USA - Louisiana. Judge grants new trial for Rogers Lacaze

Judge grants new trial for Rogers Lacaze, 38, Black. Lacaze, who was shipped to Louisiana's death row in July 1995 along with former New Orleans Police Department Officer Antoinette Frank for the most infamous New Orleans massacre in a generation, will get a new trial on 1st-degree murder charges, a judge ruled today. Retired Judge Michael Kirby found "a structural error" in Lacaze's trial on 3 counts of 1st-degree murder - namely, that one of the jurors, David Settle, was a commissioned law enforcement officer at a time when they were legally barred from jury service. Kirby, a retired Plaquemines Parish and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal judge, also found merit to some of the other claims by Lacaze's attorneys, who have argued for years that his case was botched by Orleans prosecutors, the judge at his trial and his own, now-deceased trial attorney. In his ruling, Kirby said he found the evidence of Lacaze's guilt "overwhelming" but that the juror question alone warranted a new trial. Kirby found that Settle, who had a history as railroad police agent with arrest powers, remained silent when the question came up of whether jurors had backgrounds or family members in law enforcement. Lacaze's attorneys also argued that the death sentence for Lacaze, 38, was unconstitutional because Lacaze is mentally disabled. Kirby said they could take that question up in the next trial. The decision comes almost exactly 20 years after a jury found Lacaze guilty of 3 counts of 1st-degree murder in the killing of Frank's partner, Officer Ronnie Williams II, 25, and siblings Cuong Vu, 17, and Ha Vu, 24, inside a restaurant in New Orleans. The March 4, 1995, slayings marked a low point in both image and morale for an NOPD that was beset by corruption charges and an explosion of deadly street violence, with the city's murder rate about double what it is today. It had peaking in 1994 at 421 murders.