Opinion ID: 1774411
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Constitutional Underpinning of LSA-R.S. 14:143

Text: Before we continue, however, we consider it advisable to first discuss whether the statute rests upon firm constitutional grounds, particularly since issue of whether the statute impermissibly robs local governments of powers delegated to them by the Louisiana Constitution of 1974 was raised below by the city prosecutor in response to the defendant's preemption argument. As the foregoing discussion reveals, the statute aims to deprive local governments of a degree of their lawmaking authority. Such a result invites our scrutiny, particularly when Home Rule Charter governments like the City-Parish government of Baton Rouge are affected. Home rule entities must be regarded as more than creatures of the legislature, since their powers and functions are granted directly by the constitution and their discretion is constitutionally preserved against undue interference. Francis v. Morial, 455 So.2d 1168, 1173 (La.1984) (citation omitted). We have no difficulty in deciding that LSA-R.S. 14:143 is constitutional insofar as it is directed at those local governments that function under a Home Rule Charter adopted after the effective date of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974. Article VI, § 5(E) of our constitution provides that such a home rule charter government may only exercise any power ... not denied by general law. The same limitation applies to governmental subdivisions not under the authority of a Home Rule Charter. La. Const. Art. VI, § 7(A). LSA-R.S. 14:143, as a law of statewide concern enacted by the legislature which is uniformly applicable ... to all political subdivisions, is just such a general law, and therefore may constitutionally circumscribe the authority of such local governments. La. Const. Art. VI, § 44(5). Compare Lafourche Parish Council v. Autin, 94-CA-0985, 648 So.2d 343 (La.1994). However, in this particular case we are dealing with a Home Rule Charter Government that pre-existed the 1974 Constitution. See Note 2, supra. For such an entity different rules apply, as we recently stated in City of New Orleans v. Board of Com'rs, No. 93-C-0690, 640 So.2d 237 (La.1994). In City of New Orleans, we concluded that Article VI, § 4 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974 provided not only that those Home Rule Charter governments existing prior to our 1974 constitution retained the power they had exercised under the 1921 constitution, but also that they retained this power absent the limitation that legislative supremacy had previously presented. We thus made it clear that when confronting such home rule entities the legislature no longer possesses, as it did under the 1921 Constitution, the unqualified power to withdraw, preempt, or overrule a local law that is consistent with the constitution and was enacted pursuant to a constitutionally maintained preexisting home rule charter. City of New Orleans, supra, 640 So.2d at 251. Contrast City of New Orleans v. Board of Supervisors, 43 So.2d 237, 242 (La.1949). However, we also recognized that Article VI, § 9(B), which provides that the police power of the state shall never be abridged, demands that the ascendancy of pre-1974 Home Rule Charter governments not be absolute. See also Hildebrand v. City of New Orleans, 549 So.2d 1218, 1225 (La. 1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1028, 110 S.Ct. 1476, 108 L.Ed.2d 613 (1989) ([Art. VI, § 9] does not purport to strip the subdivision entirely of its police power, but simply sets forth specific limitations in certain areas). We then articulated the test by which the balance between these two competing constitutional interests should be resolved: a litigant claiming that a home rule municipality's local law abridges the police power of the state must show that the local law conflicts with an act of the state legislature that is necessary to protect the vital interest of the state as a whole. City of New Orleans, supra, 640 So.2d at 252 ( citations omitted ). [9] We apply that test to the constitutional validity of LSA-R.S. 14:143, examining the statute to see if it is necessary to protect the vital interest of the state as a whole. The statute, as has already been discussed, is designed to prevent municipal interference in State felony prosecutions. The responsibility to protect citizens from criminal depredation is one of the most fundamental aspects of the State's police power. [10] One way in which the State, through its legislature, acts upon that responsibility is by assessing the harm that certain conduct causes, proscribing that conduct, and imposing punishment for engaging in that conduct. The most severe of these crimes are those for which an offender may be sentenced to death or imprisonment at hard labor, i.e. felonies. LSA-R.S. 14:2(4). In this case the State's interest is one of constitutional import, since the Louisiana Constitution of 1974 expressly accords to the legislature, and not to local governments, the exclusive right to define felonies and to the district attorneys the exclusive right to prosecute them. See La. Const. Art. VI, § 9(A)(1); Art. V, § 26(B). More particularly, the Louisiana Constitution expressly provides that [n]o local governmental subdivision shall ... define and provide for the punishment of a felony. La. Const. Art. VI, § 9(A)(1). When a municipality defines as a misdemeanor an offense that the legislature has designated a felony, and places a defendant in jeopardy for committing that offense so that the State cannot later retry the defendant, the municipality effectively prevents the State from inflicting upon the defendant the punishment the Legislature has decided is appropriate for the severity of that defendant's conduct. [11] While such a substitution of judgment may be quite proper in matters of local concern, criminal justice is a field which is perhaps uniquely a matter of statewide, and not local, concern. Accord, Township of Chester v. Panicucci, 62 N.J. 94, 299 A.2d 385, 390 (1973); People v. Stone, 190 Cal.App.3d Supp. 1, 236 Cal.Rptr. 140, 146 (1987). This is particularly true in Louisiana, where the legislature has traditionally enjoyed plenary power over the determination and definition of acts which are punishable as crimes. State v. Taylor, 479 So.2d 339, 341 (La.1985). See also La. Const. Art. III, § 1(A); State v. Rodriguez, 379 So.2d 1084, 1085 (La.1980). For these reasons, we can only conclude that when the legislature took the advice of two respected justices of this court and enacted LSA-R.S. 14:143, it did so in pursuit of a vital interest of the state as a whole. We also find that the statute is necessary to further that interest. In City of New Orleans, we stated that to demonstrate that the state statute is `necessary' it must be shown that the protection of such state interest cannot be achieved through alternate means significantly less detrimental to home rule powers and rights. City of New Orleans, supra, 640 So.2d at 252. In this case the state interest is imperilled because of the existence of a municipal ordinance which defines the same offense, as that term is understood in the double jeopardy context, as an existing state felony statute. There simply is no alternative to preempting such an ordinance if the vital state interest in ending local governmental interference in state felony prosecutions is to be advanced. Thus, we find that the statute is a constitutional exercise of the legislature's police power. We are obligated not to forget, however, the constitutional backdrop against which we proceed with our construction of the LSA-R.S. 14:143. Although on its face we find LSA-R.S. 14:143 to be a constitutional exercise of legislative authority, it remains so only if narrowly construed, since an expansive reading of the preemptive scope of the statute might impermissibly infringe upon the local affairs of a home rule government. Bayou Cane Fire Dept. v. Terrebonne Parish, 548 So.2d 915, 920 (La.1989). With this limitation in mind, we advance to the construction of LSA-R.S. 14:143.