This paper was prepared for presentation at the Southwestern Social Science Association annual meeting, March 24, 1995, in Dallas, Texas. It developed from a suggestion by Mrs. Sally McKissack, former Chairman of the Louisiana Pardon Board and now my teaching colleague, whose assistance in defining the subject is much appreciated.

Clifton C. Greene, of Shreveport and Zwolle, Louisiana, arrived at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in summer 1994. Convicted of first-degree murder in an August 1993 drive-by shooting in Many, in Sabine Parish, Clifton was 18 years old when he came to Angola. His sentence: life imprisonment without eligibility for parole. Like the 18-year-old killed in the shooting, Chris Joseph, who became a statistic as one of Louisiana's 900 murder victims in the year he died, Clifton Greene became a statistic on the other side--one of more than 2,500 lifers in Louisiana's prisons, 2,400 of them like him natural lifers not eligible for release. Of the Louisiana State Penitentiary's 4,600 convicts, half are lifers; it is the biggest repository of lifers in the world.

Over 150 new natural lifers entered Louisiana's prisons in 1994, part of a larger group of an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 lifers who entered state prisons nationwide. When America's prison

population topped one million in early summer 1994 (1,012,851 as of June 30, 1994, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics), about 80,000 of them were men and women serving life sentences.

How much time will Clifton Greene and the thousands of lifers who entered other state prisons last year actually serve, before they are released? Will several hundred of these lifers, including Clifton, those designated "parole-ineligible" by the legislatures of 33 states, really be in prison for the rest of their natural lives?

It is hard to answer either question to an absolute certainty, but given present political realities, the answer to the first question is: a much longer time than they would have served until a few years ago. And to the second question: yes, or so near to the end of their lives their best hope may eventually be a medical release that would allow them to die in the free world from which they were excluded 30, or 40, or 50, or 60 years before. Modern medical care is doing wonders for prison life spans.

How long is a life sentence? When Ron Wikberg and I were doing our research on Angola's longtermers, just over six years ago (see "The Longtermers," The Prison Journal, Spring/Summer 1990), we reported Bureau of Justice Statistics' figures indicating that for lifers released from prison in 1983, the median time served was eight years and seven months. This is obviously much shorter than a natural life span.

At the time, Ron and I agreed that the statistic was probably reflective of the then-prevalent practices in many states of granting parole release eligibility to lifers after a relatively short period of time, often in the range of seven to ten years. From 1926 until 1972, Louisiana's lifers had been released from prison after ten-and-a-half years, if they had not already had their sentences commuted and been released on parole or good-time. In this era, the assumption was that nay lifer with a moderately good behavior record would be recommended for release by the warden.

____________________

*I would like to thank my research assistants, Mary Ann Baker, who reviewed Pardon Board records in Baton Rouge, and Kelly Reed Stringfield, who did much of the microfilm work. I would like to express my appreciation as well to Ms. Thomas Hollins, Administrative Secretary, Louisiana Pardon Board, for her help in searching records to insure completeness and accuracy, and to Sylvia Stephens, of the Office of Information Services, Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, for doing the computer research.

The recommendation was not complicated or controversial, in most instances. It was merely a fact of the working system. The warden approved, the Pardon Board agreed, the convict was released.

Lifers in other states benefitted from similarly generous release practices. True lifers, who came to prison as young men and stayed for the remainder of their natural lives, were rare birds, as Kevin Krajick pointed out in his Corrections Magazine article, "Growing Old in Prison," fifteen years ago.

Ron and I were aware, however, when we wrote about the 31 Angola inmates who had spent 25 years or more behind bars, that we were not writing about a dying breed--a bunch of wild old men who would soon fade from the scene as relics of an earlier age. We were writing instead about the future of American imprisonment--increasing numbers of men and women growing old as they served out real life sentences for crimes committed when they were young.

We had observed a trend that was already taking hold in the 1980s: the great majority of the states were taking one of two steps: increasing the minimum time in prison required for parole eligibility, with a term in the range of 15 to 25 years common now, in 1995; or designating some offenses parole ineligible. Many states have taken both steps. Five states--Florida, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan and California--have more than 1,000 natural lifers serving these no-parole sentences. Pennsylvania and Louisiana, plus South Dakota, with a much small smaller prison population, have designated every life sentence as a natural life sentence. Table 1, which is adopted from several tables in the January 1993 Corrections COMPENDIUM, gives an overview of parole in the states as of September 30, 1992. Su Perk Davis's article pointed out that 8.2% of the prison population consisted of inmates serving life terms, most of them parole eligible.

Of the 80,000-plus lifers in 1994, more than 10,000 are natural lifers. For these men (and a few women), traditional release practices do not apply. A natural life sentence has no statutory point at which parole kicks in; release becomes possible only when the natural life sentence is converted into a finite sentence, and parole eligibility is restored.

