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Louisiana’s outgoing Democratic governor pardoned 40 convicted murderers since October including one of whom had been on death row and another who fatally stabbed a woman 39 times.
Gov. John Bel Edwards has been on a mission to help Louisiana lose the title of being the World’s Prison Capital and has signed the pardons to release 56 total convicts in five separate batches.
Edwards, whose term ends on Jan 8. 2024, campaigned to reduce the state’s prison population and is attempting to see some results in his final weeks in office.
The Pelican State governor began signing his pardons on Oct. 11 with his latest coming on Dec. 19, while future orders could be announced after the holidays, according to KTSB.
Eleven of the 40 jailed murderers were convicted in the first degree, or those who killed a human being with the specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm and engaged in the preparation of the crimes that led to the killing.
Ricky Washington, 65, was found guilty of fatally shooting a grocery store owner during an armed robbery in Shreveport in 1979, according to KTBS.
Owner Grady Haynes was behind the counter of YQ Grocery and was shot once in the back of the head by Washington who was using a .32-caliber handgun, according to the case brief.
Washington faced the death penalty, but the jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision, which forced the case’s judge to rule he be sentenced to life behind bars.
Another pardon involved a man who fatally stabbed a woman nearly 40 times.
Nick Charles Nicholson, who also received a pardon, was found guilty of fatally stabbing convenience store worker Kelly Ann Gramm in 1981.
Gramm was discovered with 39 stabbed wounds across her body, and a broken tip of a knife lodged in her skull, the outlet reported.
Nicholson, 60, was arrested after police found him in his car with blood on his clothes and a cash register sitting next to him.
He also faced the death penalty but was sentenced to life in prison.
In Louisiana, suspects convicted of first-degree murder can face the death penalty if the district attorney seeks it, or “shall be punished by life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.”
A third murderer set to be free following Edwards’ pardons is Frederick Kirkpatrick who was arrested for 1982 killing Steve Joseph Radoste inside Radoste’s home in Pearl River.
During his trial Kirkpatrick, now 66, said the killing was in self-defense after Radoste made homosexual advances toward him and his friend accomplice Charles Faulkner.
The two inflicted head injuries, stab wounds, and a fatal gunshot to Radoste, before robbing the house and setting it on fire, according to WVUE.
Kirkpatrick was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to death with the jury citing aggravating circumstances.
A study by the Loyola University of New Orleans College of Law found Kirkpatrick was off death row by 2019
It is unknown if the 56 inmates have or when they will be released, but the Louisiana Department of Corrections lists Nicholson as out of custody, as of Dec. 23 at 3:26 a.m.
Edwards was term-limited from running for the governor again after serving for eight years and will be succeeded by Jeff Landry, who recently served as the state’s attorney general.
Landry, 52, a Republican, defeated current Louisiana Department of Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson in October, garnering 51.6% of the vote.
In 2021, Louisiana led the US with the highest incarcerations per capita, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
The vast amount of imprisonments had most US states on the list before an actual country, with the US being the first at 664 prisoners per capita and El Salvador listed at 562.
