A Donaldsonville man convicted more than six years ago in a slaying authorities claimed was a drug-related hit was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison after an appellate court threw out a post-conviction ruling that had granted him a new trial.
Michael "Ma-man" LeBlanc, 42, received the mandatory prison term Tuesday in Gonzales more than year and a half after he was erroneously released from a north Louisiana jail while waiting for his sentence and briefly went on the run.
In September 2017, LeBlanc was found guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting of 37-year-old Adoriji "Teenie Weenie" Wilson of Donaldsonville more than three years earlier.
A hooded man wearing a green slicker walked up to Wilson and shot him several times while he was among several people sitting on a porch at an Elizabeth Street home in Donaldsonville's "back of town" area.
Prosecutors said at the time that about 16 shots were fired by the man later identified as LeBlanc in the suspected hit.
LeBlanc was convicted in a bench trial before now-retired 23rd Judicial District Judge Alvin Turner Jr.
In a bench trial, the defendant agrees to waive a jury and allow the presiding judge to handle the jury's job of weighing evidence and testimony and ruling on guilt or innocence.
Often, cases of mandatory time for second-degree murder convictions take a few months for sentencing to occur.
Due to a series of delays stemming from LeBlanc's post-conviction motions, the death of his trial attorney, Morris W. Reed Jr., and broader slowdowns due to COVID, LeBlanc never received his sentence.
Reed died in December 2019.
Despite the years of waiting and two denials of his motions for new trial, LeBlanc still had a post-trial motion for acquittal at the time he was mistakenly released from jail in late 2022.
LeBlanc's release sparked finger-pointing.
State corrections officials argued the failure to sentence LeBlanc kept him from being placed indefinitely in state custody and left him to the whims of other jurisdictions as LeBlanc finished out prison time for state and local convictions.
Ascension Parish prosecutors countered they had placed a detainer on LeBlanc that should have prevented him from being released from Riverbend Detention Center in East Carroll Parish on Nov. 30, 2022, when he finished time for charges out of nearby Madison Parish.
After LeBlanc's capture in New Orleans on Dec. 28, 2022, and return to Ascension Parish, his new counsel pursued a long-awaited motion for a post-verdict acquittal before Interim Judge Melvin Zeno.
The retired Jefferson Parish jurist was serving in place of Judge Turner until elections that fall after Turner had retired in early 2023.
In late July, Zeno agreed with LeBlanc's defense attorneys that his now-deceased trial counsel was ineffective and LeBlanc should be granted a new trial.
At trial, the attorney had failed to object to hearsay statements from being used against LeBlanc, failed to effectively cross-examine a sheriff's deputy who testified, and failed to challenge the use of evidence that wasn't properly introduced, the judge ruled.
Zeno also found the lawyer failed to call witnesses who claimed to have an alibi for LeBlanc, who were firsthand witnesses of the slaying amid conflicting descriptions of the shooter, and who may have implicated another person.
Among those witnesses cited by Zeno was a former prison dormmate of LeBlanc's co-defendant, Marishell "Kool-Aid" Ealem.
At trial, Ealem testified against LeBlanc in exchange for a plea bargain. Zeno noted that LeBlanc's attorney failed to have the dormmate testify in an attempt to challenge Ealem's credibility.
A deputy testified at trial, secondhand, that the dormmate had said Ealem admitted to setting up the slaying, though he wasn't the shooter.
"The Court found and concluded that there was a reasonable probability that, but for the Defense Counsel's unprofessional errors, the outcome of the trial would have been different," Zeno wrote in court papers filed in September.
Prosecutors appealed, however.
In December, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Louisiana 1st Circuit Court of Appeal reinstated LeBlanc's conviction, finding the trial counsel's alleged deficiencies weren't enough to change the trial outcome.
One of the three appellate jurists on the panel was a former Ascension Parish judge and contemporary of Judge Turner, Guy Holdridge, who has since retired.
On March 12, the state Supreme Court declined to take up the case.
Judge Alvin Turner's daughter-in-law, Judge Keyojuan Gant Turner, won the election last fall to fill out the remainder of his term.
On Tuesday, it was up to Zeno, standing in Gant Turner's place, to carry out the appellate court's ruling and sentence LeBlanc to life.
LeBlanc's attorneys had stepped down from the case after his initial round of appeals failed, so Zeno appointed public defender Blaine Hebert to stand for LeBlanc temporarily.
Hebert did as Zeno handed down the mandatory sentence and informed LeBlanc of his opportunity for future appeals.
David J. Mitchell can be reached at dmitchell@theadvocate.com.
