In a significant move toward rectifying a long-standing injustice, the Louisiana State Senate Judiciary Committee voted 5-1 on April 29, 2025, to advance Senate Bill 218, authored by Senator Royce Duplessis. The bill seeks to provide a legal pathway for individuals still incarcerated due to non-unanimous jury convictions—a vestige of the Jim Crow era. Non-unanimous […]
A federal judge has issued an injunction preventing the State of Louisiana from executing Jessie Hoffman using nitrogen gas, halting what would have been the state’s first use of the controversial execution method. The ruling comes just days before the scheduled March 18 execution, with the judge finding that Hoffman has a strong likelihood of […]
On Saturday, the Promise of Justice Initiative (PJI) and Rights Behind Bars, two nonprofit advocacy groups, filed a lawsuit against the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Prison Enterprises challenging the practice of forced agricultural labor at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola.
This week, the Louisiana Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case that could determine the fate of around 1,500 people convicted by a non-unanimous jury.
Louisiana's incarceration system, like most incarceration systems in this country, has always been racist, prioritizing putting Black men in jail over actual justice. This is made obvious by the state's prison population being disproportionately Black and through racist laws like the one that created Jim Crow Juries. Jim Crow Juries were legalized by an 1880 […]
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