A petition sent to the Louisiana Board of Pardons claimed that two white men, Henry Waller and Johnie Long, had actually planned and carried out the crime but had each received life sentences, rather than the death penalty. Governor Parker, on Sandlin's recommendation, commuted the sentences of Tyson and Peters to twenty years, and they were released in 1936. Parker blamed the confusion over the case on his predecessor, Governor Pleasant, for having hesitated in carrying out the initial sentence of hanging.