Michael C. Thomas entered prison at age 20 on a mandatory life sentence, and for the next 30 years he pleaded for the court to reconsider. Until one day, the local district attorney changed his fate.
Leon Cannizzaro was packing up after a dozen pugnacious years as DA in Orleans Parish when he agreed to scrap a jury’s guilty verdict against Thomas for second-degree murder.
It was an act, endorsed by a judge, that Cannizzaro’s current boss, Attorney General Jeff Landry, now calls unconstitutional.
Thomas and two of his brothers were convicted in a shooting that left Stanley Brumfield dead in Algiers a half hour after midnight on New Year’s 1991. Only Thomas was found guilty of murder, a result higher courts upheld.
Mercy was the only reason offered as Cannizzaro agreed to let Thomas plead guilty to attempted murder on Dec. 9, 2020. And even that wasn’t in writing.
“So this is pretty much a lawful jailbreak being granted by the ever-so-powerful district attorney on his way out of the building,” said Judge Laurie White, a frequent Cannizzaro troll.
“Essentially, yes,” answered prosecutor Irena Zajickova.
“Well, succinctly,” added Frank DeSalvo, Thomas’ attorney for the plea and a longtime pal of Cannizzaro.
DeSalvo said the family had “met with Cannizzaro and pulled on his heart strings,” and that the DA had resolved “that the man has done 30 years, and he’s felt like he’s done enough.”
Jason Williams had won a runoff days earlier to succeed Cannizzaro. White endorsed the deal for Thomas, asking him how he’d managed to ingratiate himself with a DA rarely known for mercy.
“It’s all about prayers,” he said.
Landry’s challenge
Cannizzaro did not respond to questions about the deal for Thomas, but it was far from a first for him or other district attorneys across Louisiana.
Louisiana prosecutors have long requested, and judges have granted, post-conviction deals to reduce verdicts and trim prison terms for varying reasons: to correct an overly punitive sentence, forestall a court fight over new exculpatory evidence, or bestow a favor.
But that power, which the Legislature enshrined in a 2021 bill that was drafted and backed by prosecutors, is under attack by Landry, the frontrunner in this year’s governor’s race.
Landry now claims the law is “facially unconstitutional” because it grants judges a clemency power reserved for the governor under the state constitution.
On Tuesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over Landry’s challenge in the case of William Wayne Lee, who was convicted of murder in St. Tammany Parish but granted a similar reprieve last year by District Attorney Warren Montgomery.
Inmate advocates argue Landry is attacking a longstanding relief valve for prosecutors. Lee’s attorneys say those plea deals are not the same as clemency, as they often force defendants to give up rights and a chance to sue.
In any case, they argue the separation of powers is muddier than Landry suggests, citing laws that reflect “overlapping of power and that the lines of power are not defined clearly or precisely. Nor should they be.”
Landry’s legal challenge has had one major impact since he filed it a year ago, defense advocates say. Outside of Orleans Parish, where Williams’ office has made liberal use of the law to grant relief to scores of long-serving inmates, prosecutors statewide have avoided new post-conviction plea agreements pending the outcome.
Focus on New Orleans
Though filed in St. Tammany Parish, Landry’s challenge appears directed at least partly at reining in Williams, whose image features in a recent Landry campaign ad focused on New Orleans crime.
Data from Williams’ office shows that his Civil Rights Division has vacated convictions and granted plea deals for lesser offenses to 55 people, dismissed convictions for 13 others and granted one a new trial from the start of 2022 through the end of March.
The statute “doesn’t create any new legal mechanism that didn’t already exist,” Williams said in a statement.
He argued that the law only spells out a power “used for public safety and the public good for generations — by my predecessors in office and by every prosecutor around the state.”
Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick’s office, which drafted the legislation along with advocates at Innocence Project New Orleans, fashioned post-conviction plea agreements before and after the law’s passage.
Connick’s office deployed the law in late 2021 to convert a 2004 death sentence to life in prison for Dustin Dressner, resolving a thorny federal legal challenge.
Since Landry first challenged the law in March 2022, Connick’s office has cited it seven times to discard convictions in cases of juveniles tried as adults under a law the Louisiana Supreme Court later found unconstitutional, information from Connick’s office shows.
At this point, “no post-conviction pleas under that statute will be entered into until that matter is resolved,” Connick’s office said in a statement. Nearly 250 prisoners from Jefferson Parish have requested reviews under the statute.
The powerful Louisiana District Attorneys Association, which backed the bill with no opposition, has been silent on the legal challenge. Loren Lampert, the group’s executive director, said “it would not be appropriate to comment on the essence of pending litigation.”
Hillar Moore, the district attorney in East Baton Rouge Parish, is among several DAs who have said they’re loath to assume a role as “pardon or parole board,” even as requests flow from prisoners under the new law, which passed as Act 104.
Landry’s office argues that the statute cedes “unfettered and entirely discretionary” clemency powers to “every district judge in this state.”
In an amicus brief, the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said a survey found district attorneys in more than half the 43 districts statewide had inked post-conviction plea deals, from Bossier Parish to St. John, Calcasieu to Ouachita.
“The one thing that all post-conviction plea agreements have in common is that they have saved judicial, prosecutorial, and indigent defense resources by ending litigation that could otherwise take years to resolve,” LACDL attorney Jane Hogan wrote.
The case of William Lee
Montgomery agreed to reduce Lee’s conviction from murder to manslaughter, and his sentence from life to 35 years, over the death of Audra Bland in 2003 from a head injury. Montgomery relied on Act 104 and a fresh look at Bland’s brain that revealed signs of multiple sclerosis.
The finding would have bolstered Lee’s defense at trial, the parties agreed. Montgomery said he spoke with the victim’s family and opted for a plea deal instead of a court fight. District Judge John Keller approved the deal after a January hearing.
Keller later denied Landry’s challenge. A state appeals court declined to hear the case, setting up arguments before the state’s highest court.
Kerry Myers, deputy director of the nonprofit Louisiana Parole Project, which has lobbied for the release of many long-serving inmates, said prosecutors drafted the law “to bring some fairness and equity to right old wrongs. To say it’s unconstitutional now is disingenuous.”
Cannizzaro’s decision to free Michael Thomas from a life sentence came before the law’s passage and didn’t get much notice. Soon after, Landry hired Cannizzaro to serve as his criminal division director. It was Cannizzaro who discussed the legal challenge with Montgomery, an email shows.
Thomas didn’t make much of his sudden freedom. He was shot in the chest and died in Algiers on Dec. 3, 2021, less than a year after his plea, at age 51. Police deemed his killing justified.
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