Will the first Lafourche death sentence in decades get carried out? Louisiana Supreme Court weighs arguments

May 13—Attorneys presented arguments to the Louisiana Supreme Court this week in the case of a Houma man sentenced to death in the slayings of a Lockport woman and her two children.

On Nov. 4, 2012, David Brown, 41, of Houma, stabbed 29-year-old Jacqueline Nieves, and her daughters, Gabriela, 7, and Izabela, 1,raped Jacquelin and Gabriella and set the family's apartment on fire.

After unanimously convicting Brown on three counts of first-degree murder Oct. 30, 2016, a Lafourche Parish jury decided two days later he should receive the death penalty.

District Judge John LeBlanc of Thibodaux formally sentenced Brown to death June 22, 2018, which marked the first death sentence handed down in Lafourche in over 40 years.

Appearing before the high court Tuesday in New Orleans, attorney Cecelia Trenticosta Kappel argued her client's sentence violated his constitutional rights because he didn't have an attorney present when the jury decided he should die.

"This case is like no other in the history of the death penalty in Louisiana," Kappel said. "In no other case has the defendant been allowed to waive counsel at the penalty phase of trial. Mr. Brown was forced to make a choice between his right to counsel and his right to make a personal defense. This is a limitation. It is a prohibition on counsel for the defendant."

Retired Justice Jeannette Knoll, appointed to sit in for Chief Justice John Weimer of Thibodaux, who recused himself in the case, said Brown made the choice to waive his right to have an attorney present.

"The trial judge even told him it was a foolish decision that he was doing," Knoll said. "He clearly warned him."

Kappel said her client wanted to limit his defense because he wanted to "protect his mother from the shame and trauma of recalling the horrific abuse that rampaged their family for generations."

"I think there's a big difference between wanting to limit the defense that is presented and actually wanting to represent yourself as a lawyer," Kappel said. "Here, Mr. Brown wanted to limit the defense his attorneys were putting on. He was told the only way to do that was to waive counsel entirely."

Kappel said Brown was also not mentally sound enough to represent himself during the penalty phase.

"You can't tell competency just by looking at someone in court," she said. "There has to be an evaluation and there was none here. There are unanswered questions as to Mr. Brown's competency. He was in no shape to represent himself. Nobody told Mr. Brown he had the right to testify on his behalf or that waiving counsel might have an effect on that. Nobody even suggested standby counsel. This is a Sixth Amendment problem. The lack of counsel during this very critical period throws into question whether the entire waiver was valid. This was a sham proceeding. He didn't have anyone speaking on his behalf."

Assistant District Attorney Joe Soignet, who represented the Lafourche District Attorney's Office, told the court that Brown's decision to waive counsel initially sent shockwaves through the prosecution.

"I can certainly tell you we were not giddy," Soignet said. "We had just finished years of hard work by securing a conviction in a case concerning the most heinous set of factual circumstances. We were prepared to move on to the next phase when this issue fell on us like a bomb out of the sky. It threatened to derail all the work we had done up to that point."

The right to waive counsel is ultimately a personal choice, and Brown clearly decided he did not want to have an attorney during the penalty phase, Soignet said.

"The defendant — not his lawyer or the state — will bear the personal consequences of the conviction," Soignet said. "It is therefore the defendant who decides. He clearly states (in the record) and reiterates he wants to represent himself. He doesn't have to like the position he's in or will end up in. At the end of the day, if that is the paramount factor in determining whether or not a defendant has a right to his constitutional right to represent himself, I think this was David Brown's personal decision."

There are 67 death row inmates in Louisiana, but only one has been executed in the last 11 years. Gerald Bordelon, convicted in 2002 for killing his 12-year-old stepdaughter in Livingston Parish, was executed in 2010 after waiving his appeals.

The court will make a ruling on the matter at a later date.

— Staff Writer Dan Copp can be reached at 448-7639 or at dan.copp@houmatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanVCopp.

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