New Orleans A parole period for October has been set for a Black man sentenced to life in prison for stealing clippers in a 1997 burglary, a sentence the Louisiana Supreme Court has upheld, despite his appeal to the Supreme Court that the punishment was disproportionate and rooted in racist law.
In November, an appeals court of the state held that the sentence for Fair Wayne Bryant, 62, was in accordance with ordinary criminal law, and, after a previous appeal failed, was no longer subject to review.
The Supreme Court voted 5-1 to overturn the ruling, with five white male justices voting in favor and Chief Justice Bernette Johnson, the only Black member of the court, voting against. A seventh justice, also a white man, was acquitted. The court gave the decision without comment, but Johnson posted a stabbing dissident of two pages in which she argued that the sentence was so out of proportion to the crime to be clearly unconstitutional. Her response drew widespread attention to the case.
In her dissent, Johnson called ordinary offender laws “a modern manifestation” of legislation passed after the Civil War to make it easier for former slaves and their descendants to be convicted of petty crimes and to be severely convicted. Those laws, she said, were an attempt to ‘re-enslave African-Americans’.
Bryant took the hard sentence after he was convicted in 1997 of stealing the haircuts from a store in a carport near a house in Shreveport. His record already included a 1979 attempt to convict armed robbery – a crime classified as violent under Louisiana – and three consecutive non-violent crimes: possession of stolen property in 1987; attempted to falsify a $ 150 check in 1989; and simple burglary in 1992.
In 2000, the state appellate court rejected multiple arguments that Bryant made, some involving legal proceedings and one argument that the sentence was exaggerated.
“Defendant has spent very little of his adult life outside the criminal justice system,” the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal said in its 2000 decision, which went on to break his record. “This litany of convictions and the short duration of the periods during which the suspect was not in custody for a new crime is broad support for the punishment imposed in this case.”
Francis Abbott, executive director of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, said factors that will go into the decision of the seven-member parole committee on whether Bryant will record his criminal record, his behavior in ‘ the prison, or he has a place to live and all the remarks of victims.
Abbott said Bryant had applied for parole on July 21 and an executive committee of three members of the parole committee agreed Wednesday to plan for a hearing on October 15.
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