Gary Tyler

Gary Tyler (born July 19, 1958), from St. Rose, Louisiana, is an African-American man who is a former prisoner at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, Louisiana. He was convicted of the October 7, 1974, shooting death of a white 13-year-old boy and the wounding of another, on a day of violent protests by whites against black students at Destrehan High School in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. He was tried as an adult and convicted of first-degree murder at age 17 by an all-white jury; he received the mandatory death sentence for that crime, according to state law. When he entered Louisiana State Prison (Angola), he was the youngest person on death row.

In 1976 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roberts v. Louisiana that the state's death penalty law was unconstitutional, as it required mandatory sentences for convictions of certain capital charges, without consideration of mitigating factors. The Supreme Court ordered state court reviews and the commutation of sentences of persons on death row to the next lower level of punishment. Tyler's sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole for 20 years.

His defense appealed the conviction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in 1980 that Tyler's trial had convicted him on "unconstitutional charges" and was "fundamentally unfair"; it remanded the case to the lower courts and ordered a new trial. But on state appeal, it changed its ruling in 1981, saying that attorney error by Tyler's original defense counsel did not allow redress. Tyler was recommended by the state parole board for a pardon, but governors had failed to act on this.

Many observers believe that Tyler was wrongfully convicted, as his trial and defense were seriously flawed. Tyler's cause was taken up again in 2007 by human rights organizations and a variety of public figures after his case was reviewed by a columnist of the New York Times. In 2012 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that persons who were minors at the time of a crime for which they were convicted, could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and applied this retroactively. It ordered state courts to review such cases. Tyler was released in 2016 after the state arranged a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, which had a maximum sentence of 21 years; since he had already served nearly twice that, he was released from prison. Following Tyler's release from prison, no further police action was taken to identify the murderer which remains unsolved to this day.

Gary Tyler is one of eleven children of Juanita and Uylos Tyler of St. Rose, Louisiana. His father was a maintenance worker who sometimes held three jobs; his mother worked as a domestic. His father died in 1989 of heart trouble. Tyler and his siblings attended local schools, which were segregated into the 1970s. When he was 16, he began to take the bus to Destrehan High School. Previously all-white, the school had conducted court-ordered desegregation since 1968, bussing black students to the school. In the school sessions in 1974, racial tensions had been rising, with fights breaking out in the halls and at games. The white community continued to resist desegregation and black students were harassed at the school by white students.

In 1974 formerly all-white Destrehan High School in St. Charles Parish was filled with racial tensions among the students as the administration reluctantly integrated, 20 years after the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The school board bussed black students to the school to achieve this. Because of fights breaking out and a violent protest being conducted by white students, officials closed the school early the day of the events.

Black students were sent home on their regular bus. On October 17, 1974, Tyler was 16 and on the bus. As they were leaving Destrehan High School, the bus was attacked by an angry mob of 100-200 whites, mostly students. The whites were angry about integration at the school.^{[citation needed]} Timothy Weber, a 13-year-old boy standing with his mother as they waited to leave, was shot and fatally wounded. He later died. Police searched the bus more than once, but no gun was ever found. The bus driver said he believed the shot had come from outside. All the students from the bus were taken to the police station and interrogated under extreme pressure.

Tyler was arrested for disturbing the peace when he talked back to a police officer; he was soon charged with the murder of 13-year-old Weber. His mother Juanita Tyler and he said that he was beaten severely by the police in an attempt to make him confess, but he refused. Other witnesses later told of being intimidated and threatened by the police. As columnist Bob Herbert wrote in 2007, "A white boy had been killed and some black had to pay. Mr. Tyler, as good a black as any, was taken to a sheriff’s substation where he was beaten unmercifully amid shouted commands that he confess. He would not."