What the natural lifers must have, if they are ever to be eligible for release, and what the other lifers must pursue, if they wish to be released before the statutory minimum, is executive clemency. The generic term for the action is a pardon, but in the case of a lifer it is more correctly called a commutation, or a "time cut," as the convicts say.

Executive clemency, once the prerogative of kings, has been handed down to the modern political officials responsible for the execution of our felony criminal laws--our governors and President. Clemency is discretionary, and throughout English and American history it was used not just to restore lost rights or set aside a wrongful conviction, which are the intended purposes of a pardon, but also to adjust other sentences.

Clemency has been used primarily to reduce or shorten deserved punishments, punishments properly imposed on offenders by a judge in a court of law. As such, executive clemency is always more-or-less unjust, as Ernest van den Haag suggested some time ago, in that its purpose is to thwart legal justice for the sake of political or charitable ends. Shakespeare recognized this human dilemma 400 years ago when he pointed out, in The Merchant of Venice, though we plead for justice, what we want, when it is our case under review, is mercy, which "droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath." What we deserve is justice; what we seek is mercy.

How is mercy dispensed upon convicts through the executive clemency process? In the states, two components are important--the pardon board and the governor. Usually an offender must have the approval of both the pardon board and the governor to get clemency, and then in the case of most natural lifers the offender must also go to the parole board for release authorization.

Procedures in Louisiana are illustrative. A life term inmate in state custody first applies to the pardon board for clemency. Since 1975, the pardon board has consisted of five members appointed by the governor to serve terms conterminous with his. A simple majority vote rules.

Prison Number of Lifers Life w/o No-Parole Lifers

State Population Male Female Parole Male Female

Alabama 17,221 2,548 58 Yes 685 11

Alaska No response -- -- Yes NA NA

Arizona 16,021 739 24 Yes 196 11

Arkansas 8,165 467 27 No

California 108,183 11,275 492 Yes 995 42

Colorado 8,961 500 12 Yes 22 1

Connecticut 11,086 149 3 Yes NA NA

Delaware 4,027 397 6 Yes 95 5

D.C. 11,122 774 10 Yes 10 0

Florida 47,619 4,767 145 Yes 2,332 44

Georgia 24,829 3,236 145 No

Hawaii 1,473 3 0 Yes 28 3

Idaho 2,265 189 6 Yes 174 6

Illinois 31,018 551 14 Yes 532 14

Indiana No response No

Iowa 4,512 374 17 Yes 374 17

Kansas 6,139 488 19 No

Kentucky 10,362 562 24 No* 8

Louisiana 21,165 2,158 72 Yes 2,083 71

Maine 1,574 44 0 Yes 11 0

Maryland No response Yes ? ?

Massachusetts 9,409 925 24 Yes 389 10

Michigan 38,513 3,086 107 Yes 1,729 66

Minnesota 3,582 153 7 Yes 1 0

Mississippi 9,058 49 0 Yes 151 0

Missouri 16,051 1,166 52 Yes 318 24

Montana 1,300 27 0 Yes 8 0

Nebraska 2,639 79 5 No

Nevada 6,191 903 31 Yes 214 9

New Hampshire 1,850 26 2 Yes 26 2

New Jersey 22,047 890 20 No

New Mexico 3,325 156 9 No

New York 61,373 9,033 444 Yes 10 0

South Carolina 8,697 1,290 67 No

South Dakota 1,498 99 3 No

North Carolina 19,868 2,171 66 No

North Dakota 561 12 1 No

Ohio 37,131 2,935 143 No

Oklahoma 14,780 929 62 Yes 87 8

Oregon 6,480 439 23 Yes 17 2

Pennsylvania 24,670 2,324 93 Yes ? ?

Rhode Island 2,858 83 Yes 99 3

Tennessee 14,500 1,246 44 No

Texas 51,887 4,152 85 No

Utah 2,691 41 0 Yes ? ?

Vermont 1,206 14 0 Yes ? ?

Virginia 16,939 1,248 25 No

Washington 10,039 588 20 Yes 125 7

West Virginia 1,808 254 6 Yes 124 1

Wisconsin 7,825 498 25 No

Wyoming 1,075 108 3 Yes 0 0

Federal BOP 81,822 1,177 41 Yes ? ?

*Abolished life without parole in 1975.

Source: Corrections COMPENDIUM, January 1993.

In considering petitions from lifers, the board often rejects them if the offender has not served enough time--with ten years established as a subjective minimum.

If the pardon board approves the petition, and recommends a commutation, the paper work is forwarded to the governor's office, where it is reviewed by his counsel. It may be signed within a few days, or it may lay on the table for years, even into the next governor's term, before it is finally approved or rejected.

