Nearly all Louisiana’s death-row inmates have filed for clemency

A final term gives a politician an opportunity for courage. John Bel Edwards, Louisiana’s lame-duck Democratic governor, seemed to be seizing it when he announced his opposition to the death penalty in a conversation on faith and leadership at Loyola University, a Jesuit college, in March. In a state where Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton in 2016 and easily captured the eight electoral-college votes in 2020, most voters have long approved of putting inmates to death. Despite newfound support from the outgoing governor, a bill to ban the practice died in committee in May. Abolishing it, Republicans and prosecutors argued, would incentivise murderers to go rogue.