Louisiana Voice

A judge shall not initiate, permit, or consider ex parte communications, or consider other communications made to the judge outside the presence of the parties or their lawyers, concerning a pending* or impending matter.

–Rule 2.9: Ex Parte Communications, Code of Judicial Conduct

The Louisiana Supreme Court heard ARGUMENTS yesterday in the case of convicted killer Reginald Reddick but far more than Reddick’s case is at stake in the court’s eventual decision.

Call me jaded, but I would be surprised, yea stunned, if there were not some ex parte communications between state district attorneys and certain justices on the Supreme Court.

The reason I feel this way is obvious: Depending on the court’s ruling, as many as 1500 prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, 80 percent of whom are black and who, like Redick, were convicted by split jury verdicts, could be eligible for re-trial.

Imagine the logistics involved in state district courts in 64 parishes having to suddenly schedule new trials for 1500 defendants – an average of 23 per parish – in a system already hopelessly backlogged with pending cases.

Reddick’s case centers around whether or not a 2020 US Supreme Court ruling striking down split verdicts should be retroactive.

Louisiana and Oregon were the last states in which a person could be convicted in a non-capital felony case by a vote of 10 of 12 jurors. Capital cases have always required a unanimous verdict but as late as 1973, Louisiana allowed 9-3 split verdicts. That was changed at the state constitution convention that year to 10-2.

The split verdicts were allowed as a means of maintaining “the supremacy of the white race” by basically negating the presence of blacks on juries and as an easier route to conviction of black defendants who the state would incarcerate and then lease out to private companies for cheap labor.

But in 2018, Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring unanimous verdicts in jury trials for cases initiated on Jan. 1, 2019, or later.

The US Supreme Court, ruling in the Jefferson Parish case of Ramos v. Louisiana two years ago, said that non-unanimous verdicts were unconstitutional. The court mandated new trials for defendants with split-jury verdicts who were in the appeal process but did not apply to those who had exhausted their appeals.

In another case, Edwards v. Vannoy, the US Supreme Court ruled against making those cases retroactive and now Reddick is hoping the Louisiana Supreme Court will do what the US court would not.

Fat chance.

Not to trivialize the importance of the potential Reddick ruling, it’s like purchasing a car on Friday only to learn that the dealer begins offering a huge rebate for the same vehicle on the following Monday. It’s not fair, but in reality, there’s not much the buyer can do.

There was a time when I made a purchase at Sears only to see the product go on sale the following week. That really happened to me back in the ‘70s and I promptly returned the item for a full refund and then turned around and purchased it at the sale price. It was a practice approved by Sears at the time.

I am not suggesting that Reddick is innocent. That was never my argument. It’s about the application of the law to all defendants on a fair and equal basis.

And in his case, you might expect that Attorney General Jeff Landry, that towering champion of human rights – NOT – would be vocal in his opposition to applying the law retroactively.

And you’d be correct.

Landry has already come out with guns blazing. Or at least one of his hired hands has. Assistant AG Shae McPhee sniffed, “At the time, Mr. Reddick…was given a trial and his due process that was due under the constitution at the time. To allow him to continually relitigate the same issue eats up the resources of the state.”

Ah. There you have it. It all comes down to a question of money. The state would dodge its responsibility in the name of avoiding inconvenience and expense.

It’s the same logic prosecutors apply in their fight to prohibit DNA testing for those who insist they were wrongly convicted of crimes. They were convicted before the general application of DNA evidence, so why should they get a new trial now? They may have been convicted because of the failure to provide exculpatory evidence, but that was the practice at the time (even though it was illegal), so why should they get a do-over?

Never mind the application of basic human rights. It’s just too damn inconvenient to prosecutors and the justice system to oblige them with a fair verdict. Scheduling these retrials will simply overload the system.

That’s the argument and if you think one or more prosecutors haven’t committed ex parte communications through back door channels to make that fact known to the justices, then I have some lovely timeshare beachfront property in Dry Prong to offer you at a good price.