If the governor signs the commutation--his stamp of approval is called a "Gold Seal"--the pardon board recommendation takes effect. Unless the board's recommendation is for a time cut to a very short term--50 years or less is considered short for lifers, with recent boards--or unless the inmate has been in prison for a very long time, he is generally not eligible for immediate release, what is called a "cut to time served." If the inmate's sentence were cut to 40 years, for instance, and he had already served 22 years and had earned his good-time credits under Louisiana law, he would be eligible for immediate discharge.

Most inmates are not so eligible. The pardon board in recent years has tended to commute lifers' sentences to a term in the range of 60 to 90 years, restoring parole eligibility after one-third, or 20 to 30 years. This month, as an example, Gov. Edwin Edwards commuted the life sentence of Moreese "Pops" Bickham to 75 years. Bickham is 77 years old. He has been in prison for 36 years, convicted of killing two Mandeville law enforcement officers in a 1958 shootout. Bickham is now eligible for a parole hearing (after 25 years in prison), but he will not reach his goodtime release date for at least a couple of more years, depending on what his prison record is like.

The parole board in Louisiana now consists of seven members, again appointed by the Governor to serve terms coinciding with his, who sit in three-member panels at the various prisons to hear specific cases. Again a majority vote rules. Parole for lifers is far from automatic. Many are rejected. In Louisiana, the parole board is obligated to hear a parole request only once. If the inmate is rejected, the board can vote to accept subsequent requests in the future, but it can deny him the right to a hearing if it wishes. This represents the administrative board's movement toward perfection of the judicial court's baseball analogy: instead of "three strikes and you're out," it's "one strike and you're out." If parole is granted, a release date is established, usually very soon after the hearing, and the inmate is processed for release.

Other states have similar practices, the major point of difference being whether or not the pardon board's action requires the governor's approval. In an effort to make the pardon board appear more professional and less political, a few states have made the pardon board the governor's designee, with authority to grant clemency on its own. In the great majority of the states, the governor is still the grantor of clemency: he must sign the legal document for it to be effective.

This describes the ideal process, as if you were telling a lifer what sort of obstacle course he would have to run to get released: "Behave yourself for ten or fifteen years, work hard, get active in inmate organizations, stay in contact with your family on the outside, develop an understanding with prison officials, and then go through the pardon board, the governor's office and the parole board. With persistence, you'll get out." The more practical question is: how many lifers successfully complete the course and actually get out of prison?

There is a general perception nationwide that clemency is not used as much as it was before. A century ago, when parole and good-time release mechanisms were not as well-established as they are today, clemency was an accepted and widely-used practice. Inmates with long terms expected clemency. You were likely to die if you stayed in a 19th century prison for more than five or ten years; few convicts served more than ten years, even on a life sentence. If they could last a few years, they could expect clemency to be granted.

Later, as other forms of release became better established, the use of clemency declined, though it remained prevalent as a practice in the South. (See "Pardons and Politics," The Angolite, January/February 1988.) But in the last two decades, the use of clemency has become increasingly suspect politically. Even governors who might be inclined to mercy are cautious about appearing to be too generous to convicts, and pardon-selling scandals in Tennessee and Louisiana have weakened the credibility of the political officials who make clemency decisions. The governor's right to pardon, once taken for granted, has now become a political liability. As a governor, you can't pardon too many, or your opponent will call you "soft on crime," and you have to be careful in individual cases to be sure no preferential treatment was bought with money or political favors, which were certainly employed more frequently in the past.

Pardon Board statistics show these figures for clemencies granted by Louisiana's last four Governors:

Av/Yr.

Gov. Edwin Edwards 1972-1980 2,367 296

Gov. Dave Treen 1980-1984 181 45

Gov. Edwin Edwards 1984-1988 632 158

Gov. Buddy Roemer 1988-1992 480 120

From 1975 on so-called "automatic pardons" have been available to all first-time felony offenders. Most don't bother to ask for a pardon, to get back their citizenship rights. If they do apply, their pardons do not require the Governor's signature. So automatic pardons are not included in these figures. These are only discretionary clemencies.

As Gov. Edwin Edwards's fourth term enters its last year, approaching its end in January 1996, his use of clemency appears much less frequent to this point than in his three previous terms, and less frequent than in Gov. Roemer's recent term. Through March 1, 1995, after more than three years in office, Gov. Edwards has signed fewer than 200 clemencies. And this is the posture of a Governor who is leaving office to retire from politics, so he doesn't have to worry about facing the voters again.

The interesting point is that although convicts and corrections officials are well aware that clemency is not used as frequently as it used to be, the people of Louisiana (and the legislators who either reflect their views or shape their views) either haven't gotten the word or don't believe it, if they have heard of the change.

