Shocker claims in Louviere trial bid

Lawyers seeking a trial for convicted rapist and killer Chad Louviere say proceedings leading to a death sentence ordered 14 years ago were riddled with errors and shortcomings, falling far below standards acceptable for defense in such cases, to the point where a trial on the facts – which never occurred – is in order.

The crimes Louviere committed on Oct. 17-18, 1996, undeniably represent a miscarriage of humanity. The legal papers currently filed suggest a subsequent miscarriage of justice.

The 195-page brief upon which arguments are based alleges gross failure by trial attorneys defending the former Terrebonne Parish deputy against charges stemming from a 25-hour bank siege, the killing of ArgentBank employee Pamela Ann Duplantis and the rape of other women.

It includes significant revelations never before made public. According to the court papers:

• Louviere told police the killing of Duplantis was unintentional, and evidence supporting that claim was available. Nevertheless, attorneys advised him to plead guilty and waive a trial on the facts.

• Recent analysis done by experts indicates Louviere’s claim of accidental shooting may be rooted in fact, which if heard by a jury at the trial he never had could have resulted in a different outcome.

• Despite evidence of mental problems known to his former attorneys, a hearing on his competency to stand trial or enter a guilty plea was never requested.

• The trial judge – aware that Louviere was taking medications for mental illness – never requested a hearing on his competency, although it was within his power and authority to do so.

• Police failed to properly process and preserve the crime scene

The allegations are significant because if District Judge John Walker finds that the death penalty was improperly imposed a trial could be ordered, or a new hearing on his penalty result.

If this happens, the women victimized by Louviere could face tough questioning by a new team of defense lawyers on what they saw in relation to the killing of Duplantis.

VICTIM HAD NO SAY

The allegations are in addition to recently-reported claims that aspects of Louviere’s social history – including sexual abuse at the hands of a church employee from the ages of 6 through 12, by an older cousin after that, and a family background rife with alcoholism, sexual and physical abuse going back generations – were not properly or adequately addressed by attorneys who represented him.

Phyllis Duplantis, mother of the murder victim, says she never knew Louviere claimed the shooting to be an accident. However, she is not impressed.

“I don’t know if they are saying that just trying to get off the death penalty and just have life,” Phyllis Duplantis said. “Pamela didn’t have a say that she wanted to live or die. Why should he have a say? I have heard from so many other people who say they are tired of feeding him, tired of him living. It is time to do something with him. He shouldn’t have walked in the bank with a rifle.”

The petition filed by attorneys J. Samuel Sweeney and Sarah Ottinger of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana states that Louviere “does not contest that his actions on those two days in October 1996 caused unspeakable hurt to many.”

“It is his mental state on those days, through his plea of guilty to first degree murder, through his sentencing trial, to this very day that is at issue,” the petition states. “He asserts herein, based upon evidence that was not presented to the Court or jurors at trial, that his horrific acts on those days were not the result of ‘vicious will.’ They were the acts of a mentally ill man who never intended to shoot and kill Pamela Duplantis. And he was prosecuted for those acts when he was incompetent to understand the proceedings against him.”

The fault for this, the petition states, lies with the legal team that represented him.

Professor Dane Ciolino, who teaches at Loyola University’s New Orleans College of Law and maintains www.lalegalethics.org is among legal experts not associated with the case interviewed for this story.

He says it is common for claims of bad lawyering to be raised in post-conviction relief actions, rather than in the normal appeals process.

“Often the focus is on the performance of the lawyers in preparing for and presenting the death phase evidence,” Ciolino said. “There have been many reversals because of ineffective lawyering in the preparation for and presentation of the death phase. The jury that makes the life or death decision on penalty needs full information about the defendant’s background because they are told they need to weigh mitigating circumstances. The jury really has been cheated by the lawyer who fails to investigate and present mitigating evidence.”

VICTIMS FIRST

The expense associated with responding to the petition and any appeals that may follow, and the pain of re-living events related to Louviere’s actions, could be dispensed with should prosecutors cede to pleas for Louviere to live out his natural life behind prison walls.

It is that expense as well as wear-and-tear on survivors that causes most prosecutors to forego seeking death in many cases, even when a first-degree murder is at issue.

District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr. has opted to seek life in prison or accept pleas on several cases that could have been capital, but only with the agreement of families.

Serial killer Ronald Dominique and also Jorrell Young, killer of Drama Club bartender Robert LeCompte, are among local defendants recently spared the potential of lethal injection.

