Justia Louisiana Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

The State appealed the grant of post-conviction relief for Defendant Anthony Thomas. The trial court granted the application based on an allegation that defendant's trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance. Upon review of the case, the Supreme Court concluded defendant did not satisfy the "Strickland" standard and that it was in error to grant defendant post-conviction relief. View "Louisiana v. Thomas" on Justia Law

Respondent Manuel Ortiz was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1995 for the killing of his wife. The State urged jurors to find that Respondent was involved in a murder-for-hire scheme motivated by his desire to collect on an insurance policy taken out on the wife. Post-conviction relief proceedings stretched out over years. One of the allegations Respondent raised on appeal involved prosecutorial misconduct by a former assistant district attorney. The litigation took place against the background of the assistant DA's subsequent but unrelated legal difficulties which resulted his disbarment and imprisonment on federal charges. The district court ultimately denied respondent the post-conviction relief he sought, effectively rejecting specific claims that the assistant DA had suppressed certain exculpatory evidence and suborned perjury, but vacated Respondent's death sentence. Both Respondent and the State appealed the district court's decision. With no evidence that any prosecutorial decision made before or during the guilt or sentencing stages of trial stemmed in whole or part from any pecuniary interest in the insurance proceeds relating to the victim's death (including the decision to charge Respondent with his wife's murder), the Supreme Court concluded that the district court erred in vacating Respondent's death sentence. Accordingly, the Court reversed the appellate court's decision and reinstated respondent's death sentence. View "Louisiana v. Ortiz" on Justia Law

The Louisiana Supreme Court accepted a certified question presented by the Louisiana Court of Appeal, Third Circuit. The question presented sought "binding instructions from the Louisiana Supreme Court regarding the correct usage of a defendant's name (and other close relatives) in cases in which the victim is a minor related to the defendant." The Supreme Court concluded that the controlling statutory authority mandated confidentiality of the victim's identity in certain cases, but does not extend this protection to any other persons. View "Louisiana v. R. W. B." on Justia Law

In "Louisiana v. Duheart," the Supreme Court reversed part of the district court's judgment that La.R.S. 32:101(A)(1) was unconstitutionally vague, and remanded the case for reconsideration of defendant's motion to suppress. Defendant filed a second motion to suppress, again arguing La.R.S. 32:101(A)(1) was unconstitutionally vague. The district court again granted the motion and held the statute unconstitutionally vague as applied in defendant's case. Upon re-review, the Supreme Court again held the district court erred in its analysis: the evidence defendant wanted suppressed had no bearing on the outcome of the motion and thus was not a justiciable controversy for review. Accordingly, the Supreme Court reversed the district court to the extent that it suppressed evidence based on La.R.S. 32:101(A)(1). View "Louisiana v. Duheart" on Justia Law

The state charged defendant by bill of information with failing to maintain his registration as a convicted sex offender by failing to appear for his quarterly registration with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. Defendant filed a motion to quash the bill of information on grounds that he had fully satisfied any registration duty he may have had before establishing residence in Louisiana and that he was therefore under no legal obligation to register as a sex offender in the state. Defendant argued, and the trial court agreed, that he had satisfied his duty to register in Louisiana by operation of law under the existing 10-year period by December 2005, and that he therefore had no duty to register when he came to Louisiana in March 2009. The trial court rejected the state’s argument that the registration period, whether measured by 10 years or 25 years, had not lapsed because it had not begun until defendant moved to this state in 2009. The court of appeal agreed with defendant in a split panel decision that his "duty to register expired by operation of law in December 2005, 10 years after his release from custody and a little over two years prior to the effective date of the [2007] amendment." The Supreme Court after its review disagreed with the trial and appellate courts and reversed: "defendant was not 'a person required to register' in Louisiana until he established residence . . .under former law, as under current law, defendant’s duty to register and maintain his registration for a period of 10 years did not terminate in 2005 because, as the state argue[d], it did not begin until 2009, when he established residency in this state, and he had not extinguished his obligation under the former law, much less under the current expanded registration periods, before his arrest in 2010." View "Louisiana v. Clark" on Justia Law

The Louisiana Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether the United States Supreme Court's decision in "Graham v. Florida" (130 S.Ct. 2011 (2010)), applied in a case in which the juvenile offender committed multiple offenses resulting in cumulative sentences matching or exceeding his life expectancy without the opportunity of securing early release from confinement. Having reviewed the record and the applicable law, the Louisiana Court found Graham's holding that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment forbids the imposition of life in prison without parole for juveniles committing non-homicide crimes, applied only to sentences of life in prison without parole, and did not apply to a sentence of years without the possibility of parole. Therefore, the Court reversed the decision of the trial court which amended defendant's four 10-year sentences for four armed robberies. View "Louisiana v. Brown" on Justia Law

