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Gary Tyler (born July 19, 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 convicted of the October 7, 1974 shooting death of a white 13-year-old boy and the wounding of another, on a day of violent protests by whites against black students at Destrehan High School in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. He was 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.
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.
Many observers believe that Tyler was wrongfully convicted, as his trial and defense were seriously flawed. Tyler's cause was taken up again in 2007 by human rights organizations and a variety of public figures after his case was reviewed by a columnist of the New York Times. In 2012 the United States Supreme Court ruled that persons who were minors at the time of a crime for which they were convicted, could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and applied this retroactively. It ordered state courts to review such cases. Tyler was released in 2016 after the state arranged a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, which had a maximum sentence of 21 years; since he had already served nearly twice that, he was released from prison. Following Tyler's release from prison, no further police action was taken to identify the murderer which remains unsolved to this day.
Black students were sent home on their regular bus. On October 17, 1974, Tyler was 16 and on the bus. As they were leaving Destrehan High School, the bus was attacked by an angry mob of 100-200 whites, mostly students. The whites were angry about integration at the school. Timothy Weber, a 13-year-old boy standing with his mother as they waited to leave, was shot and fatally wounded. He later died. Police searched the bus more than once, but no gun was ever found. The bus driver said he believed the shot had come from outside. All the students from the bus were taken to the police station and interrogated under extreme pressure.
Tyler was arrested for disturbing the peace when he talked back to a police officer; he was soon charged with the murder of 13-year-old Weber. His mother Juanita Tyler and he said that he was beaten severely by the police in an attempt to make him confess, but he refused. Other witnesses later told of being intimidated and threatened by the police. As columnist Bob Herbert wrote in 2007, "A white boy had been killed and some black had to pay. Mr. Tyler, as good a black as any, was taken to a sheriff’s substation where he was beaten unmercifully amid shouted commands that he confess. He would not."
The racially charged atmosphere had been heightened by the arrival of David Duke in Destrehan. He was emerging as a leader in the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi politics in Louisiana and the United States. He brought what he called 'security teams' to protect white residents.
At the trial, the police produced a gun they claimed to have found on the bus, after it had been searched several times. (It had been allegedly stolen from the Sheriff department's firing range.) They said a witness testified that Tyler had pulled it from a slit in the seat. But, in the decades following the conviction, the witness recanted her testimony, and the gun disappeared from the evidence room.
Despite the lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime, Tyler was convicted at trial in 1975 by an all-white jury in a Louisiana state court. Observers thought the case was marked by several flaws, and noted that his court-appointed defense lawyer had no experience in capital cases. As Bob Herbert wrote in 2007 in The New York Times, the lawyer "had never handled a murder case, much less a death penalty case. He kept his meetings with his client to a minimum and would later complain about the money he was paid."
Under Louisiana law, since it was a capital case, conviction incurred the mandatory sentence of death, to be accomplished by electric chair. Tyler was taken to Louisiana State Prison, where at age 17, he was the youngest inmate on death row.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama (2012), that mandatory life sentences without parole for persons convicted as minors was unconstitutional for all juvenile offenders, even for persons convicted of murder. The court ruled that this decision had to be applied retroactively, potentially affecting nearly 3000 persons nationally who had been convicted as minors and received such sentences.
Tyler gained freedom following Louisiana Supreme Court review and consultation with the St. Charles Parish district attorney's office on his case. It drove a hard deal. The DA and court agreed to vacate Tyler's conviction for first-degree murder if Tyler agreed to enter a guilty plea to manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to the maximum of 21 years for that charge. Since Tyler had already served 41 years, nearly twice that time, he was finally released from prison on April 29, 2016. Associated Press, "Gary Tyler a free man after more than 4 decades in Angola", NOLA.com, 29 April 2016
In 1989 the Louisiana Board of Appeals recommended a pardon, based on Tyler's good behavior in prison. Five witnesses recanted the testimony they had presented at his trial. At the time Governor Buddy Roemer, a Democrat, was running against David Duke for election. He refused to consider the pardon as the election was racially charged. He feared a backlash from white voters if he freed Tyler. Dave Zirin, "Gary Tyler's Quest for Justice", The Nation, 21 Mar 2007, accessed 16 Jul 2008
Human-rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have argued that the legal process and procedures were flawed by the racially charged atmosphere of the period and by police intimidation of Tyler and witnesses. Due to the racial and political issues when Tyler was convicted, in 1994 Amnesty International described him as a "political prisoner".
In 2007 Bob Herbert of The New York Times wrote three columns about the case and the injustice committed against Tyler. His work helped raise the visibility of Tyler's plight. Amnesty International, a coalition of sports figures, and other groups made a renewed effort to gain executive clemency for Tyler. In 2007 his attorneys filed a petition with the Louisiana Parole Board requesting that they commute his life sentence to a defined number of years, which was necessary by state law in order to gain approval by the governor for executive clemency. Tyler did not gain a pardon; he had by then served 32 years in prison.
Tyler's supporters have claimed that there was a miscarriage of justice in his case. Some of the issues include:
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