Gary Tyler (born July 1958), from St. Rose, Louisiana, is an African-American man who is a former prisoner at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, Louisiana. He was freed after 41 years in jail after being tried as an adult and convicted of first-degree murder at age 17 by an all-white jury; he received the mandatory death sentence for that crime, according to state law. When he entered Louisiana State Prison (Angola), he was the youngest person on death row. Many observers believe that Tyler was wrongfully convicted, as his trial and defense were seriously flawed. He was imprisoned from 1975 until April 29, 2016. He had been convicted of the October 7, 1974 shooting death of a 13-year-old white boy and wounding of another, on a day of violent protests by whites against black students at Destrehan High School in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Although desegregation had started in 1968 at the school, racial tensions had increased during 1974.
In 1976 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roberts v. Louisiana that the state's death penalty law was unconstitutional, as it required mandatory sentences for convictions of certain capital charges, without consideration of mitigating factors. The Supreme Court ordered state court reviews and the commutation of sentences of persons on death row to the next lower level of punishment. Tyler's sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole for 20 years.
His defense appealed the conviction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in 1980 that Tyler's trial had convicted him on "unconstitutional charges" and was "fundamentally unfair"; it remanded the case to the lower courts and ordered a new trial. But on state appeal, it changed its ruling in 1981, saying that attorney error by Tyler's original defense counsel did not allow redress. Tyler was recommended by the state parole board for a pardon, but governors had failed to act on this.
Tyler's cause was taken up again in 2007 by human rights organizations and a variety of public figures after his case was reviewed by a columnist of the New York Times. In 2012 the United States Supreme Court ruled that persons who were minors at the time of a crime for which they were convicted, could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and applied this retroactively. It ordered state courts to review such cases. Tyler was released in 2016 after the state arranged a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, which had a maximum sentence of 21 years; since he had already served nearly twice that, he was released from prison.
Events
In 1974 formerly all-white Destrehan High School in St. Charles Parish
was filled with racial tensions among the students as the administration
reluctantly integrated, 20 years after the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
The school board bussed black students to the school to achieve this. Because
of fights breaking out and a violent protest being conducted by white students,
officials closed the school early the day of the events.
Black students were sent home on
their regular bus. On October 17, 1974, Tyler was 16 and on the bus. As they
were leaving Destrehan High School, the bus was attacked by an angry mob of
100-200 whites, mostly students. The whites were angry about integration at the
school. Timothy Weber, a 13-year-old boy standing outside the bus with other
classmates, was shot and fatally wounded. He later died. Police searched the
bus more than once, but no gun was ever found. The bus driver said he believed
the shot had come from outside. All the students from the bus were taken to the
police station and interrogated under extreme pressure.
Tyler was arrested for disturbing
the peace when he talked back to a police officer; he was soon charged with the
murder of 13-year-old Weber. His mother Juanita Tyler and he said that he was
beaten severely by the police in an attempt to make him confess, but he
refused. Other witnesses later told of being intimidated and threatened by the
police. As columnist Bob Herbert wrote in 2007, "A white boy had been
killed and some black had to pay. Mr. Tyler, as good a black as any, was taken
to a sheriff’s substation where he was beaten unmercifully amid shouted
commands that he confess. He would not."
The racially charged atmosphere had
been heightened by the arrival of David Duke
in Destrehan. He was emerging as a leader in the Ku Klux
Klan and neo-Nazi politics in Louisiana and the United States. He brought
what he called 'security teams' to protect white residents.
Gary Tyler, a former
American political prisoner in Louisiana, giving a lecture at the
University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
Tyler was imprisoned from 1975 (jailed since 1974) until April 29, 2016
having been convicted aged 17 of the 1974 shooting death of a
13-year-old white boy. Originally sentenced to death, Tyler was the
youngest prisoner on death row. The United States Court of Appeals for
the Fifth Circuit ruled the trial was "fundamentally unfair" and Amnesty
International has categorized him with all other political prisoner
around the world.
Trial
and conviction
Sixteen-year-old Tyler was
charged as an adult for first-degree murder, which under state law
required the death penalty if he was convicted. If it had not been prosecuted
as a capital crime and he had been charged as a juvenile, his maximum sentence
would have been imprisonment in a juvenile facility until age 21. At the trial, the police produced a gun they claimed to have found on the bus, after it had been searched several times. (It had been allegedly stolen from the Sheriff department's firing range.) They said a witness testified that Tyler had pulled it from a slit in the seat. But, in the decades following the conviction, the witness recanted her testimony, and the gun disappeared from the evidence room.
Despite the lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime, Tyler was convicted at trial in 1975 by an all-white jury in a Louisiana state court. Observers thought the case was marked by several flaws, and noted that his court-appointed defense lawyer had no experience in capital cases. As Bob Herbert wrote in 2007 in The New York Times, the lawyer "had never handled a murder case, much less a death penalty case. He kept his meetings with his client to a minimum and would later complain about the money he was paid."
