At age 23, Joanisha "Duckie" Keelen's battered body
was found in the living room of a burning Central City
apartment.
Stabbed dozens of times and beaten before the fire,
she was dead when firefighters pulled her from the
home. Police believed her death was the result of a
domestic dispute. Their hunch was bolstered after
Keelen's husband showed up at the police station to be
questioned following his wife's death.
But a jury this week in Orleans Parish Criminal
District Court unanimously found Gerard Jerome
McDougle, 45, innocent in the death of his wife.
After 1 ½ hours of jury deliberation Wednesday night,
McDougle was freed from charges of murder and arson in
the 2001 killing of his wife. Soon after, he was
released from Orleans Parish Prison, where he had
remained since his arrest shortly after the slaying.
With no physical evidence, such as DNA or blood,
linking him to the crime, jurors had nothing concrete
to find McDougle guilty of second-degree murder, his
attorney said.
Although the trial was an emotional one -- in addition
to the ghastly details of Keelen's death, her
relatives testified that McDougle had threatened to
kill her -- jurors found the state's case didn't hold
up under scrutiny. One state witness who had
previously identified McDougle as the man who dragged
Keelen to her apartment that final day told the jury
it wasn't McDougle after all.
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office
would not comment on the case, spokeswoman Melanie
Roussell said.
Prosecutors, who had a circumstantial case from the
start, originally went after McDougle on a charge of
first-degree murder but reduced it before the trial.
Other charges, including kidnapping, also were
scrapped as the case proceeded through Judge Dennis
Waldron's courtroom.
McDougle testified that he saw his wife the day she
was killed, but left her fighting with someone named
Tyrone.
No one else has been charged in the attack on Keelen
in her corner apartment at 1933
Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. the morning of July 7,
2001.
Keelen, who battled heroin addiction and worked as a
prostitute, met a disturbing end: Someone had crushed
her skull and stabbed her with numerous objects before
firefighters arrived before 9:30 a.m. that Saturday to
find her on fire.
The lifelong New Orleans resident left five children.
Three were with McDougle, including a son named after
his father.
At the time of Keelen's death, McDougle was living in
a federal halfway house, finishing a five-month
sentence for being a felon in possession of a handgun.
A prior conviction for simple burglary forbade him
from having guns.
It looked bad for McDougle in the beginning of the
case: He was known for being "possessive" of Keelen,
according to her family and friends. Neighbors often
heard them fighting. Prosecutors said McDougle
murdered Keelen in a final violent denouement to their
tumultuous six-year relationship.
In 1996, her brother told the jury last week, McDougle
announced the only way Keelen could leave him was in a
body bag. A sister testified that McDougle had told
her that people would have to kill him if "his woman"
tried to leave.
Prosecutors argued at trial that on the day she died,
MacDougle saw Keelen talking with another man in a car
outside her apartment. McDougle dragged her upstairs,
they said, where he beat her and stabbed her with a
screwdriver and a knife before setting the place on
fire to cover his tracks.
But McDougle's attorney, Jeffrey Smith, convinced
jurors that prosecutors didn't have anything but prior
allegations of domestic abuse to link him to the
killing.
In fact, it was the defense team that paid to bring in
DNA experts, Smith said. They testified that Keelen's
body at the time of her death contained semen strains
that didn't match McDougle.
