THE SINCLAIR CASE

Chapter Three: Ralph Roy: The Worst Prosecutor Ever

Against this racist political backdrop, I was the perfect white candidate for the death penalty.

I had killed one of Little Dixie’s sons—an offense that brought the anger of the Klan neighborhood to a boiling point. Pitcher had political benefits both ways in seeking the death penalty in my case. He could curry favor with his White Citizens Council friends in Little Dixie while telling the city’s black community he was an equal opportunity death penalty seeker.

Pitcher once again tagged Ralph Roy to prosecute my case as he had in the Brent and Montgomery cases. Fresh off his successful death penalty prosecution in these cases, in which he had engaged in egregious prosecutorial misconduct to ensure those capital verdicts, Roy was prepared, as Pitcher knew he would be, to utilize whatever prosecutorial misconduct available to him to secure the same verdict in my case.

Roy had a sordid history of unethical courtroom tactics, anything from suppressing favorable evidence to using perjured testimony. He was a “convict at any cost” prosecutor—the kind of prosecutors whose unethical trial tactics brought about the Brady Rule from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963. The Louisiana Supreme Court was ultimately forced to sanction and more than once criticize Roy for his unethical courtroom conduct. He became a disgrace to state’s legal profession. That is the way he died.

Today a Google search does not produce one single noteworthy contribution the prosecutor ever made to the legal profession. A Google search does reveal an obituary—a fitting commentary for a man who so horribly corrupted the definition of justice.

I say this without the slightest reservation: Ralph Roy’s egregious prosecutorial misconduct in my case was borderline criminal. He knew he was trying to kill a man who, under Louisiana law, did not qualify for the death penalty.

In order to secure a death penalty verdict under Louisiana law at the time of my June 1966 trial, Roy had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that J.C. Bodden was killed during the commission of a robbery or an attempted robbery inside the store. The prosecutor knew the attempted robbery had been abandoned when I turned and fled from the store. That effectively ended the “felony” he needed to make the crime a “felony murder” eligible for the death penalty.

Six people witnessed the events surrounding the shooting death of Bodden: Ray Neyland, Donald Lee Jones, Grundy Sampite, his wife Katherine, and Donald Ray Kennard and his wife Ramona.

Grundy Sampite and Donald Lee Jones were physically inside the store. Ray Neyland was standing in the doorway with a full view inside the store.

Katherine Sampite was sitting inside the Sampite vehicle parked directly in front of the store.

Donald Ray Kennard and his wife Ramona pulled into the store’s parking lot just as I ran from the store with Bodden in pursuit.

Neyland and Jones gave similar statements to the police at the crime scene—that Bodden chased me outside the store. They told investigators that Bodden charged me inside the store and that I ran outside the store with Bodden in pursuit.

The Kennards were equally specific. They told the police that they saw me running from the store with Bodden chasing me outside the store waving a broom above his head.

All four witnesses said Bodden was shot and fatally wounded outside the store.

Their statements put the crime outside the death penalty “felony murder” doctrine.

The core facts of the crime are these: J.C. Bodden was not killed during the commission of an attempted armed robbery. He resisted the robbery. He charged me. I abandoned the robbery attempt and fled from the store. He pursued me. He was mortally wounded by an errant bullet fired outside the store that struck him under the left armpit. That bullet nicked his aorta causing him to bleed to death in the parking lot outside the store.

Absent a felony murder, Roy could seek the death penalty in my case by proving beyond a reasonable doubt that I had a specific intent to kill J.C. Bodden that night.

The prosecutor knew that theory would not fly because the bullet that killed Bodden was fired outside the store as he chased me, armed with a broom,

The shooting death of J.C. Bodden was manslaughter.

Louisiana law defined manslaughter as a “homicide” committed without any intent to kill or cause great bodily harm during the commission or attempted commission of a felony.

Ralph Roy did not have a case with either a specific intent to kill or a homicide committed during the commission or attempted commission of a robbery.

A manslaughter verdict carried a maximum penalty of 21 years with parole eligibility after service of one-third of any sentence imposed.

That was Roy’s dilemma.

He knew the Bodden family, their friends, and the Istrouma football alumni led by Billy Cannon would not accept that verdict.

