Lorea

Pierre-Joseph Redote’s engraved and painted flowers + folklore lyrics

I was able to find a few email addresses and phone numbers on the official Louisiana Supreme website

Clerk of Court Hon. John Tarlton Olivier

400 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA 70130

P: (504) 310-2300

Email: [email protected]

Judicial Administrator’s Office Sandra A. Vujnovich

400 Royal Street, Suite 1190, New Orleans, LA 70130

P: (504) 310-2550

Court Public Information Coordinator Trina S. Vincent

400 Royal Street, Suite 1190, New Orleans, LA 70130

P: (504) 310-2590

Email: [email protected]

Names of the Judges that voted against the appeal: 

William J. Crain

Scott J. Crichton

James T. Genovese

Jefferson D. Hughes III 

Fair Wayne Bryant was convicted in 1997 of stealing the hedge clippers. Prosecutors pursued and won a life sentence in the case, a penalty permissible under the state’s habitual offender law. Bryant appealed the life sentence as too severe.

Chief Justice Bernette Johnson was the sole dissenter in the court’s decision last week, writing that Bryant’s sentence is “excessive and disproportionate to the offense” — and that it was costing the state a lot of money to keep him imprisoned.

“Since his conviction in 1997, Mr. Bryant’s incarceration has cost Louisiana taxpayers approximately $518,667,” she wrote. “Arrested at 38, Mr. Bryant has already spent nearly 23 years in prison and is now over 60 years old. If he lives another 20 years, Louisiana taxpayers will have paid almost one million dollars to punish Mr. Bryant for his failed effort to steal a set of hedge clippers.”

Bryant, who is Black, had four prior convictions. Only the first was violent: an attempted armed robbery in 1979, for which he was sentenced to 10 years hard labor. His subsequent convictions were for possession of stolen property in 1987, attempted forgery of a $150 check in 1989 and burglary of a house in 1992.