263204 Death Row
Louisiana State Prison
Angola, LA 70712
Glen Seals' Case
Conviction Tossed In Taxicab Killing
The Times-Picayune, October 3, 2000
by: Joe Darby; West Bank Bureau
Judge Patrick McCabe of the 24th Judicial District Court threw out the 1993 conviction of Glen Seals because a sanity hearing, requested by Seals' attorney before his trial, was never held. McCabe said all proceedings against Seals, 37, should have stopped until the hearing was conducted. Prosecutor Terry Boudreaux, who handles appeals for the Jefferson Parish district attorney's office, asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to overrule McCabe's findings. It could be some time before the high court rules, Boudreaux said.
Seals was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Ray Feeney, 58, who was robbed, shot with his own gun and dumped out of his taxicab on Earhart Expressway near Clearview parkway on Aug. 15, 1991.
The state Supreme Court upheald Seals' conviction and death sentence in 1996, finding no errors in the trial. But Nick Trenticosta of the Center for Equal Justice, which represents people on death row, discovered in his research of Seals' case that the sanity hearing was never held.
Judge Clarence McManus, who presided over Seals' 1993 trial in the 24th Judicial District Court, had granted the defense request for a sanity hearing, but the hearing never took place.
Attorney Martin Regan, whose firm represented Seals at trial, told McCabe in a hearing last month that he assumed all defense motions had been fulfilled before the trial began.
Seals is the first death penalty conviction in Jefferson Parish to be overturned in several years.
Boudreaux said he is arguing to the Louisiana Supreme Court that a retroactive sanity hearing could determine if Seals was competent to stand trial in 1993.
The state high court has ruled that such hearings may be held in some cases, particularily if psychiatric evaluations of the defendant were conducted before trial, which could be used to help provide information on the defendant's mental state at the time. But McCabe found that no evaluation of Seals was conducted after his arrest.
"The information available to the doctors for a retroactive sanity (hearing) is extremely small, extremely slight," McCabe said.
If the state high court upholds McCabe's decision, it would be up to the attorneys representing Seals in a new trial to ask for a new sanity hearing to determine if he is competent to stand trial, Trenticosta said. If he were found competent, the state would have to try him again. If not, a judge would likely order him held to see if medications and other psychiatric treatment could render him competent.
Copyright 2002
