Judge Refuses to Invoke Attorney Immunity for District Attorney in Murder Case

BATON ROUGE – Documents say a federal civil rights lawsuit against Scott Perrilloux, district attorney for three parishes, will go forward after a judge issued a ruling against the D.A. Monday.

In the lawsuit, Perrilloux is accused of coercing an alleged witness to fabricate testimony in a 2002 capital murder case against Michael Wearry. The testimony helped put Wearry on death row for the murder of a 16-year-old pizza delivery boy.

Perrilloux and former Livingston Parish Chief of Detectives Marlon Kearney Foster allegedly used threats and intimidation to get the then 10-year-old Jeffery Ashton to falsely say he saw Wearry and other defendants near the murder scene.

WWL-TV spoke with Ashton, now 30, after he recanted his testimony. He now says he was nowhere near the crime scene and never saw Wearry.

“I seen none of that,” he said. “On the night that everything happened, I was not in Springfield, period. We was at the Strawberry Festival.”

Ashton said Perrilloux and Foster told him what to say.

Wearry was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. The high court threw out his conviction due to prosecutors withholding evidence from his defense team.

Wearry took a deal and plead guilty to manslaughter.