By JIM BUTLER

“All personnel go to secure channel.”

That police scanner directive on May 28, 1996 told newspaper and television newsrooms emptying for lunch that a story had begun.

All these years later, it continues.

A divided Louisiana Supreme Court last week reversed and vacated the capital murder conviction of Darnell Robinson, sending the case back to Ninth Judicial District Court for a new trial.

Robinson, now 54, was convicted in 2001 of the murder of four Poland residents – Billy Lambert, Lambert’s sister Carol Hooper, her daughter Maureen Kelly and Kelly’s infant son Nicholas, shot to death in Lambert’s house on Guy Peart Road on that May day.

Robinson and Lambert had met at a VA alcoholism treatment center. Lambert offered Robinson a job on his farm as well as lodging.

Since conviction and losing a direct post-trial appeal, Robinson has been on Death Row at Angola.

Louisiana has not executed anyone in 12 years.

The Robinson order ironically comes at the same time as Gov. Jeff Landry revealing his administration’s intent to study and propose a new way to enforce capital punishment.

The maze of motions, dozens of depositions, and courtroom clashes have generated thousands of pages in the case file, the bulk since the appeal process began.

From that record, the court reached the conclusion that Robinson’s defense team at trial, and by inference the jurors, did not have all potential evidence that the prosecution had access to.

That included that the key witness, who testified to an alleged jailhouse confession by Robinson, may have received a quid pro quo deal, and that a previously undisclosed witness may have seen Robinson elsewhere at the time of the murders.

Also withheld or overlooked, according to the high court, were crime lab findings and additional witness statements that “could have affected jury judgment and put the case in a different light.”

So, the case comes back to the parish. Some of the principals have retired, others have different jobs, some have died. Robinson, then a young laborer is now a middle-aged inmate.

Case record remains, to fill any gaps in witness memory, as does information jurors never heard.