By BILL LODGE
The Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — The American Civil Liberties Union sued Louisiana on Thursday for alleged violation of two prisoners’ religious freedoms.
Both prisoners are at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. One is on death row for a murder in St. Mary Parish. The other is serving 60 years for a manslaughter conviction in St. Bernard Parish.
Officials for the prison and the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.
Donald Lee Leger Jr., now 39, was sentenced to death in the 2001 shooting of Troy Salone, 35, at his home near Franklin.
Leger, a Catholic, argues in federal court in Baton Rouge that prison officials unfairly limit Sunday television services on death row to Baptist or other Protestant faiths.
“Prisoners are permitted to attend Baptist religious services held in death row’s prison yard. However, no similar Catholic services have been held since at least April 2007,” Leger complains.
“It seems kind of ridiculous to me,” St. Mary Parish Sheriff David Naquin said Thursday. “If he (Leger) was that concerned about Jesus Christ, maybe he wouldn’t be in jail.
“We’re a small town,” Naquin added. “Everybody takes this a little personally.”
Efforts to reach Salone’s widow, Evelyn, were unsuccessful Thursday.
Evelyn Salone survived the shooting after undergoing hours of surgery.
Law enforcement officials said after the incident Leger had kidnapped an ex-girlfriend, who escaped into the Salones’ neighborhood.
Naquin said Leger knocked on the Salones’ door and shot the couple when they said they hadn’t seen the woman.
“I frankly am unaware of the details of either man’s convictions,” ACLU attorney Barry Gerharz said.
“We focus on the prison conditions and not the convictions.”
Gerharz and the ACLU also represents Shawn Anderson, 42, who pleaded guilty in 1998 to a charge of manslaughter.
Anderson admitted he strangled former girlfriend Audra Kim Payne, 22, of Violet, two years earlier, the Times-Picayune had reported.
Payne was found with her mouth, hands and ankles bound with duct tape. She had three children, according to the news reports.
Anderson was sentenced to 40 years on the manslaughter charge. Twenty additional years were stacked on because of prior convictions for burglary and cocaine possession, according to The Times-Picayune and the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections.
Pam Laborde, communications director for DOC, said Anderson will be eligible to seek parole in February 2017.
Absent a parole, Laborde said, Anderson’s prison sentence runs into 2057.
Anderson says in his civil suit in Baton Rouge federal court that he is a minister of the Nation of Islam, which is based in Chicago and headed by Louis Farrakhan.
Anderson complains that prison officials deny him access to Nation of Islam materials and publications. He also alleges he is prohibited from assembling and worshipping with other members of the Nation of Islam.
“I don’t think a prison should be able to stand between a man and his God,” the ACLU’s Gerharz said.
He added that the ACLU obtained a settlement two years ago in the case of a Mormon prisoner who had been denied access to religious publications at Angola.
“We just see a pattern and history here of letting certain people worship more freely than others,” Gerharz said.
“Catholics, Muslims and Mormons just want the same opportunities that Baptist prisoners are given,” said Marjorie R. Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana.
Tammi Arender Herring, communications director for the attorney general, said staff members had not had time to review the civil suits and could not comment on them.
Laborde, with DOC, said prison officials also would not comment Thursday.
“We have not been served with the lawsuits,” Laborde added.
Copyright 2009 Capital City Press