Dennis Jerome Bartie

The state Supreme Court has denied an appeal by the state regarding a confession given by a Lake Charles man during his interrogation in a cold case murder. 

A decision in March by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal throwing out the confession of Dennis Jerome Bartie will stand. 

Bartie, 35, is accused of fatally stabbing Rose Born, 45, at Paradise Donuts, a business she owned on 18th Street, in 1998.

He was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder on June 1, 2016.

Todd S. Clemons, Bartie’s defense attorney, previously said Bartie’s confession “was clearly the strongest part of the state’s case, but we feel that it was a false confession.”

Clemons said interrogators continued interviewing Bartie, even though he “exercised his Fifth Amendment right on multiple occasions.” He said if someone is being interrogated and asks to terminate the interview, “you have to shut it down.”

During a 2017 hearing on whether the confession could be used at trial, Judge Mike Canaday ruled that the evidence could not be suppressed.

Carla Sigler, a former prosecutor with the Calcasieu Parish District Attorney’s Office said during that hearing that it was important for the court to consider “the totality of circumstances” in weighing factors regarding suppression.

“He was not some innocent school kid brought in off the street and told he would be put to death,” she said. “He was a hardened criminal and in prison at the time.”

After reviewing the videotapes of Bartie’s nearly eight-hour interrogation, Sigler said “the defendant keeps on talking even when he says he’s done talking.”

“He didn’t invoke his rights; he kept talking,” Sigler said. “If a defendant doesn’t want to keep talking, then he should stop talking.”

Bartie was previously convicted of attempted second-degree murder in Baton Rouge and is serving time in prison for that conviction. In that case, prosecutors said Bartie stabbed a woman 22 times.

Bartie’s trial in the Born murder is set for Aug. 20 in state district court.