A report prepared for the Loyola Death Penalty Resource Center in February 1993 asked 600 registered voters across Louisiana this question: "If a person convicted of murder in sentenced to life in prison without benefit of probation or parole or suspension of sentence, do you think that this person would live out his natural life and die in prison or do you think that he might be released at some time?" The responses were:

He would serve life in prison 20.0%

He would be released 71.3%

Uncertain 8.5%

The followup question asked of those who said he would be released was: "How many years do you believe he would serve in prison before being released?" The most frequent response was 20 years, the median was 15 years, and the arithmetic average was 16.8 years.

This report makes it clear that the people of Louisiana do not believe that lifers serve natural life sentences; only one in five adults surveyed believed that "life means life." The survey also indicates that most people expect a lifer to serve about 15 to 20 years before being released.

How do these beliefs and expectations compare with the actual practices of life imprisonment in Louisiana over the last 20 years? Since 1973, when Louisiana began to apply true natural life sentences to large numbers of offenders, the number of lifers has increased from 257 to 2,592, as of March 1, 1995. This increase is shown in Table 2. As already pointed out, 2,400 of these are natural lifers. The only ones who are not are the second-degree murder lifers who came in from 1973 to 1975, when parole eligibility came after 20 years, and 1975 to 1979, when parole eligibility came after 40years. Since 1979, all life sentences imposed on Louisiana offenders have been no-parole sentences.

Number of Increase from

Year Natural Lifers Previous Year

1970 143 28

1971 164 21

1972 193 29

1973 257 64

1974 323 66

1975 382 59

1976 454 72

1977 528 74

1978 601 73

1979 699 98

1980 802 103

1981 935 133

1982 1,084 149

1983 1,219 135

1984 1,330 111

1985 1,445 115

1986 1,573 128

1987 1,698 125

1988 1,807 109

1989 1,933 126

1990 2,039 106

1991 2,155 116

1992 2,280 125

1993 2,439 159

1994 2,592 153

Source: Office of Information Services, Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

A few lifers remain who came into the system before 1973, but the great majority, 2,418 out of 2,595 (93%), have come in from 1973 on. How many lifers have left the system in the past two decades, and what has been their means of exit? Using Department of Public Safety and Corrections figures, it is difficult to get a precise answer to this question. When you do a computer printout of lifers, you get a mix of pre-1973 and post-1973 offenders (some of whom were resentenced for pre-1973 crimes), you get a few who were parole-eligible, under statute or court order, and you get some whose status in the computer files was either entered in error (like some shown serving first-degree or second-degree murder sentences that were really attempts rather than completed acts) or some whose status was changed after Pardon Board action or a court ruling, so that it is impossible to tell what their original sentence was, without going back to their records file. There is also no accurate count as to how many lifers have died in prison the past 20 years. The computer printout shows at least 12, but records of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where 88% of the lifers are confined, show more than 12 deaths than this in the year 1993 alone.

What follows is an estimate or "best guess" made on the basis of a thorough analysis (involving three years of off-and-on research) of the imprisonment of life-sentenced offenders in Louisiana, and their discharge or change of status from life to finite terms as a result of executive clemency.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported "that about 20% of the lifers who applied for clemency between 1975 and 1989 had their sentences commuted to a lesser term, often to 40 to 60 years. During those 15 years, 1,123 lifers applied, 718 were granted a hearing and 538 received a favorable recommendation. Of those, the governor approved 224."

This report does not indicate how many of the 224 commutations were released immediately or went on to get parole, or how many were still in prison. Its basic statistical point--that about 19% of all lifers in custody during this era got some kind of relief from their life sentences--is misleading on two counts. First, commutations were much more frequent in the early years, through 1980, than they were thereafter, as I pointed out in my summary of gubernatorial actions above. Second, many of the commutations granted during this period were of the old "10-6" lifers, sentenced when the rules were different.

Even though court rulings said the release of these lifers was discretionary with the prison warden--his recommendation was necessary for them to get out, and if it was decided administratively to stop making this recommendation, no one could do anything about it--officials have tended to view these inmates in a different light from the post-1973 lifers. So the majority of the 224 commutations were to inmates who had been in prison prior to 1973 and had already served 15 or 20 or more years in prison before commutation.

What of the inmates who have come in since 1973, sentenced for any one of the six current life sentence statutes in Louisiana: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, distribution of Schedule I narcotics, and habitual offenders? How many of the "new lifers," almost all of whom are natural lifers, have been able to negotiate the obstacle course and work their way toward freedom?

