Luong v. Alabama

In 2008, a grand jury charged Lam Luong with five counts of capital murder in connection with the deaths of his four children. He was later convicted on all counts, for which he received a death sentence. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Luong's convictions and death sentence, holding that the trial court erred by refusing to move the trial from Mobile County because, it reasoned, the pretrial publicity was presumptively prejudicial and by refusing to conduct individual questioning of the potential jurors regarding their exposure to that publicity. The Court of Criminal Appeals also held that the trial court erred in denying defense counsel funds to travel to Vietnam to investigate mitigation evidence and in admitting into evidence during the sentencing hearing a videotape simulation using sandbags approximately the weight of each child illustrating the length of time it took for each child to fall from the bridge to the water. The Supreme Court found that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in the decisions it made in this case. As such, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded this case for further proceedings. View "Luong v. Alabama" on Justia Law