Odomes won’t serve time for slaying

Despite being convicted of second-degree murder, Derrick Odomes will not serve a prison sentence in the killing of the Rev. Hunter Horgan III because Odomes was 14 years old when the priest was found dead in the St. John’s Episcopal Church in August of 1992, a Thibodaux district judge ruled last week.

A 12-person jury convicted Odomes of second-degree murder last month, 19 years after the crime was committed. Louisiana law, at the time Horgan was killed, prevented convicted juveniles from serving past their 21st birthday, and District Judge John LeBlanc affirmed his pre-trial ruling against an ex post facto sentence Friday after two of Horgan’s family members pleaded for a life sentence.

LeBlanc said it “would be easy for me and it probably would be popular” to sentence Odomes in Horgan’s murder, acknowledging the wishes of Horgan’s family.

“In many respects, they are my wishes, too,” LeBlanc said, “but I can’t sentence people based on wishes.”

Officially, LeBlanc sentenced the 33-year-old to a prison stay until his 21st birthday. “Those are just words because it has no effect,” the judge said.

The state will appeal LeBlanc’s ruling, Lafourche District Attorney Cam Morvant II said Monday. Prosecutors have 30 days to file the necessary paperwork with the First Circuit Court of Appeal.

Still, Odomes will serve a prison sentence after LeBlanc ruled he was a six-time-convicted felon and issued him a life sentence last month.

Odomes’ attorney, New Iberia-based Lynden Burton, said he has filed all of the necessary paperwork in appellate court as he seeks to overturn the habitual offender sentence. When asked about his confidence in overturning the ruling, Burton said, “With appeals, you never know.”

Horgan was found face down in the church rectory Aug. 13, 1992, with several close-range wounds to his head, neck and body from what appeared to be blunt- and sharp-force trauma, according to witnesses’ testimony last month.

His car and wallet were missing, and two fingerprints belonging to Odomes were lifted from a facet and table at the scene.

The first was on a table near Horgan’s dead body in the rectory’s business office, and the second was from the cold-water knob to a kitchen sink. A trail of blood led from the office to the kitchen.

While delivering a victim’s impact statement from the witness stand Friday, Horgan’s cousin John Perry looked directly at Odomes after asking LeBlanc to sentence him.

“You, son, will spend the rest of your life in jail, I hope with two life sentences,” Perry said.

From the stand, Perry told LeBlanc that he understood the intellectual argument behind his pre-trial ruling, but he asked him to reconsider. “The family wants life sentencing for this crime,” he said. “Badly wants it.”

Jon Kemp, Horgan’s sister, also gave an impact statement. She said Horgan’s death was “devastating, shocking, horrible and grief stricken,” and Horgan’s family and the Thibodaux community were “robbed.”

Kemp remembered Horgan as an older brother who played “cowboys and Indians” and built pine-straw forts as a child, an “energetic” and “motivated” basketball player and a man who made the cover of Time magazine, along with several people, in their protest against the Vietnam War.

“Hunter’s light, it shone everywhere, and it was cut out forever,” Kemp said. “I hope (Odomes) has everlasting hell on this earth.”

Perry thanked the Thibodaux Police Department, Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney Cam Morvant for sticking with the case through its ups and downs over 19 years and seeing to it that Odomes was convicted.

The family maintained a public silence from when Odomes was charged with the murder in 2007 until he was convicted. “We have done exactly what we’re supposed to do as victims, and that’s let justice be done,” Perry said.

“Closure is a word I don’t understand, because I don’t have the slightest notion as to what it means,” Kemp said. “Even though the coffin is closed, the memories live on.”