Published: February 21, 2024
By: Madison Marong, LSU Manship News Service
BATON ROUGE— Protesters swarmed House hearing rooms Tuesday as a top law enforcement committee passed legislation that would expand capital punishment to include death by nitrogen gas and electrocution. The panel significantly boosted sentences for carjacking and penalties for so-called “rainbow” fentanyl sold to children.
It also tightened parole issues and prisoner rules which drew opposition from groups that aid formerly incarcerated people in voting and civic participation.
Punishment for carjackings and selling fentanyl to children came in a flurry of legislation that swept across the Capitol on Tuesday following a stirring speech the day before from newly-elected Gov. Jeff Landry.
Landry, a former state Attorney General, ran on a get-tough-on-crime stance that would roll back scores of revisions made under his predecessor, Gov. John Bel Edwards. Chief among Landry’s positions was to restart capital punishment as a deterrent to what has been soaring crime rates in the state’s major cities.
Louisiana has not administered capital punishment by lethal injection since 2010.
Read more at BIZ.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 
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