Under Louisiana law, since it was a capital case, conviction incurred the mandatory sentence of death, to be accomplished by electrocution. Tyler was taken to Louisiana State Prison, where at age 17, he was the youngest inmate on death row.
Changes
in the death penalty laws
In Roberts v. Louisiana (1976), the United
States Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana's death penalty statute was
unconstitutional as it made the death penalty mandatory for certain murders,
and it did not allow for consideration of mitigating factors or the exercise of
mercy to spare a defendant's life. The USSC directed the Louisiana Supreme
court to review the cases of all inmates on death row and commute their
sentences to life in prison without parole, the next lower level of punishment.
As a result, the Louisiana Supreme Court sentenced Tyler to life imprisonment
without parole for at least 20 years. He joined the general prison population
at Angola to serve his sentence.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Miller
v. Alabama (2012), that mandatory life sentences without parole for
persons convicted as minors was unconstitutional for all juvenile offenders,
even for persons convicted of murder. The court ruled that this decision had to
be applied retroactively, potentially affecting nearly 3000 persons nationally
who had been convicted as minors and received such sentences.
Tyler gained freedom following
Louisiana Supreme Court review and consultation with the St. Charles Parish
district attorney's office on his case. It drove a hard deal. The DA and court
agreed to vacate Tyler's conviction for first-degree murder if Tyler agreed to
enter a guilty plea to manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to the maximum of
21 years for that charge. Since Tyler had already served 41 years, nearly twice
that time, he was finally released from prison on April 29, 2016.
Appeals
and controversy
Tyler's case was appealed by defense
counsel. In 1980 the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that Tyler had been
"convicted on an unconstitutional charge" (per the 1976 USSC Roberts
decision) and that the trial was "fundamentally unfair". They noted
that his attorney had failed to object to the judge making an improper charge
to the jury, instructing them to "find that the defendant, Tyler, had
intended 'the natural and probably consequences of his act', i.e. to kill or
inflict great bodily harm on more than one person." The court vacated
Tyler's conviction and remanded the case to the lower court, ordering a new
trial. But the state appealed this decision based on his attorney's failure to
object to the judge's instruction, which normally prevents redress of the
conviction. In 1981 the Appeals Court reversed its earlier ruling. While
reiterating its judgment that the trial had been unfair, it withdrew its
instruction for another trial, because of his attorney's error. The US Supreme
Court did not accept this case for hearing.
In 1989 the Louisiana Board of
Appeals recommended a pardon, based on Tyler's good behavior in prison. Five
witnesses recanted the testimony they had presented at his trial. At the time
Governor Buddy Roemer, a Democrat, was running against David Duke
for election. He refused to consider the pardon as the election was racially
charged. He feared a backlash from white voters if he freed Tyler.
Human-rights organizations,
including Amnesty International, have argued that the
legal process and procedures were flawed by the racially charged atmosphere of
the period and by police intimidation of Tyler and witnesses. Due to the racial
and political issues when Tyler was convicted, in 1994 Amnesty International described him as a
"political prisoner".
In 2007 Bob
Herbert of The New York Times wrote three columns about
the case and the injustice committed against Tyler. His work helped raise the
visibility of Tyler's plight. Amnesty International, a coalition of sports
figures, and other groups made a renewed effort to gain executive clemency for
Tyler. In 2007 his attorneys filed a petition with the Louisiana Parole Board
requesting that they commute his life sentence to a defined number of years,
which was necessary by state law in order to gain approval by the governor for
executive clemency. Tyler did not gain a pardon; he had by then served 32 years
in prison.
Tyler's supporters have claimed that
there was a miscarriage of justice in his case. Some of the issues include:
- The white community of Destrehan High School, like others in the Deep South, was vehemently against integration and was anti-black. The school board had reluctantly adopted busing to achieve integration of the school 20 years after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. On the day of the shooting, 100-200 white students had been involved in a violent protest against black students.
- The bus driver has insisted that he believes the shot was fired from outside of the bus.
- The bus driver observed the first search of the bus and said that no gun was found on it.
- The gun which the police claim was used in the murder (and produced as evidence at the trial), was a Colt .45 government-issue. It was identified by officers of the parish sheriff's department as having been stolen from their firing range. The gun later disappeared from the sheriff's evidence room.
- The jury for Tyler's trial was all white; blacks had been excluded by the prosecution.
- The 1981 US Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, ruled that the trial was based on an unconstitutional charge as it required a mandatory sentence (given the USSC's decision in Roberts v. Louisiana (1976) and was "fundamentally unfair", flawed by the trial judge's improper charge to the jury that the jury must find that the defendant, Tyler, had "intended the natural and probable consequences of his act".
No comments
Post a Comment