Appropriations panel backs bill to speed post-conviction reviews despite $4.1M fiscal note

The House Appropriations Committee on Monday voted to report House Bill 6 75 favorably, a bill Attorney General Liz Murrell and district attorneys said will impose firm deadlines on state post‑conviction relief procedures to prevent multi‑decade delays in carrying out sentences or correcting wrongful convictions.

The bill matters because advocates for victims and prosecutors said Louisiana’s current post‑conviction process has been “weaponized” to produce years — sometimes decades — of delay on death‑penalty cases, while defenders and the organizations that represent incarcerated people warned the change will require up‑front funding to staff a large caseload of active petitions.

"The system has…