Waitz said he would consider dropping the fight to kill Louviere, but only if that was the clear desire of the Duplantis family and the women who survived the bank siege.

“This office is victim-driven,” Waitz said, explaining that under no circumstances would he consider a change in position unless there were undeniable assurances that Louviere would never be released.

Presuming the case moves forward, various claims in the court papers will be heard by Judge Walker, likely one at a time, and likely over a span of months.

The first hearing, on the question of Louviere’s sanity and whether he was competent to enter the guilty plea that led to his sentence of death, is scheduled for Dec. 15.

Other issues, including the propriety of a guilty plea overall, considering evidence Louviere’s attorneys say was not considered at the time the case was heard, will come later.

AT THE MERCY OF THE JURY

Under modern rules established by the U.S. Supreme Court, a defendant in a death case has what amounts to two trials in one.

The jury must first decide whether the defendant is guilty of the capital offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Often they have a choice between first-degree murder and other offenses, like second-degree murder or even manslaughter.

If they find guilt on the capital charge, jurors must then consider whether the defendant should be put to death.

That question is decided after the defense and prosecution present testimony and evidence. Prosecutors will try to prove “aggravating” circumstances, which they claim justify the imposition of an irreversible sanction. Defense lawyers try to prove “mitigating” circumstances, to support their plea that the convicted killer should live.

In Louviere’s case, that did not happen. He entered a plea of guilty to the charge of first-degree murder, and a jury then weighed only the question of whether he should live or die.

While not unprecedented, such a plea – guilty to a capital offense with no promise that the death penalty will be spared as a result – is uncommon.

“In a lot of these cases there is a plea bargain, and part of the bargain is that it gets reduced to life,” said Richard Dieter, an attorney who is director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington D.C. non-profit that maintains information on capital cases nationwide. “It is very rare that someone pleads guilty without any benefit. Once they do they are at risk of a death sentence. They have removed any doubt in the jury’s mind that they have committed the crime, although it has happened.”

Many of the cases where it has, Dieter and other experts said, have been those where a defendant desired to die, in essence volunteering for execution.

Loyola’s Ciolino says there are tactical reasons why a lawyer might decide an outright plea is a good idea.

“If you have got no viable defense on guilt you can get the jury’s respect by having the client accept responsibility for the crime,” he said. “It is something juries find to be a mitigating factor against death.”

There are strong indications that lead attorney David Stone, who still practices in Alexandria, may have envisioned just such a strategy.

“He’s not here today trying to get off on a technicality or a loophole,” Stone said in his opening statement to the Louviere jury. “He’s taking responsibility for his actions in the only way that he can: He’s pled guilty to everything.”

The Louisiana Supreme Court settled questions surrounding the acceptance of Louviere’s guilty plea by Judge Edward J. Gaidry. But key issues not raised at trial, and therefore certainly not addressed in the appeal, are now before Judge Walker.

FATAL FLAWS

The petition alleges that Louviere did not intend to fire the bullet that killed Pamela Duplantis. His intent upon entering the bank was to talk with his estranged wife and to likely kill himself, the court papers state.

“In a paranoid, manic, psychotic state, gesticulating angrily as he confronted his ex-wife, Mr. Louviere accidentally pulled the trigger on the AR-15 rifle he was holding, or the rifle accidentally went off,” the petition reads. “The bullet likely ricocheted off the porcelain ‘stony’ floor of the lobby, striking Ms. Duplantis at the very edge of her scalp somewhere within the hair line.”

Some forensic information based on the crime scene investigation was available to attorneys prior to the entry of Louviere’s guilty plea, according to the court papers. Other details emerged close to the time of Louviere’s plea but were not fully processed by the defense. The prosecution’s case, the petition states, was according to experts based on an autopsy report that was “flawed,” “cursory” and purely external.

Forensic experts consulted by the new attorneys, they say, support the claim of accident rather than intent. The analyses are not consistent with the statement of Assistant District Attorney Mark Rhodes, at the conclusion of the sentencing trial, that “with an AR-15 not 10 feet away, leveled at her, with her staring at him in horror, he takes off her head. He shoots her right above the eye, and peels back her whole head.”

That argument, attorneys say, had tremendous emotional impact for jurors, but was based on speculation and inaccurate information.

“It painted an erroneous picture not only of specific intent, but of gruesome and malicious specific intent,” the court papers state. “A relatively short examination of the autopsy photographs by a pathologist familiar with assault rifle wounds would have curtailed the prosecution’s false assertions.”

