Gary Tyler
| Gary Tyler | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | July 1958 (age 58) |
| Citizenship |
 United States
|
| Criminal charge | First degree murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death, commuted in 1977 to life sentence without parole for 20 years |
| Criminal status | Released April 29, 2016 |
| Website | freegarytyler |
Gary Tyler (born July 1958), from St. Rose, Louisiana, is an African-American man who is a former prisoner at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, Louisiana. He was freed after 41 years in jail after being tried as an adult and convicted of first-degree murder at age 17 by an all-white jury; he received the mandatory death sentence for that crime, according to state law. When he entered Louisiana State Prison (Angola), he was the youngest person on death row. Many observers believe that Tyler was wrongfully convicted, as his trial and defense were seriously flawed. He was imprisoned from 1975 until April 29, 2016. He had been convicted of the October 7, 1974 shooting death of a 13-year-old white boy and wounding of another, on a day of violent protests by whites against black students at Destrehan High School in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Although desegregation had started in 1968 at the school, racial tensions had increased during 1974.
In 1976 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roberts v. Louisiana that the state's death penalty law was unconstitutional, as it required mandatory sentences for convictions of certain capital charges, without consideration of mitigating factors. The Supreme Court ordered state court reviews and the commutation of sentences of persons on death row to the next lower level of punishment. Tyler's sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole for 20 years.
His defense appealed the conviction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in 1980 that Tyler's trial had convicted him on "unconstitutional charges" and was "fundamentally unfair"; it remanded the case to the lower courts and ordered a new trial. But on state appeal, it changed its ruling in 1981, saying that attorney error by Tyler's original defense counsel did not allow redress. Tyler was recommended by the state parole board for a pardon, but governors had failed to act on this.
...
Wikipedia