A Eunice man convicted of second-degree murder in 1996 is applying to the state Board of Pardons for clemency.
Jarred Lanclow was sentenced to life without the benefit of parole when he was convicted of second-degree murder in the January, 1996, shooting death of Chad Doucet, 20, of Church Point.
Lanclow, 18 at the time of the shooting, shot Doucet following a disturbance in the parking lot of St. Thomas More Church, located in the Acadia Parish section of Eunice.
According to testimony at the trial, a dispute broke out between two groups of young adults following a wedding at the church. Lanclow never denied that he shot the victim.
His attorney, Andre Doguet, claimed diminished capacity and self-defense on behalf of his client, calling the parking lot fight “two minutes of chaos.”
Assistant District Attorney Kim Hayes countered that Lanclow had been the aggressor in the fight and “he had the gun.”
Hayes rested his case after testimony by Brandon “B.J.” Achten, who said that he had visited Lanclow and discussed the events of the night of the shooting and that Lanclow told him, “If I hadn’t shot him, I would have looked like an ass in front of everybody.”
District Judge Jules Edwards was the presiding judge and handed down the only sentence allowed by law upon conviction of second-degree murder.
According to Department of Corrections records, since his conviction, Lanclow has earned his GED, completed an anger management program and 12 steps of AA certification from Louisiana Technical College and became certified as an automotive technology/electrical technician, as well as a number of other automotive repair certifications.
While clemency and pardon are not interchangeable, a pardon is a form of clemency.
Clemency is a general term for reducing the penalties for a particular crime without actually clearing your criminal record. A clemency can come in the form of a pardon, which is forgiveness of a sentence, a commutation, which is reduction of a sentence, or a reprieve, which is a temporary putting off of punishment while the situation is analyzed further.
Therefore a pardon is always clemency, but when someone receives clemency, it does not necessarily mean a pardon.
Anyone with comments concerning Lanclow’s application for clemency should contact the state Board of pardons at 225-342-5421.
