There's something's rotten in Caddo Parish. Prosecutors there have been at it again, "it" meaning withholding evidence in a death penalty case.

    On Thursday, Judge Jerome M. Winsberg, the retired New Orleans judge handling the Angola 5 trials in West Feliciana, issued a ruling that provided the latest twist to that never-ending saga.

    After more than $10 million and nearly 15 years, one would think the entire Angola 5 matter would be resolved. The case involves the killing of an Angola guard, Capt. David Knapps, in a 1999 escape attempt. It lingers not because of real questions about the five defendants' guilt or innocence but because the state so desperately wants to kill them.

    In the case of David Brown, Winsberg held that prosecutors withheld a confession from another member of the Angola 5, Barry Edge, that put the onus of Knapps' killing on Edge. Brown's sentencing might have gone differently, Winsberg concluded, if the confession had been provided to the defense.

    In other words, if the prosecutors had followed the law.

    Brown did not get a new trial, as Winsberg found the evidence of Brown's involvement in the escape attempt sufficient. But Brown will now have a new sentencing hearing.

    Why this lust to get a death sentence? Why is it not enough to send a man to Angola forever?

    Even those who favor capital punishment must acknowledge it is one thing to seek it and quite another to do so with illegal tactics. Surely even death penalty proponents see that too often Louisiana has seen capital cases unravel because of prosecutorial misconduct.

    In New Orleans, no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in on the matter. The justices rebuked former District Attorney Harry Connick's office for trying to kill a man while burying evidence that man may not have done the crime.

    That doesn't seem to have fixed the problem, though. It's past time Louisiana got serious here. Prosecutors who engage in such unethical practices should, at a minimum, be stripped of their license to practice law. In egregious cases of misconduct - which is to say, those cases when prosecutors should have known or suspected the defendant was not guilty - I see no reason why a prosecutor should stand above the law. Arrest them.

    Brown's case does not appear to reach that level, although two of the prosecutors involved in his Angola 5 trial were fired in July for unrelated reasons. Caddo Parish Assistant District Attorneys Hugo Holland and Lea Hall falsified paperwork the DA's office used to buy automatic weapons, a bizarre matter that wound up costing taxpayers nearly $450,000 in settlement costs.

    That incident does color one's perception of the Brown case, however. Holland and Hall were a part of a district attorney's office that sounds almost unhinged, according to an account published in The Shreveport Times. A whistleblower in the office described prosecutors equipping their rides with sirens and wearing SWAT gear and acting generally like they fancied themselves vigilantes rather than professionals.

    Nor is this the first time we've seen something sinister from Caddo Parish prosecutors. In March, Glenn Ford was freed after 30 years on death row. It was Caddo Parish prosecutors who sent Ford there even though they had a pretty good idea at the beginning Ford didn't commit murder.

    In what moral universe is it proper for the people to be represented by such unthinking cowboys when the issue involves seeking another person's death? This is justice run amok; this is purely vengeance.

    The hurt imposed by these miscarriages isn't limited to the man staring at execution. We like to think we live under a rule of law, and that those laws are administered by men and women who take seriously oaths to protect us.

    But once again we have prosecutors operating like outlaws. No one is safe in that environment. It need not be a capital crime. Why should any person feel the system is fair when we have so many instances of prosecutorial misconduct?

    There's something diabolical about state-sanctioned killing in bad faith. Death penalty proponents have to be uncomfortable with that. Decent and honorable prosecutors doing good things for us have to be embarrassed and upset that these violations of defendants' rights occur with such regularity and in different parishes.

    There's a way out of this intolerable situation, though. Abolish the death penalty. Whether one favors or opposes it, there is no question it is not being properly and fairly adjudicated in Louisiana.

    http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.s..._bend_the.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  8. #8
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Judge overturns death sentence of one of the ‘Angola 5’

    Judge overturns one inmate’s sentence after new statement discovered

    BY JOHN SIMERMAN
    The Advocate

    A judge this week overturned the death sentence of an Algiers man who was one of the “Angola 5,” a group of Angola State Penitentiary lifers who were convicted of killing a prison guard, Capt. David Knapps, during a failed 1999 escape attempt.

    Retired Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Jerome Winsberg, who is handling the case, ruled Thursday that prosecutors withheld a confession by another of the accused killers until after David Brown went on trial, according to Brown’s attorneys.

    He ordered a new sentencing hearing, they said.

    A state prison inmate had given a statement saying Barry S. Edge told him that only he and a third man, Jeffrey Cameron Clark, committed Knapps’ murder. The statement emerged only when prosecutors turned it over before Edge’s trial last year.

    Edge, the last of the five to stand trial, was convicted of first-degree murder, but a jury fell three votes shy of a unanimous verdict on the death penalty, leaving Edge to serve a new life sentence.

    Brown’s attorneys argued that the failure to turn over the statement violated Brady v. Maryland, a 50-year-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires the state to turn over evidence favorable to a defendant.

    The Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office, which was handling the case, argued that the statement was not “material,” meaning it wasn’t likely to have changed the verdict.

    Winsberg overturned Brown’s death sentence but not his conviction for killing Knapps, according to his attorneys. Brown was already serving a life sentence for second-degree murder in a 1992 killing in Marrero.

    Steve Wimberly, first assistant district attorney for Jefferson DA Paul Connick’s office, could not be reached for comment. The office is expected to appeal Winsberg’s ruling.

    Knapps, 49, was killed during an escape from the Educational Building of the prison’s camp. A sixth inmate was shot and killed in the escape attempt.

