State Supreme Court declines to reinstate Houma murder conviction
A Houma man will face a new trial for the murder of a former deacon after the state Supreme Court declined to reverse a lower court’s decision to overturn his conviction.
Leron Calloway, 24, was found guilty June 19, 2015, in the shooting death of 66-year-old former Annunziata Catholic Church deacon Connely Duplantis in an armed robbery of his cell phone on Carolyn Avenue in Houma Nov. 24, 2013.
District Judge David Arceneaux sentenced Calloway to life in prison during a hearing Feb. 8, 2017.
After reviewing the evidence, the Louisiana 1st Circuit Court of Appeal in Baton Rouge overturned the conviction in 2019 and sent the case back to the district court. Prosecutors filed a writ of certiorari, which petitions the Louisiana Supreme Court to review the case.