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Dalton Prejean (December 10, 1959 – May 18, 1990) was an American murderer. He was tried, convicted, and executed by the electric chair in Louisiana for the murder of Louisiana State Police Trooper Donald Cleveland. Because the defendant was a black man convicted by an all-white jury, he had brain damage and tested just above mental retardation, and he was age 17 at the time of the crime, the case received international attention. ==Background== Prejean was the second of four children. When he was two weeks old his parents sent him from their home in Lafayette to live with his aunt and uncle in Houston, Texas. Dalton was unaware of his true parentage until the age of eleven. When Dalton's father left his mother and moved to Houston, the aunt decided that Dalton had to be told that he was not her child. Around this time, he began creating problems of an unknown nature, and was sent to live with his mother in Lafayette. Dalton began skipping his school classes following his return to Lafayette. In March 1972, he was committed to the Louisiana Training Institute for truancy at the insistence of his mother. Released only seven months later, he soon came into conflict with the authorities on charges of burglary, theft, and "false firearms". In March 1974, he was committed to the Lafayette Juvenile Youth Authority, a residential program for delinquents. He ran away from that facility after a month; upon his return his commitment was terminated and he was released on probation to his mother. In June 1974, Dalton was arrested for the killing of John Doucet, a taxi driver. Dalton admitted the killing and was committed once again to the Louisiana Training Institute. In a later statement about the incident Dalton stated that he and two friends called a cab with the intention of robbing the driver. One of his companions was carrying a gun. The three directed the driver to a quiet part of town and persuaded him to stop while they searched for an address. Dalton insisted on taking the gun from his companion because the other youth appeared to be nervous. Dalton approached the driver, and believing that the driver was reaching for a gun of his own, fired twice and began running. While fleeing he told a passerby to call an ambulance because someone had been shot. Dalton later turned himself in to the police and admitted that he had killed the driver. A psychiatric evaluation of Dalton was performed in 1974. He was found to be intellectually limited and to have very poor judgment. Dalton was diagnosed as having borderline mental retardation, and it was questionable if he knew the difference between right and wrong. The psychiatrist considered the boy to be “a definite danger to himself and others, and his dream content suggests that it is a matter of accident that the cab driver was killed rather than the boy being killed. He is equally likely to get himself killed in the near future.” The psychiatrist therefore recommended a lengthy confinement, followed by transfer to permanent facilities. The juvenile courts had jurisdiction over the defendant until he was twenty-one. The doctor’s recommendation would have served to keep the defendant confined until December 1980. In 1976, however, another doctor conducted a psychiatric evaluation of the defendant and recommended that he be discharged. He concluded that the defendant's values had changed, but cautioned that "suitable conditions (should be) imposed to be sure he had adequate supervision and is going to live in a fairly stable environment". That doctor also suggested that fairly rigid probation requirements be imposed. On December 10, 1976, Prejean was released to the custody of his aunt in Houston, apparently without any probation requirements. Within seven months, Dalton was once more under arrest for murder. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dalton Prejean」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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