    The inmates had taken two other officers hostage, but they were rescued by a security team.

    Juries convicted four of the five inmates who were prosecuted for the killing, sending two of them, Brown and Clark, to death row. Edge and Robert Carley received life sentences after they were found guilty. David Mathis pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received a life sentence.

    Prosecutors from Jefferson and Caddo parishes tried Brown in 2011, playing a recording to the jury of Brown telling investigators he dragged Knapps into an employee restroom and held him there while a co-defendant hit him with a mallet.

    State DNA tests found that Knapps’ blood was on Brown’s hands, shoelace and clothes, according to testimony in the trial.

    Prosecutors argued later, at Edge’s trial, that it was Edge who pummeled Knapps with a hammer to the head.

    In June 2011, before Brown went on trial, prosecutors Hugo Holland and Tommy Block, along with investigators for the Jefferson DA’s Office, interviewed a state inmate named David Domingue, according to court records.

    Domingue told them that Edge explained that “we could have let (Knapps) live,” but that he and Clark decided on their own to kill the guard.

    “He said him and Jeffrey did, were the only ones that were thinking rationally during this highly charged situation. And they made a decision to help their self to kill (Knapps). But they could have let him live.”

    Domingue later repeated the statement in a hearing in September, as Brown’s attorneys sought a new trial.

    Brown’s lawyers argued that the state’s position — that Domingue’s statement was not “material” to Brown’s case — was “similarly myopic” to one that Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office attempted before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Juan Smith, who had been convicted in a 1995 quintuple murder.

    Some of the high court justices openly chided Cannizzaro’s office for even trying to defend a failure by prosecutors to turn over earlier statements from the lone eyewitness, who had said he couldn’t identify the shooter. The Supreme Court overturned Smith’s conviction on an 8-1 vote.

    “There is nothing worse a lawyer can do than hide favorable evidence from a defendant facing the death penalty,” one of Brown’s attorneys, Billy Sothern, said Friday.

    “We hope that the judge’s ruling affirming that principle by throwing out David Brown’s death sentence will allow for the resolution of this case after 15 years of litigation, expense and uncertainty.”

    Sothern was referring to the high cost of trying the Angola 5 and defending their convictions. All told, the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections has spent about $10 million for prosecution and defense costs, expert witnesses, paralegals, court reporters and jury costs.

    The hefty price tag has been a source of handwringing by some state legislators, who brought it up earlier this year during budget talks.

    Clark’s appeal of his death sentence, meanwhile, remains pending.

    http://theadvocate.com/news/11079280...th-sentence-of
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  9. #9
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    State Supreme Court reinstates death penalty on Angola 5 inmate convicted in 1999 slaying of correctional officer

    The death sentence of 1 of the 5 Louisiana State Penitentiary lifers found guilty of murdering a prison guard during a botched 1999 escape was reinstated Friday by the state's highest court.

    A retired New Orleans judge had ordered a new sentencing hearing for Angola 5 member David Brown in late 2014, ruling that prosecutors withheld a confession by another of the accused killers until after Brown, of Algiers, went on trial in 2011 in the slaying of Capt. David Knapps.

    But the Louisiana Supreme Court decided Friday that because the statement is "neither favorable nor material" to Brown, the failure to disclose it was not prejudicial to him.

    Chief Justice Bernette Johnson dissented, saying retired Criminal District Court Judge Jerome Winsberg made the right call and that her confidence in the outcome of the penalty phase of Brown's 1st-degree murder trial has been undermined.

    "The state concedes that it withheld the statement of inmate Richard Domingue, which supports ... Brown's defense theory that he was less culpable in the killing of the correctional officer," Johnson wrote.

    According to Domingue's statement, inmate Barry Edge confided in him that he and inmate Jeffrey Cameron Clark hatched the plan to kill Knapps, she noted.

    "Domingue's statement could have been used by the defendant to persuade the jury that since he was not directly involved in the decision to kill Knapps, he should be sentenced to life imprisonment rather than given the death penalty," the chief justice added.

    Brown's attorneys argue the failure to turn over the statement violated the U.S. Supreme Court's decades-old ruling in Brady v. Maryland that requires the state to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant. Prosecutors contend the statement was not material and would not have changed the verdict.

    David Brown's attorney, William Sothern, said in a statement Friday evening: "The prosecutors suppressed incredibly significant evidence at David Brown's death penalty trial. The trial court correctly determined that he was entitled to a new trial because of that most serious prosecutorial misconduct. We will continue to pursue every possible avenue for appeal to obtain a fair trial for him where his constitutional rights are respected and where the jury gets to hear all of the evidence."

    The jury that convicted and condemned Brown heard a recording of Brown telling investigators he dragged Knapps into an employee restroom and held him there while a co-defendant hit him with a mallet. DNA tests found that Knapps' blood was on Brown's hands, shoelace and clothes, trial testimony indicated.

    Brown and Clark were convicted in the killing of Knapps, 49, and condemned to die. Brown already was serving a life term for 2nd-degree murder in a 1992 killing in Jefferson Parish.

    Edge and inmate Robert Carley were found guilty in Knapps' slaying and given life sentences. Inmate David Mathis pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder and received a life sentence.

    http://theadvocate.com/news/14929172...ing-of-correct

  10. #10
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Brown's petition for certiorari.

    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Louisiana
    Case Nos.: (2015-KK-2001)
    Decision Date: February 19, 2016

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.a...es/15-8779.htm

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •