NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)–In a 6-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a Louisiana death row inmate’s appeal Tuesday.
Lamondre Tucker has been on death row since his 2011 conviction for the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend in 2008. KTBS in Shreveport reports Tavia Sills was 18 when Tucker killed her and dumped her body in a pond. Tucker, 18 at the time of the murder, was not the father.
Supreme Court justices Steven Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who have questioned whether the death penalty violates the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, filed a dissent suggesting Tucker may have escaped death row had his case been tried elsewhere. The dissent notes that Caddo Parish sentenced more convicts to death than any other county or parish in the United States between 2010 and 2014.
“Caddo Parish imposes almost half the death sentences in Louisiana, even though it accounts for only 5% of that State’s population and 5% of its homicides,” justices Breyer and Ginsburg wrote. They also noted Tucker’s IQ was 74. In 2002, the court ruled executing the intellectually disabled is cruel and unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment.
The six justices in the majority did not file an opinion giving their reasons for rejecting Tucker’s petition.