Roy was up to the assigned challenge to satisfy those political forces leaning hard on Sargent Pitcher. He had to create a cold-blooded murder narrative in “the Sinclair case,” both in the courtroom and in the local media. Gibbs Adams, a veteran newspaper reporter in Baton Rouge at the time, told me years later that Roy repeatedly leaked stories to him and other reporters about that “cold-blooded murderer Sinclair.”

Here is the way Roy created his “cool and calm” killer prosecutorial narrative at my 1966 trial.

He told jurors that I attempted an armed robbery and Bodden resisted the robbery by telling me to get out of the store. The prosecutor said I then shot Bodden in the chest inside the store with the bullet piercing his heart. After mortally wounding the clerk, Roy told jurors that I calmly and casually walked outside the store to my car; that I was real cool and calm throughout the attempted robbery process.

That prosecutorial narrative constituted a felony murder.

To support the “cool and calm” killer native, Roy got Sampite to perjure himself by testifying that I shot Bodden inside the store before I calmly walked out of the store. Katherine Sampite bolstered her husband’s perjured testimony by falsely testifying that she saw me calmly walk out of the store to my car and casually drive away.

The Sampites, I believe, knew J.C. Bodden on a personal level. Grundy Sampite said they were regular customers at the store. Perhaps that is why they committed perjury. Whatever the reason, they were more than willing to give false testimony to see J.C.’s killer brought to justice with a trip to the state’s electric chair.

But Roy wanted—or perhaps needed—more evidence to support the “the cool and calm” killer narrative.

He got that evidence from a local restaurant owner named Larry K. Sullivan.

Sullivan, who was also a friend of Bodden, told the jury that I was in his restaurant—a place called “The Chicken Diner” located a short distance from the Pak-A-Sak--approximately 30 minutes before Bodden was killed and that I was acting like a “robber looking for a place to rob.”

I was never in Sullivan’s “Chicken Diner” or any other restaurant in Baton Rouge.

The problem with Sullivan’s trial testimony was that it differed significantly from a statement he gave to the police on the night of the offense.

The enterprising restaurant owner told investigators that I was in the Chicken Diner at 8:00 p.m.—the exact time that Bodden was killed.

I could not have been in both places at the same time.

That proved to be a minor problem for Roy.

The prosecutor told Sullivan to change the time I was in his restaurant from 8:00 p.m. to roughly 7:20 p.m. before the crime occurred.

Roy wanted Sullivan’s testimony to put me in Baton Rouge looking like someone trying to find a place to rob before I attempted to rob Bodden. That bolstered the cool and calm killer narrative—a robber “on the hunt.”

Sullivan agreed to give Roy the perjured testimony the prosecutor wanted.

In effect, Roy got the prosecution’s three primary witnesses to testify falsely—Sullivan who made me look like a robber on the hunt and the Sampites who made me look like a cool and calm killer during the robbery attempt.

Roy even punctuated Sullivan’s testimony by telling the jury that “young Sullivan” was one of the best witnesses he had the privilege of presenting in court.

Beyond Sullivan’s own contradictory statement to the police on the night of the offense, how do we know that “young Sullivan” perjured himself at trial?

There were two waitresses in the Chicken Diner that night with Sullivan. Both women—Betty Scalan and Gloria Hill—verified that a suspicious man was indeed in the restaurant that night, but neither of woman could identify me as that person to the police. More to the point, they told detectives that the suspicious looking man was in the restaurant sometime between 8:10 and 8:30 p.m.—well after the Pak-A-Sak crime had been committed.

Ralph Roy did not call the two waitresses to testify. I don’t believe they were willing to perjure themselves by changing the time the suspicious man was in the Chicken Diner or by identifying me as that person.

I don’t think Roy approached the Kennards, Neyland or Jones to give false testimony that would have supported the cool and calm killer narrative. He knew they would not, just as he knew Scalan and Hill would not, commit perjury for him. He and Pitcher made a calculated decision to suppress the testimony of these six witnesses whose testimony would have placed Bodden’s homicide outside the Louisiana death penalty murder statute.

The two prosecutors decided to bury the 1965 Offense Report prepared by the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Department that contained the statements of the six witnesses—a report that I would ultimately get my hands on in 1980.

They had one political mission: secure a death penalty verdict in “the Sinclair case.”