Metairie Man Pleads Guilty to 2017 Quadruple Murder, Gets Four Life Terms

Armande Tart pleaded guilty this week to killing four people and attempting to kill a fifth at a Metairie apartment complex, ending a case that had dragged through Louisiana and federal courts for nearly a decade. The 30-year-old New Orleans man entered his plea one day after opening statements began in his retrial, just as prosecutors were preparing to call their fourth witness. Judge Donald Foret sentenced Tart to four consecutive life terms, plus additional time for attempted murder and obstruction of justice.

Tart admitted to two counts of first-degree murder for killing Rose Mary Charles and John Henry, and one count of second-degree murder for killing Harold Frisard, according to WWL-TV. He also pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and obstruction of justice. Charles was 61 and from Metairie, Henry was 56 and from Metairie, and Frisard was 55. A fourth victim, 50-year-old Kyle Turner of LaPlace, was also killed in the attack.

How the Violence Unfolded in 2017

The killings happened at a Metairie apartment complex in March 2017. According to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, Turner, Henry and Charles were each shot in the head inside one apartment, while Frisard was found stabbed multiple times in the head inside a separate unit in the same complex, per an account from WWL-TV at the time. Days after the murders, investigators arrested 52-year-old Terry Manual as an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder, alleging that Tart had called him for a ride from the scene after claiming he had just committed a robbery.

Tart was also sentenced to 50 years for attempting to murder a surviving woman and 20 years for obstruction of justice. Foret ordered the four life sentences to run consecutively, while structuring the 50-year attempted-murder sentence and the 20-year obstruction sentence to run concurrently with each other, the station's report notes. In court, Tart apologized for killing the victims and blamed his actions on illegal narcotics he was abusing at the time.

A Split Jury, Then a Retrial Nearly a Decade Later

Tart was first convicted in the case in December 2020 and sentenced to life in prison at that time. A Jefferson Parish jury had actually returned its verdict in August 2019, finding Tart guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder after deliberating for just over two hours, according to AP News. That original conviction did not survive, however, because Louisiana was still allowing non-unanimous jury verdicts at the time, and the U.S. Supreme Court soon changed that nationwide.

In April 2020, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Ramos v. Louisiana that the Sixth Amendment requires unanimous verdicts for serious criminal convictions in state courts, per the Justia Supreme Court Center. Louisiana and Oregon had been the only two states still allowing 10-2 jury convictions for felonies. Because Tart's case was still on direct appeal when the ruling came down, he was automatically entitled to have his conviction vacated and to receive a new trial, according to an analysis from Cozen O'Connor.

Why Not Every Case Got a Do-Over

Not every Louisiana inmate convicted by a split jury got the same chance. In October 2022, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in State v. Reddick that the constitutional ban on non-unanimous verdicts does not apply retroactively to convictions that had already been finalized on collateral review, according to AP News. That decision limited retrials primarily to cases like Tart's, where the appeal was still active, and it affected hundreds of Louisiana inmates whose appeals had already concluded by the time the rule changed.

Louisiana voters had actually moved to end split verdicts before the Supreme Court forced the issue nationally. In November 2018, 64% of Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment eliminating non-unanimous jury verdicts for felony offenses committed on or after January 1, 2019, per the Promise of Justice Initiative. Because Tart's crimes predated that cutoff, his original case still fell under the old rules until the Supreme Court's ruling caught up to it.

Under Louisiana law, both first-degree and second-degree murder convictions carry a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment at hard labor without the possibility of parole, leaving no judicial discretion once Tart entered his plea. With the case now resolved through a guilty plea rather than a second full trial, the four consecutive life sentences ensure Tart will serve back-to-back terms with no chance of release.