An expert consulted by the attorneys, forensic pathologist and former Michigan medical examiner Daniel J. Spitz, M.D., provided opinions based on blood spatter and examination of the autopsy report.

“The gunshot wound sustained by Pamela Duplantis is caused by a projectile that is fired from a high speed assault rifle,” states his initial report. “The wound is consistent with being secondary to a ricochet or a large projectile fragment after the bullet struck the tile floor near where the victim was sitting.”

Spitz’s opinion is further based on the embedding of a wood chip near the fatal wound, suggestive of a ricochet.

COMPIS MENTIS

Louviere’s initial denials of intent, coupled with early indications of an accident occurring during the siege rather than an intentional killing of Duplantis, should have warned trial lawyers away from a guilty plea, the petition asserts.

“He should never have pled guilty to first-degree murder,” the lawyers argue. “The shooting of Pamela Duplantis constituted second-degree murder at most. The information set out in this claim was, for the most part, available to trial counsel and should have been investigated prior to counsel recommending to Mr. Louviere that he plead guilty.”

Ciolino – despite his assertion that such a plea can be strategic – indicates that they may have a point.

“If the client has said it was accidental it might have been a hands-down case for second-degree,” Ciolino said in an interview Sunday. “You can never be guilty of first degree murder unless you have intent to kill. I’m not sure of the strategy, or if that plea was appropriate.”

But if Louviere was insistent that the shooting of Duplantis was an accident, then why would he agree to a plea that posed a grave risk of sending him to the executioner’s door?

That’s partially why Walker’s pending task, determining questions of the defendant’s mental state, is so crucial.

Was Louviere competent to make a decision regarding his plea of guilty?

The petition states he was not.

“The evidence of Petitioner’s incompetency is overwhelming and multifaceted,” the petition states. “it was obvious to anyone who had contact with him during the pre-trial and trial proceedings. Petitioner’s lawyers were in perhaps the best position to observe his acute mental health problems, yet they did nothing to bring the issue to the Court’s attention. The evidence presently before this Court compels only one possible remedy, reversal of Mr. Louviere’s conviction and death sentence.”

DELUSIONAL BELIEFS

That a defendant must be competent to proceed with a trial is a long-standing facet of law, and inarguably more so when the penalty sought is death.

“Whether the defendant understands the nature of the charge and can appreciate its seriousness; whether he understands what defenses are available; whether he can distinguish a guilty plea from a not guilty plea and understand the consequences of each; whether he has an awareness of his legal rights; and whether he understands the range of possible verdicts and the consequences of conviction,” is how the Louisiana Supreme Court defines factors to consider when weighing competency.

According to the court papers, a psychiatrist who examined Louviere three weeks prior to his plea “found that he was delusional and psychotic at the time of the evaluation, and that his delusions rendered him incapable of assisting his lawyers and rationally understanding the proceedings.”

Since then, a psychiatrist “has likewise concluded that Mr. Louviere’ s delusional belief system and paranoia rendered him incompetent at the time of his plea. Additionally, petitioner’s mental health records document his longstanding struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoia, and mood disorder, as well as his suicide attempt a mere three weeks after he entered the guilty plea. What’s more, Petitioner’s counsel and family members both remember that Mr. Louviere was frequently irrational, paranoid, and out of touch with reality while he was awaiting trial, especially in the months and weeks leading up to the plea. Finally, letters written and sent by Mr. Louviere to law enforcement and friends reveal his delusional and paranoid beliefs.”

Dorothy Lewis, M.D., a psychiatrist who teaches at Yale and NYU and specializes in killers, examined Louviere before his plea. Her report is contained within records Walker now weighs.

“Mr. Louviere was completely delusional regarding his case … Evidence of Mr. Louviere’s inability to appreciate the nature of the charges against him and what would constitute a reasonable defense was illustrated by unrealistic and delusional ideas of how his case could be defended,” the report by Lewis states. “For example, he believed that he had information that would expose corruption of local law enforcement figures and that in exchange for this information, he would be freed and given a new identity. As the interview went on, Mr. Louviere was less and less able to remain logical and coherent and was totally unable to understand his plight or the best way to present a defense. He was flamboyantly delusional and totally incompetent to assist his lawyers, much less knowingly plead guilty to the offenses with which he was charged.”

Former lead counsel Stone states in an affidavit that Louviere exhibited bizarre behavior; Julie Kilborn, now an attorney but at the time a paralegal working with the defense team, also supplied recollections.

