State corrections officials on Monday asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the death sentence of a man convicted nearly three decades ago of a Baton Rouge double-murder, a case that could hasten the next use of Louisiana’s death chamber.
Todd Wessinger, who landed on death row for killing two former coworkers at Calendar’s restaurant in Baton Rouge in 1995, is the nearest of more than 50 death row prisoners to exhausting his avenues of appeal in state and federal courts, officials say.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals seemed ill-convinced Monday by arguments from Wessinger’s attorney that he deserves another chance at a new sentence due to a prior lawyer’s failures to provide complete evidence during the sentencing phase of his 1997 trial…