Legal Commentary

DA Wants Death, Juries Won't Deliver

By TChris

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro doesn't get it.

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said Friday that his office isn't giving up on the death penalty, even after two capital trials this year ended in mistrials and a nightmarish child-murder case this month failed to persuade a jury to hand down the ultimate penalty.

Cannizzaro and his staff believe Louisiana should kill the "worst of the worst," like Barry Ferguson, who raped and strangled his mentally disabled daughter. Who, they asked, could be more deserving of the death penalty? Last week, Cannizzaro got his answer.

The jury of eight men and four women, unpersuaded, sentenced Ferguson to life in prison.

Voters elected Cannizzaro to represent their community in court. Juries are delivering the sense of the community again and again: killing is not the answer to killing. Orleans Parish juries haven't returned a death sentence in twelve years, despite New Orleans' reputation as the nation's murder capital. But Cannizzaro doesn't get it. He refuses to hear the message that juries continue to deliver, and so he spends the community's resources in futile efforts to kill defendants. It's time that Cannizzaro learned to listen.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).