Rogers Lacaze


( | The Times-Picayune archive)

Reopening one of New Orleans' most horrific crimes in recent decades, a judge Thursday (July 23) granted a new trial to Rogers LaCaze, the death row inmate convicted of helping kill a police officer and two restaurant employees in eastern New Orleans in 1995.

LaCaze will face a new trial on first-degree murder charges because a former police officer who worked for railroad companies and the State Police sat on the jury that convicted him, in violation of jury rules, said the order by Judge Michael Kirby.

LaCaze and then-New Orleans police Officer Antoinette Frank were convicted for the March 4, 1995 killing of three during a robbery of the Kim Anh restaurant. The victims were NOPD officer Ronald "Ronnie" Williams II, 25, who was there in an off-duty security detail and was Frank's partner on the force, and siblings Cuong Vu, 17, and Ha Vu, 24.

"For 20 years Rogers LaCaze has been asking for what every defendant is entitled to, a competent attorney and a fair trial in front of an impartial jury," said one of his post-conviction attorneys, Blythe Taplin, of the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans. "While we disagree with some of the findings in the court order, this is the only just result. Mr. LaCaze looks forward to his day in court."

  • Read the 1995 story on the triple murder at Kim Ahn restaurant.

Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office immediately said it planned to appeal the order for a retrial.

Kirby, a retired Plaquemines Parish and appeals court judge who was appointed to preside over LaCaze's post-conviction proceedings, vacated the convictions and death sentence and awarded the new trial.

He cited the fact that David Settle, who had worked with police for 20 years up to that time, "sat on Mr. LaCaze's jury when commissioned law enforcement officers were legally barred from jury service." Further, Settle never disclosed it during the jury selection process.

That "structural error," Kirby ruled, violates the U.S. and Louisiana constitutions. LaCaze "is thus entitled to a new trial before a properly constituted jury," he wrote in the 128-page decision.

"Although I find the evidence of Mr. LaCaze's actual guilt compelling, he is entitled to a new trial because his trial was afflicted with a structural defect, i.e., the violation of a constitutional right so basic to a fair trial it cannot be treated as a harmless error," Kirby wrote.

Kirby also ruled that LaCaze will remain in custody until he is retried. He declined to authorize bail, as it is allowed in capital cases. LaCaze was charged with first-degree murder.

Cannizzaro's spokesman, Assistant District Attorney Chris Bowman, said Thursday the office was still reviewing the lengthy decision.

"It's worth noting that despite the multitude of claims upon which the defendant sought relief, the court found merit to only one, to a single claim, that there was a law enforcement officer on the jury," Bowman said. "We respectfully disagree with Judge Kirby's analysis of that issue, and we will seek review in the appellate courts."

A horrible crime

The massacre at Kim Ahn restaurant stood out even amid New Orleans' ferocious crime wave in the early and mid-1990s, when the city's murder rate led the nation, regularly clocking more than 300 killings per year.

The chilling way in which the victims were murdered, and the involvement of a police officer who committed the killings while in uniform, shocked the city and the nation. Many remembered it as the first time an NOPD member had killed another fellow officer.

Prosecutors said the bloodbath began when Frank, then 28, and LaCaze, then 18, went to rob the restaurant around 1:50 a.m. on March 4, 1995. They shot Williams, including in the head, a week after the birth of this second child. The shooters then turned to the Vu siblings, who were killed as they dropped to their knees to pray and beg for mercy, prosecutors said.

Another Vu family member, who survived by hiding in a storage cooler, identified Frank as one of the shooters when Frank returned to the scene under the pretense of responding to the emergency. She and LaCaze were arrested that same day.

A jury took 1 hour and 20 minutes to convict LaCaze at the end of his trial that July. Frank was convicted in a separate trial a few months later.

Numerous claims raised in appeal

Kirby's ruling Thursday has no affect on Frank's conviction.

In seeking a new trial for LaCaze, Taplin and Sarah Ottinger, also of the Capital Appeals Project, raised numerous claims, including that he did not get an impartial jury. They also argued that his trial attorney, Willie Turk, had never defended a death penalty case before. Turk has since died.

Kirby found that Turk was incompetent during the penalty phase that led to the death sentence. But Kirby found the ineffective attorney claim is moot, because LaCaze is getting a new trial.

The attorneys asserted that three jurors either were in law enforcement or had relatives who were homicide victims. The attorneys also say the jurors lied about their backgrounds during jury selection.

Settle was a police officer for Southern Railway from 1978 to 1982, then worked for Norfolk Southern's police force as a sergeant until he lost that job in 1993, "for misappropriation of four tires," according to Kirby's ruling.

At the time of LaCaze's trial, Settle worked for Louisiana State Police and testified in a post-conviction hearing that "his work related to drivers' license issues."

"That is significant because at the time of his jury service law enforcement officers were not competent jurors," Kirby wrote.

During jury selection, Settle did not speak up when attorneys asked a panel of potential jurors if anyone was related to someone in law enforcement. Settle didn't respond to the question when it was asked of a second panel of prospective jurors, according to the ruling.

"Even if there is a plausible explanation for his silence here, I cannot fathom a legitimate reason for him not speaking up when the trial court directly asked the first row of his panel if anyone was related to anybody in law enforcement," Kirby wrote.

Prosecutors argued that Settle's status with law enforcement when he was on the jury was "of no moment," because the ban on officers serving on juries was overturned before LaCaze's appeal was final, Kirby wrote.

"I find that at the time Mr. LaCaze was tried for three counts of first-degree murder there was present on the jury 'a badge-wearing law-enforcement officer' whose presence thereon offended the impartial trial guarantee" of the state constitution, Kirby wrote.

The judge did not find that Settle "was actively seeking to be part of the jury by his silence."

"The record before the court abundantly establishes that, for whatever reason, Mr. Settle did not honestly answer the question and that if he had honestly answered it, he would have been found to be a legally incompetent juror" under caselaw, the judge wrote.

Another juror who voted to convict LaCaze was employed by the NOPD as a dispatcher and was on duty at the time of the triple homicide. That woman even attended Williams' funeral. Another jury disclosed that two of her siblings were homicide victims. Kirby found no reversible error in their place on the jury.

Reporter Manuel Torres contributed to this story.