Defendant Timothy Bazile was indicted by a grand jury for the second degree murder of his wife, Kendra. The indictment was returned on October 13, 2010, and defendant arraigned on October 15. The district court set a trial date of October 3, 2011; notice of the trial date was given to the defendant and his counsel in open court. Defendant waived his right to a jury trial after a colloquy with the district judge. The state objected to the defendant's action, arguing the waiver of the defendant's right to a jury was made in violation of the amendment to La. Const. art. I, sec. 17(A). On the first day of trial, defense asked for a continuance on the ground the state failed to fully comply with discovery requests. The prosecutor objected to the request for continuance. Overruling the prosecutor's objection, the district court set a new trial date of October 11, 2011. Giving effect to the defendant's earlier jury trial waiver, the new trial was set to proceed before the district judge. The prosecutor again objected, arguing the defense failed to waive trial by jury within the required time limitations under the state constitution. In an attempt to overcome the state's objection, defense counsel offered to re-set trial beyond forty-five days from the earlier waiver. The prosecutor objected to this offer, arguing a continuance does not extend the forty-five day period provided by the state constitution. The prosecutor contended whenever the trial was held, the mode of trial would be a trial before a jury since the forty-five day period contemplated by the state constitution had already run before the original October 3, 2011 trial date. The district judge held a defendant had a right to waive a jury trial at any time before trial under the federal constitution; thus, the state constitutional provision which imposed limits on that right was unconstitutional. The state appealed, and was denied without comment by a vote of 2-1. The state then applied to the Supreme Court for review. After its review of the record, the Supreme Court concluded the constitutionality of La. Const. art. I, sec. 17(A) was not raised by the parties in the district court, rather, raised sua sponte by the district judge. When the matter was once more before the district court, the defendant filed a "Motion to Declare Constitutional Amendment Unconstitutional," claiming La. Const. art. I, sec. 17(A), as amended in 2010, violated the federal constitution. The Supreme Court found the district court's ruling to be erroneous, and accordingly reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Louisiana v. Bazile" on Justia Law

The issue before the Supreme Court centered on the appropriate remedy for a defendant when he is prohibited, in violation of La. C.Cr.P. art. 799.1, from using a peremptory challenge to back strike a provisionally selected juror. Agreeing with the court of appeal’s determination that the error is one which is subject to harmless error analysis, the Court nevertheless find the court of appeal misapplied the harmless error standard of review in this case. Because, after review, the Court could not conclude with certainty that the guilty verdicts rendered in this case were surely unattributable to the district court’s error in prohibiting the defendant from using a back strike to peremptorily challenge a provisionally selected juror, the Court reversed the decision of the appellate court, vacated defendant’s convictions and sentences, and remanded this matter to the district court for a new trial. View "Louisiana v. Lewis" on Justia Law

In 2008, defendant Jeremy Patterson and co-defendant Tyrone Reynolds were charged by grand jury indictment with one count of second degree murder. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in this case to consider whether, following a district court ruling prohibiting the defendant from exercising a peremptory challenge to back strike a provisionally selected juror in violation of La. C.Cr.P. art. 799.1, the court of appeal appropriately applied a harmless error analysis to conclude that the error in denying the back strike was not harmless. Finding the court of appeal correctly applied a harmless error analysis to the facts of this case, the Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court's decision. View "Louisiana v. Patterson" on Justia Law

In 2010, Defendant Mazen Hamdan was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The bill of information stated that defendant was previously convicted in Orleans Parish of possession of heroin and possession of methadone, which were used in the trial for the underlying weapon offense. A jury found defendant guilty as charged, and he was sentenced to serve 10 years of imprisonment at hard labor. On the day of the sentencing hearing, the state filed a habitual offender bill of information alleging that defendant’s sentence should be enhanced due to his prior guilty plea in federal court to interstate transportation of stolen property. Defendant filed a motion to quash the habitual offender bill in which he contended that the predicate offense alleged by the state had no felony equivalent in Louisiana. Defendant also alleged that the charging instrument in the federal prosecution did not indicate whether he actually possessed the stolen property or simply arranged for its transportation. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in this case to consider the criteria by which the courts of this state are to evaluate a criminal defendant’s previous conviction in a foreign jurisdiction during a habitual offender adjudication: "[w]hether a predicate offense does not necessarily include conduct criminal under Louisiana law, the conviction cannot lead to an enhanced penalty. In determining whether the predicate offense satisfies this criteria, courts are not confined to an examination of the applicable laws and the charging instrument of the foreign jurisdiction. Rather, when . . . there is information from the foreign proceeding available in the record that clearly establishes that the crime for which the defendant was convicted in a foreign jurisdiction would be a felony if committed in this state, courts are required to consider all of the available information in the record in deciding whether the foreign crime which, if committed in this state would be a felony.” The Court held that the trial court legally erred in quashing the state’s habitual offender bill. Therefore, the Court reversed the decision of the appellate court, vacated the trial court’s judgment granting defendant’s motion to quash, and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Louisiana v. Hadman" on Justia Law