What I decided to do, to focus my research on a more definable population, and also to use a population comparable to the 1993 Loyola report, was to look at the records of only first-degree murderers. They are probably the most hard-core and long-term of Louisiana's lifers, the ones the public and politicians would least like to see win a commutation or parole. In my view, their release rate would establish the base line probability of release for all natural lifers; my expectation is that second-degree murderers, rapists, kidnappers and narcotics dealers face somewhat better prospects for commutation and parole than do first-degree murderers. So whatever the percentage of success is for first-degree murderers, it is very likely to be no lower (and probably several points higher) for other murderers, rapists, kidnappers and narcotics dealers.

How many offenders have been sentenced under Louisiana's current first-degree murder statute, which went into effect on July 2, 1973? Again, given the way statistics were kept in the first decade after the law took effect, we can't say for certain.

Department of Public Safety and Corrections figures show that 776 first-degree murderers are in custody today (March 1, 1995). But 46 of these by my count are attempts rather than completed acts, and at least 83 were sentenced under the old murder statute rather than the new one.

Deleting these 129, 647 first-degree murderers in sentenced under the new law remain in custody--594 serving life sentences and 53 awaiting execution under death sentences. But the list contains the names of at least two convicts who were executed in 1991 and 1993, and the name of one woman convict released on parole, after a commutation, three years ago. Some other updating is probably in order, including one convict shown as having been in custody since 1935. If he has been in custody for 60 years, we would like to hear from him at once, as this is a new record for Louisiana.

Not on the list are the names of most of the 21 first-degree murderers who have been executed since 1983, when Louisiana resumed the application of capital punishment, and the names of other first-degree murderers who have died of natural causes, suicide, homicide or accidents during confinement. Excluding the inmates who have been executed, about 200 others have died at Angola alone in the past 20 years; the statistical probability is that about half of these were lifers, some of whom were pre-1973 convictions and some of whom were post-1973.

What you get, when you add together the current population of "new" first-degree murderers--life-sentenced and death-sentenced--the executed, the other dead and the released, is about 700 to 750 valid first-degree murderers who have entered custody from late 1973 to the present. Excluded here, I hope, would be those whose sentences or convictions have been overturned by the courts, resulting in final actions other than re-conviction and re-sentencing for first-degree murder.

So to repeat my question, after this elaborate explanation of how this estimate was arrived at, how many of these close to 800 first-degree murderers have gotten commutations and been released from prison? To arrive at this number, we reviewed all the clemency recommendations of the Louisiana Pardon Board, and their records on gubernatorial actions, since 1980. We did not go beyond 1980, with the exception of one death sentence commutation, because first-degree murderers coming in after 1973 would have served at most less than seven years by 1980, barely enough to get to the fringes of eligibility for commutation. In fact, the first commutation of a new first-degree murder lifer that we found took place in 1984, the only one done by Gov. Dave Treen in his four years in office.

From this first commutation in 1984 through early 1995 we found a total of eleven new-law first-degree murderers who received commutations. This information is presented as Table 3. Of the 11, nine were men and two were women. One was a death sentence commuted to life without parole, one was a death sentence commuted first to life and then to a fixed term, and the other nine were life sentences commuted to a fixed term. Nine of the ten commuted to fixed terms were given parole eligibility; one was not. All ten were allowed good-time. Of the eleven commuted, eight were subsequently released from prison, either on parole or at their good-time release date; one of these eight, released on parole, was revoked and returned to state custody.

I have also included an Attachment A as an appendix. It is made of up inmates who were on various lists--official and unofficial--as having been commuted for first-degree murder, but when we investigated we found their placement was in error. Either their crime was an attempt, or a second-degree, or there had been no commutation. I am listing them for the record, because their names are often misplaced in this category.

After more than 20 years of sentencing first-degree murderers under Louisiana's new law, over 700 men and women have been imprisoned, and exactly eight that we can identify have been released. One of these returned to custody to join the three others either not eligible for release at all (including the one Death Row inmate commuted to life) or not yet at their parole or good-time dates.

For statisticians, this means the commutation rate of first-degree murderers in Louisiana is 1.5%, and the release rate is 1.0%. Ninety-eight per cent plus of the first-degree murderers who have come into the lawful custody of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections in the last 22 years are still in the same status they were when they arrived--serving life without parole or awaiting execution--and 99% of them are either still in prison or dead. This is probably about as near-perfect implementation of a criminal justice policy into law as I am aware of in the history of American criminal justice.

The eleven first-degree murderers whose sentences were commuted should consider themselves in select company indeed. Others might ask, considering the 98 out of 100 who did not get clemency, what sets these few apart, or makes them more deserving? The basic facts of their offenses and the records of actions taken by the Pardon Board and the Governor are matters of public record. A few of the cases are no longer on file in the Pardon Board office, but most of them are and can be discussed briefly.

