On Tuesday afternoon, a Senate judiciary committee passed three bills focused on drastically overhauling New Orleans courts, cutting 10 judgeships across Orleans Parish judiciary and one clerk of court, incoming clerk Calvin Duncan, who was decisively elected to oversee records at Criminal District Court in December and slated to take office in May.
A similar courts-consolidation proposal advanced out of a House committee last week, sponsored by Rep. Dixon McMakin of Baton Rouge.
The bills now head to the full Senate, then the full House, in votes expected in the coming weeks.
Critics of the bills say that the author, Sen. Jay Morris, on behalf of Gov. Jeff Landry, wrote legislation based on a skewed notion of Orleans Parish caseload counts, which are different and more complex than than other courts in the state. The result understates the workload of Orleans courts, they say.
The proposals would cut four of 13 from Orleans criminal court, two of 14 from Orleans civil court, two of seven from municipal court, and two of four in juvenile court.
Orleans judges oversee more trials than any other parish, by far. “We tried 137 jury trials last year. We’re double Jefferson, double St. Tammany.”
Juana Lombard, Chief Judge of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court
Another bill would cut four of 12 judges from the 4th Circuit appellate court, which covers New Orleans.
Orleans is structured differently from other parishes in the state, with separate criminal, civil, and juvenile courthouses, benches of judges, and clerk’s offices. Most parishes operate under single consolidated “judicial district” systems, said Morris, who hails from Monroe, in northern Louisiana.
“Two separate administrations means you’re paying for two of everything,” Morris said.
Politically motivations or attempt to fix broken system?
From the governor’s office, Landry said that the changes were long overdue. “The system is broken, and ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for you to right-size it,” he said in his State of the State address last month.
Mayor Helena Moreno, who represented New Orleans at the legislature before her service in City Hall, told the Advocate that she saw it differently. “As a former legislator, there are some bills that come about because they are really about efficiencies, and some that come about because they are political. And I believe that this one is really more about being political.”
Councilman Freddie King, who chairs the City Council’s criminal justice committee also described it as “clearly politically motivated” and done without consultation with New Orleans officials. Those proposing the changes should visit the courts “and take a look at the lives that would be affected,” he said.
Typically, within a consolidated judicial district, the more plentiful civil-court fees help to foot the bill for so-called “poor courts” — the criminal and juvenile branches.
Similar Orleans consolidation proposals have floated through the legislature for decades, most recently in 2006, when the legislature heeded a plan by then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco to consolidate criminal, civil, and juvenile courts in Orleans along with other offices.
The concept was ultimately found to be inefficient and too costly and was shelved, though it resulted in the consolidation of the separate civil and criminal sheriff’s offices into one Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office.
There was no similar in-depth study this time.
In fact, the bills’ authors didn’t even bother to discuss the complexities of a merger with Orleans judges before filing, said Sen. Gary Carter, a Democrat from Algiers who sits on the Senate judiciary committee and was one of the three votes in opposition to the legislation, in a party-line vote.
If legislators had asked, they would have found that Orleans judges oversee more trials by far, Orleans Criminal District Court Chief Judge Juana Lombard testified. “We tried 137 jury trials last year,” she said. “We’re double Jefferson, double St. Tammany,” she said.
Duncan is lightning rod for current effort
Critics say that the legislation’s most blatantly political aim is to unseat Duncan, who served 28 years on a wrongful murder conviction before he was released and eventually exonerated, in 2021.
During his campaign, state Attorney General Liz Murrill was publicly critical of his use of the word “exonerated” to describe himself, since he had initially pleaded guilty to earn his release, later returning to file paperwork that led to a judicial exoneration.
Morris told Duncan during a pre-hearing phone call and during Thursday’s hearing that the bill’s aims were not personal, but instead were “what the governor wants,” intended to “right-size” a bloated courts system that is unlike any other in Louisiana.
But the particulars of the Orleans-specific consolidation are not even spelled out within the bills, said Duncan’s campaign manager, Emily Ratner. “It’s absolutely not about efficiency because the bill does not provide a timeline on which the clerks of civil and criminal court could transition their offices into a consolidated office,” she said.
Chelsey Richard Napoleon, the civil clerk of court, also raised concerns about how quickly such changes could be implemented. “This is something that can’t be done overnight,” Napoleon said.
Even Duncan’s one-time opponent, Darren Lombard, urged legislators to vote down the legislation. “As clerk of Criminal District Court for Orleans Parish, I respect the will of the voters above all. Just months ago, the people chose my successor, Mr. Duncan. SB256 by Sen. Jay Morris attempts to undo that decision,” Lombard wrote in a column published by The New Orleans Agenda on Wednesday morning. “I urge the Legislature to reject this bill and stand with the voters of Orleans Parish,” Lombard opined. “Democracy must be honored. For the very same reason, I also oppose SB 197 and SB 217.”
Some critics say that Morris and his allies deliberately sidestepped timelines and overlooked important structural differences between Orleans and other parish courts — because the lawmakers’ goals are primarily political.
The bills are a “racist grab on New Orleans courts,” according to the Louisiana ACLU. The ACLU’s executive director, Alanah Odoms, was most critical of the elimination of Duncan’s position and what it symbolized to the state.
“Mr. Duncan spent four decades fighting a system that failed him,” Odoms said. “In fact, it failed all of us as Louisianans.”
In his testimony on Tuesday, Duncan described the existing clerk’s office as a place that needed a lot of elbow grease and a careful examination of existing files to avoid the sort of costly mistakes that led to his wrongful conviction and so many others. “They had the wrong person because we lost the evidence in the clerk’s office,” he said.
Most importantly, the legislative proposal disregards the will of 68% of Orleans voters who chose him for a four-year term in this position, Duncan said. “The people voted, and now you’re saying that their vote don’t count,” Duncan said. “They’ve been disenfranchised.”
Lombard’s opposition to the bills was added to this story.
See Bill SB217 in its current form: https://legis.la.gov/legis/BillInfo.aspx?i=250281&utm
