Louisiana high court to decide if suicide erases conviction

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The Louisiana Supreme Court says it will decide whether a white man’s conviction for killing a Black man should be thrown out because he killed himself in prison while appealing the verdict. The Advocate reports that prosecutors want the high court to reinstate the conviction of Kenneth Gleason, who was found hanging in his cell shortly after beginning his life sentence in September 2021. A state district judge threw out the conviction under a doctrine requiring courts to do so for defendants who die while their appeals are pending. Prosecutors say the justices should either overturn the doctrine or allow for a suicide exception.