Date of

R/S D.O.B. Parish Conviction

James A. Andrews B/M 5-05-60 Jefferson 12-22-77

DOC # 89243. Commuted to 40 years on 8-11-89 (Roemer), with parole eligibility after 1/2 of sentence. Parole eligible 11-15-97; eligible for good-time release on 9-20-99. Still at Angola.

Charles Caldwell B/M 1-26-51 Caddo 12-21-79

DOC # 92675. Commuted to 35 years on 1-14-88 (Edwards), commuted again to 17 years on 11-02-90 (Roemer). Would have been parole eligible after first commutation in 1991; discharged at good-time release date.

Polete County B/M 1-09-47 Winn 4-07-78

DOC # 88635. Commuted to 30 years on 3-09-88 (Edwards); eligible for parole immediately. Released on parole.

Bobby Ray Demars B/M 5-28-51 Natchitoches 12-30-77

DOC # 87334. Commuted to 24 years on 3-05-84 (Treen). Released on parole.

Catherine Dodds W/F 12-26-44 Jefferson 6-16-77

DOC # 85357. Originally sentenced to death 8-07-75. Death sentence commuted to life on 6-16-77 (Edwards). Life sentence commuted to 30 years on 12-18-86 (Edwards). Released on parole in 1992.

Herman George W/M 3-30-41 Webster 5-15-78

DOC # 15766. Commuted to 21 years on 11-16-89 (Roemer); eligible for parole immediately. Discharged.

Daniel Gettridge, Sr. B/M 12-27-28 Orleans 7-19-77

DOC # 96691. Commuted to 60 years on 2-19-90 (Roemer); parole eligible after 20, good-time eligible. Still at Angola; parole eligible on 12-19-96.

Marilyn L. Hampton W/F 9-09-42 Ouachita 10-18-78

DOC # 91813. Commuted to 12 years on 12-06-85 (Edwards), with parole eligibility and good-time credit. Eligible for immediate release.

Leo E. Jones B/M 10-08-52 Orleans 11-26-73

DOC # 76330. Commuted to 25 years on 1-14-88 (Edwards); parole eligible immediately. Released on parole; later revoked.

Ronald S. Monroe B/M 12-03-54 Orleans 2-06-80

DOC # 90920. Death sentenced commuted to life w/o parole or good-time on 8-16-89 (Roemer). Serving life at Angola. Only death-sentenced inmate commuted to life by governor's action since 1973.

Emmett R. Procell W/M 9-10-38 Sabine 12-15-77

DOC # 88537. Commuted to 16 years on 3-18-86 (Edwards); no parole eligibility but good-time allowed. Released on good-time.

Source: Louisiana Pardon Board and the Office of Information Services, Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

Charles Caldwell was certainly among the most blessed of the eleven who were commuted. Caldwell, who was assigned to the Governor's mansion as a cook and lived at the State Police Barracks, was commuted twice, first by Gov. Edwards in 1988, and then by Gov. Roemer in 1990. The first commutation, to 35 years, would have made him parole eligible in 1991; the second, to 17 years, allowed his immediate release on good-time. The Pardon Board Chairman's letter to Gov. Edwards mentioned Caldwell's "excellent conduct" but noted opposition from law enforcement and the sentencing judge. His good cooking apparently carried the day.

Polete County was also assigned to the State Police Barracks, where he was described as "a hardworking individual displaying responsibility and dedication. He has performed all duties with a good attitude." County shot his victim three times, after the victim and others had teased him at a party. When his life sentence was commuted to 30 years by Gov. Edwards, he became parole eligible at once. He was released on parole soon after.

Bobby Ray Demars was the first post-1973 first-degree lifer to get a commutation, that we can find. He had shot to death an off-duty Natchitoches Parish deputy sheriff in an argument over an admission charge to the Thunderbird Inn. The victim's wife expressed opposition to clemency. The sentencing judge said no clemency for ten years. Otherwise no opposition was noted. Demars had been a trusty in the parish jail before he went to prison. He was assigned to the Governor's mansion and lived at the State Police Barracks--are we beginning to discern a pattern here?

The Pardon Board heard Demars's case originally in 1981. Gov. Dave Treen pardoned him in March 1984, as Treen was leaving office. Demars was described as "a model prisoner," who "shows much remorse for the offense committed, and has endeavored to take advantage of every opportunity offered to him toward rehabilitation." He became parole eligible after serving eight years in prison.

The most famous of the eleven commutations, and so far as we know the only one of them whose story has been into a television movie, is Catherine "Kitty" Dodds. The 1994 TV movie was called "The Conviction of Kitty Dodds." Like Charles Caldwell, she received two commutations. She was originally sentenced to death in the murder-for-hire killing of her husband, Charlie Dodds, an ex-New Orleans police sergeant. Sentenced to death at her trial in 1975, she was commuted to life by Gov. Edwards in 1977. She escaped from a hospital while confined at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in August 1980. She was recaptured after aiding an elderly man who fell into a ditch in a snowstorm, in her new hometown of Peculiar, Missouri. The publicity brought the FBI, who sent her back to Louisiana in May 1982.

