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August 18, 2020

Louisiana Man Sentenced to Life for Stealing Hedge Clippers to Get New Hearing
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In Louisiana, a parole board has set an October hearing for Fair Wayne
Bryant, a 62-year-old Black man who was sentenced to life in prison for
the 1997 theft of hedge clippers. Earlier this month, five white members
of Louisiana's Supreme Court upheld the sentence, saying it was
permitted by a Louisiana "habitual offender law." In a scathing dissent,
the court's only Black member, Chief Justice Bernette Johnson, blasted
mandatory minimum sentences under the law as a "modern manifestation" of
segregationist legislation passed after the Civil War.


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