“From the outset of our work on Mr. Louviere’s case, it was quite obvious that he had significant mental health problems,” she states in an affidavit. “At times he would fall into sustained periods of depression and contemplate suicide; on one occasion he actually did attempt to kill himself. At other times he was very irritable and easily agitated by relatively minor issues. He also had frequent nightmares, which interfered with his sleep. In the fall of 1998, he told us that his nightmares were getting so bad that he had to work out to the point of total exhaustion before he could get any sleep. While these problems plagued Mr. Louviere throughout the time we represented him, they grew particularly acute in the weeks leading up to the guilty plea.”

Kilborn said that as the plea date loomed, Louviere became “increasingly fixated on the idea that, in exchange for supplying the Terrebonne DA with information about illegal local law enforcement activities, the government would agree to give him a new identity and allow him to live out his life on a military base in another part of the country.”

“He claimed to have information on a burglary ring run by the police and on other crimes committed by individuals within the sheriff’s and DA’s office,” Kilborn’s affidavit states. “He’d go on and on about this stuff and continually ask us whether we had begun investigating the allegations and negotiating with the DA’s office. He also believed that certain ‘higher-ups’ in Terrebonne Parish were conspiring to have him killed because of what he knew. He often made no sense, and he appeared to have little contact with reality at the time, both of which made it increasingly difficult to consult with him and develop a viable defense strategy. At another time, Chad talked about negotiating with the federal government and pleading to a federal charge with the hope of avoiding the state capital murder charges. It was totally unrealistic, but he thought it was possible. At the time, he said that was one of the two options he had; the other was to commit suicide.”

FAILURE ADMITTED

The attorneys’ statements are echoed in communications Louviere had with other people.

Louviere contacted Waitz in 1998, with a claim that he possessed sensitive information about crimes.

He also contacted the FBI, stating that he had information on a rape committed by a deputy and a murder involving police in Thibodaux, as well as a burglary ring involving highly placed people. He contacted the FBI in Lafayette with similar claims while jailed there.

And in correspondence with a friend, Tracie Blanchard, Louviere wrote that he expected to be released from prison and given a new identity in exchange for information about corruption. His death, he wrote, would be faked and he would be moved to a military base.

Even if the attorneys did not seek a competency evaluation, the petition notes, it would have been within the power of the trial judge, if he had reason to believe the move warranted.

Gaidry was advised that Louviere was on psychotropic medications, but did not seek to learn of Louviere’s competency either.

“If you know the guy is on psychotropic medications and he has a history of mental illness, any competent capital lawyer is going to get a competency examination ordered,” Ciolino said. “It falls below the minimal standard to not get a mental health evaluation.”

That failure, Ciolino said, could be indicative of “sub-par performance.”

A STRANGE CASE

Julie Kilborn does not dispute the failures of the team she was part of, although she was only a paralegal at the time.

“Mr. Louviere’s mental health problems should have raised questions for us about his competency to plead guilty and to stand trial, but, in the midst of handling all of the other case-related issues, we just missed this one,” she states. “Back then, as a paralegal, I didn’t fully appreciate the ramifications of our failure to request a competency hearing and present this evidence to challenge Mr. Louviere’s fitness to plead guilty and proceed to trial. Now, as a practicing capital trial lawyer, requesting a competency hearing would be one of the first things I would do under these circumstances.”

David Stone had little to say regarding his duty to Louviere, the court or the public last week, when contacted by telephone.

He described the Louviere case as a “gut-wrenching and horrible nightmare.”

“The pressures were tremendous,” he said. “For a variety of different reasons, it was a very horrendous first-degree case.”

The nightmares caused by Louviere’s actions in 1996 for living victims and the Duplantis family could soon be relived, as the case winds through the legal system.

Attorneys told of the alleged failures by his counsel and the legal system at large the first time around expressed sadness that those shortcomings may result in even more pain, for those most affected and the community at large, as Louviere fights for his life.

Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center said he has no doubt that the mere process of having a judge determine whether a death sentence was arrived at through careful deliberation, and whether all the rules were followed, will have effects not only on those most affected by Louviere’s crimes, but the community as a whole, and that the attorneys arguing for Louviere will have a tough path to walk.

“The assumption is you have got the sentence you deserved, so you have to fight against the assumption rather than on equal ground,” Dieter said. “Folks don’t want to overturn something that has been decided. But it seems steps might have been missed here. This is a strange case with a lot of elements. On the surface it would seem this needs further review. If only this was done right the first time, everybody would have been better off, the defendant, the state and the victims.”

Chad Louviere