After Kitty Dodds was returned to LCIW, she launched a serious campaign to get a commutation, maintaining that she had been a battered wife but had not made an issue of it earlier. The victim's parents and law enforcement authorities objected to clemency. Her parents and two children--and the new husband she had married in Missouri--supported her. Her life sentence was commuted to 30 years by Gov. Edwards in 1986, but the Parole Board denied her parole requests several times. When she was finally approved for parole, Dodds discovered she had to serve an extra two years for escape first. She was eventually released on parole in 1992, 17 years after her husband was killed. Rodney Blackwell, who did the shooting (either for hire or as a favor to Kitty Dodds) is still serving life for first-degree murder at Angola.

Daniel Gettridge Sr. will be closing in on age 70 when he goes to his parole hearing in late 1996. Gettridge was convicted of shooting Clyde Ratcliffe, the son of his common-law wife, Juanita Jenkins. Jenkins was being beaten by Gettridge on Christmas Day, 1976. When Ratcliffe called police, Gettridge shot him four times. Gettridge was confined at Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson at the time his commutation was approved by the Pardon Board in 1986. It was not signed by the Governor until more than three years later. Gettridge was subsequently transferred to the State Police Barracks.

Marilyn Hampton is believed to have served the shortest prison term of any of the new first-degree murderers--just over seven years. She was the girlfriend of Timothy Baldwin, who was executed on September 10, 1984, for the same crime she was convicted of. As doubts grew about the extent of her involvement in the crime, she was sponsored for release by the operators of a private halfway house, who also offered her a job there. In contrast to Kitty Dodds, her case and her release attracted little publicity.

Leo E. Jones pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Orleans Parish in 1973. His crime was a robbery turned murder, in which he did not do the killing. When his sentence was commuted to 25 years by Gov. Edwards in 1988, he was parole eligible immediately. He was released and later revoked, the only one of the eight first-degree murderers released to return to prison, that we can identify.

Ronald S. Monroe is close to unique--one of a pair. He and Kitty Dodds are the only death-sentenced inmates to get a commutation to life in Louisiana in the past 20 years.

As Monroe's execution neared in August 1989, evidence pointed to the victim's common-law husband as the person who had done the 1978 murder Monroe was condemned for. Gov. Buddy Roemer commuted Monroe's sentence to life without parole eligibility, saying, "If there is any doubt in America, a man ought not be executed." Roemer said "ambiguities and some doubts" remained about Monroe's guilt. "My test is, if there is any doubt, I cannot make a mistake on the side of execution." Monroe remains at Angola, serving his life sentence.

Emmett Raymond Procell, who had killed a friend in a bar fight in Sabine Parish, was commuted by Gov. Edwards in 1986, after eight years imprisonment. He had already reached his good-time release date. He returned to his hometown of Zwolle but moved away and law enforcement authorities have not heard anything of him in several years.

Looking at this relative handful of successful commutations, occurring at an average of only about one a year for the past decade, what points can we make about commutations for first-degree murder since the new statute took effect in 1973?

1. The most obvious point is that there aren't many of them, not enough to base much of an analysis on. From the convict's point of view, it has become almost impossible to get a commutation.

2. Very few of the commutations, perhaps two of the lifers and Ronald Monroe, were at the state penitentiary when their commutations were approved. Most were at the State Police Barracks or other prisons. The already sparse odds of getting clemency get much worse if you happen to be at Angola--close to one in a thousand, for the new lifers.

3. Several of these clemencies appear to be more like pardons than commutations. That is, they are corrective rather than dimunitive, reflecting changes made by political officials based on more information being made available about the offenses. We could have lively discussions about whether several of them ought to have been prosecuted or convicted as first-degree murders in the first place.

4. The rate of commutations has declined sharply. Of the thirteen total, spread among eleven offenders, one (Dodds's death to life) was in the 1970s, ten in the 1980s, and only two so far in the 1990s. Gov. Edwards has commuted no new first-degree lifers in his current term. So to many present first-degree murderers thinking about how they might qualify for a commutation one day,

clemency remains more of a fable--a tale of supernatural intervention that once happened to others--than an event of daily reality.

I will note, as a final observation, that it appears unlikely that the trend of the last two decades will be reversed any time soon. As the legislative session of 1995 gets organized, two of the main criminal issues being debated are tougher penalties for violent criminals and reduction or removal of good-time credits. The virtual elimination of clemency for first-degree murderers has already removed much of the incentive for this group of lifers to behave themselves and build a good prison record, on the chance that they will one day go free. Lengthening already-long sentences and taking away good time can have the same effect on the rest of the prison population.

