Two judges have cycled through Brandon Boyd’s murder case over the past nine years.
Boyd is being retried for a fatal shooting during a 2014 street fight when he was 17.
District Judge Beau Higginbotham, who presided over Boyd’s first trial, was transferred to a different court division. Pro tem judge J. Michael McDonald took over the case following Higginbotham’s departure.
On Monday, Boyd’s attorney appeared for a hearing to argue for McDonald’s recusal but the judge said it’s a moot point because he could be leaving the bench by the end of this week.
“I might deny it because come Saturday, I’m going to be gone anyway,” McDonald said.
Higginbotham was reassigned to a civil docket in January and McDonald took over his caseload on a temporary basis until the vacancy was filled. During Monday’s hearing, McDonald told Boyd’s attorney, Michael Fiser, his assignment is slated to end when the permanent replacement is selected.
That will likely be decided Saturday in a runoff between longtime East Baton Rouge prosecutor Louise Hines Myers and former LSU pitcher turned local attorney Jordan Faircloth.
McDonald estimated it could take a week for the new judge to be certified depending on the margin of victory in this weekend’s election.
“You’re in a quandary. You’ve got issues with me, which is fine, but you don’t know what you’re going to get on Saturday,” McDonald said to Fiser.
“Life’s a gamble, your honor,” the attorney responded.
The fatal shooting of Emanuelle Myles occurred March 18, 2014, when Boyd and others gathered in a parking lot near his house along La Margie Avenue to watch four people fight, court records show. Police said Boyd knew two of the fighters involved in the altercation.
Myles, one of the bystanders, was shot in the head when gunshots rang out during the scrap and died at a hospital. Another man, age 19, was shot in an arm.
Witnesses identified Boyd as the shooter and testified at his March 2016 trial that they saw him raise a gun and fire multiple shots as he walked toward the brawl. Boyd’s attorneys argued that he could not have shot Myles in the back of the head from his position if he was aiming at the crowd. They suggested a second shooter must have killed Myles, but witnesses said they never saw anyone but Boyd open fire. One described it as “wild gun firing,” court documents show.
Higginbotham called Boyd “the worst of the worst type of person” when he sentenced the teen to life in prison in 2016. J. Michael McDonald was an 1st Circuit Court of Appeal judge when Boyd challenged the sentence in 2019. Not only did McDonald endorse Higginbotham’s ruling, he penned a concurring opinion saying Boyd is a “threat to society and earned his sentence” despite being a teen when the fatal shooting occurred.
Louisiana was one of only two states nationwide that allowed split-jury convictions when 10 of 12 jurors found Boyd guilty. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeal reversed his conviction and granted him a new trial in September 2020, five months after the U.S. Supreme Court declared non-unanimous verdicts unconstitutional. Citing Higginbotham’s 2016 comments from sentencing, Fiser sought to have the judge removed when the case was sent back to him for retrial.
That became unnecessary when Higginbotham swapped seats. McDonald retired at the end of 2022. Citing comments the former appellate judge made in his 2019 opinion, Fiser filed his motion for McDonald’s recusal Jan. 23, the same day Boyd’s retrial was scheduled to begin.
On Monday, the case was rescheduled for July 24. Fiser told McDonald the state has offered a plea deal, which could resolve the case before that court date.
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