“The death penalty is costing the cash-strapped state of Louisiana tens of millions of dollars a year. But there’s one state employee who’s massively profiting off its continued existence.
Hugo Holland’s fingerprints are on the bulk of Louisiana’s recent death sentences. He’s been hired by over a dozen district attorneys to prosecute death penalty cases at a rate that pays him more than Governor John Bel Edwards.
Holland spent two decades as an assistant district attorney at the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s office, which until recently churned out more death sentences than any other in the state, not to mention most others in the nation. He was effectively fired in 2012 after he and a colleague were caught lying on a federal application to buy M-16 automatic rifles for the DA’s office. The whistleblower claimed in a lawsuit that Holland generally liked to play cop, “outfitting [his] vehicles with lights and sirens, making stops, and wearing SWAT-type clothing during work hours.”
Though he was forced to resign when the scandal went public, the alleged fraud didn’t sink Holland’s career. Instead, his influence has expanded far beyond Caddo Parish. Records show he had lucrative contracts in nine different parishes last year.”
[For more on this story by Aviva Shen, go to https://injusticetoday.com/lou...pponents-523c9efa56e]
Photo: Louisiana House of Representatives (Wikimedia Commons)
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