Court Opinion

ID: 9685909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:08:12.97303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:11.251590
License: Public Domain

McCALEB, Chief Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I subscribe to the main holding herein which annuls and vacates the action of the district judge in sentencing Bullock at this time to life imprisonment. For, although originally the judge, in compliance with the Witherspoon case (391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776) should have imposed a life sentence on Bullock, under State v. Turner, 253 La. 763, 220 So.2d 67, and the cases following that decision, as the application was for habeas corpus, the fact that he erroneously granted a new trial and set aside the verdict of guilty precludes the judge, as pointed out in the majority opinion, from thereafter imposing a sentence when there was no verdict of guilty on which such sentence could rest.
' On the other hand, I strongly demur from the action of the Court in giving an advisory opinion to the judge in which it anticipates error will be committed on the remand and declares that Article 817 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as amended by Act 502 of 1972, cannot be constitutionally applied to the defendant Bullock as in his case, it is an ex post facto law. I make no comment whatever as to the decision of this Court on the applicability of the 1972 amendment because the matter is not before us at this time. It will be proper only to consider the effect of that statute if or when such a question is presented to us on appeal from an adverse ruling of the district court.
It is well settled by this Court that it is impermissible for it to give an advisory opinion to a district court as to how the judge should dispose of a particular question of law should it come before him and, particularly, in matters concerning the constitutionality of statutes. State ex rel. Day et al. v. Rapides Parish School Board, 158 La. 251, 103 So. 757; Graham et al., v. *956Jones et al., 198 La. 507, 3 So.2d 761; State v. Fant, 216 La. 58, 43 So.2d 217; Belsome v. Southern Stevedoring, Inc., 239 La. 413, 118 So.2d 458; Aucoin v. Dunn, 255 La. 823, 233 So.2d 530; Tafaro’s Investment Co. v. Division of Housing Improvement, 261 La. 183, 259 So.2d 57.
In disregarding this firmly established rule of law, the majority has usurped the constitutional right of the district court to pass on questions coming before it at the trial level and has actually assumed original jurisdiction in a criminal case contrary to Section 10 of Article VII of our Constitution.