An Orleans Parish jury rejected murder charges Friday against a man being retried in the grisly 2014 drowning death of a Reserve couple in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, instead convicting Horatio Johnson on two counts of manslaughter.

An Orleans Parish jury deliberated for more than eight hours Thursday and Friday before settling on manslaughter for Johnson, 49, in the killings of Kenneth and Lakeitha Joseph. The couple was tossed off the Interstate 510 “Green Bridge” and weighed down by 30-pound kettlebells.

Orleans Parish Criminal District Judge Benedict Willard set Johnson's sentencing for Tuesday. He faces a maximum 40-year prison term.

Johnson won a retrial along with scores of other Louisiana prisoners and hundreds in Oregon when the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 outlawed non-unani

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