Capital punishment in Louisiana

In addition, certain pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers do not want their products associated with capital punishment, meaning the state has been unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.

In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, a life sentence is issued, even if a single juror opposed death (there is no retrial).

Louisiana law stated that the execution method for death sentences prior to September 15, 1991 would use electrocution and those after would use lethal injection.

The Supreme Court, however, ruled it unconstitutional on June 25, 2008 in Kennedy v. Louisiana, saying "there is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons".

[13] On August 29, 2009—the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—a jury in Orleans Parish sentenced Michael Anderson to death on each of five counts of first degree murder for his execution style shooting of five teenagers on June 17, 2006.

The sentence was later commuted to life and then reduced still further after Anderson's cooperation with federal prosecutors and the revelation that the murder had in fact been committed by Telly Hankton[15] The prosecution of Rodricus Crawford for the murder of his one-year-old son in 2013 brought national attention to Caddo Parish and its controversial Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Dale Cox, responsible for one-third of the entire state of Louisiana's death sentences since he began prosecuting capital cases and a strong proponent of the death penalty.