The legislature is much like the people surveyed in the Loyola death penalty report discussed earlier. They don't know that Louisiana already has the toughest laws in the country, for punishing violent offenders, or that those laws are carried out in practice in the same form they are written on paper.

Commutations for first-degree murder are pretty much a thing of the past in Louisiana. It is hard to imagine any governor, even someone with the style of Edwin Edwards in his first two terms, suddenly beginning to dispense clemency "as rain dropping from the heavens." The first-degree murder lifers know this, perhaps with more certainty than they would like to admit; the public, not believing or not caring, still thinks that increasing the severity and certainty of punishment is the answer to Louisiana's nation-leading homicide rate. Clifton Greene and the others who came in with him will grow old in prison, and they will have lots of company. Ten or fifteen years from now, they will hang a sign on the front gate at Angola. The sign will say: "Lifers only."

Attachment A

Eugene Clark

DOC # 91317. Recommended twice for clemency by Pardon Board; denied first by Gov. Treen and then by Gov. Edwards. Convicted 1979 in East Carroll Parish. Still serving life at Angola.

Tyrone Coler

DOC # 125629. Shown as convicted of 14:30, but given a 30-year sentence. Since he was born in 1968, this appears impossible. From Lafourche Parish. This was apparently a conviction for attempted first-degree murder.

Louis Hall

Originally sentenced to death in 1968(?), commuted to life upon re-sentencing after Furman in 1973. Commuted to parole eligibility in 1988. Subsequently discharged from prison. From West Feliciana Parish.

James Harvey

DOC # 82231. Convicted of second-degree murder. Commuted to 20 years on 8-04-86 (Edwards). Would have been 20-year parole eligible under original sentence. Parole and good-time eligible. Discharged.

Pleasant H. Howard

Not a first-degree case. Original sentence was life with parole eligibility after 40 years, which in 1978 means it was a second-degree case. The life sentence was commuted in 1988 to 25 years with parole eligibility after one-third. Offender was 65 years old at time of commutation. Apparently discharged. From Orleans Parish.

Jessie J. Lyles, Jr.

DOC # 114065. Shown as being commuted to 50 years for first-degree murder. No record of commutation on file. From Orleans Parish. This was most likely a conviction for attempted first-degree murder.

Cynthia Moses

DOC # 89930. Shown as being commuted to 60 years for first-degree murder, but Pardon Board records reflect that the Governor has never acted on a favorable recommendation from the board. Action is still pending.

David C. Pennington

DOC # 99364 Shown as being commuted to 45 years for first-degree murder. Record says the original sentence was 40 years for second-degree murder and 40 years for attempted armed robbery, with no parole eligibility on the armed robbery charge. Commuted to 45 years with parole eligibility after one-third, on April 30, 1990. Convicted on December 14, 1978, from Jefferson Parish.

Joel Prickett

DOC # 76613. This was a first-degree murder, but committed under the old statute, on 8-15-72. Commuted to 60 years on 12-23--91 (Roemer); parole eligible after 20 years, on 12-13-92. Discharged.

Billy Ray Self

DOC # 76904. A first-degree murder committed on 2-27-72, when he was 15 years old. Commuted to 60 years on 1-02-92 (Roemer); parole eligible after 20. Apparently discharged.

Kenneth L. Simmons

DOC # 116170. Shown as being commuted to 59 years, with parole eligibility after one-third, for first-degree murder, with a conviction date of 5-11-80. Commutation was effective February 13, 1990. This case was shown as being a death sentence from April 8, 1965, which would most likely have involved a re-sentence to life after Furman in 1972. From Orleans Parish.

Thad H. Tatum, Jr.

DOC # 108762. Shown as being commuted to 95 years for first-degree murder. No record of commutation on file. From Orleans Parish. This was an attempted second-degree murder conviction, along with an armed robbery and attempted armed robbery convictions.

William E. Thomas, Sr.

DOC # 75157. D.O.B. 3-24-24. Two convictions, from Desoto Parish and Livingston Parish. On the 1973 conviction from Livingston, commutation was from life to 21 years. On the 1980 conviction from Desoto, commutation was to 60 years, with parole eligibility after 20. Not a "new" first-degree murder case; sentenced under old statute.

Herbert Welcome

DOC # 105694. Under death sentence, and serving a separate life sentence for first-degree murder also. Convicted in 1982 in Iberia Parish. Pardon Board recommended commutation to life on March 4, 1988, but the recommendation was returned without action by Gov. Roemer. Court may have ordered re-sentencing to life; no clemency approved.