Inside a Baton Rouge courtroom on Friday, the first domino fell in an emerging showdown over the national ban on capital punishment for juvenile offenders.

Citing a lack of authority to usurp federal law, 19th Judicial District Chief Judge Donald Johnson quashed a motion from the Louisiana Attorney General to reinstate the death sentence of a man who was a week shy of his 18th birthday when he killed an LSU student execution style more than 30 years ago.

Dale Dwayne Craig, now 51, was one of four teens convicted of kidnapping and torturing Kipp Earl Gullett, an 18-year-old freshman at LSU, during a fatal September 1992 carjacking.

After the group of teens drove Gullett to a secluded construction site, it was Craig who fired several bullets into his head and body as he lay in a fetal po

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