The Appeal dug into Louisiana's practice of using the habitual offender statute to penalize people for prior convictions and obtain substantially longer sentences from defendants, frequently life sentences.
Under Louisiana’s habitual offender statute, a district attorney can file to have a person’s punishment enhanced based on their criminal history. In 2011, Bernard Noble was sentenced to 13 years in prison after he was arrested in New Orleans for possessing two marijuana joints because of prior drug convictions. Noble served seven years and was granted an early release. In 2016, Jacobia Grimes faced 20 years to life for allegedly stealing $31 worth of candy bars from Dollar General store in New Orleans after Orleans Parish DA Leon Cannizzaro charged him under the habitual offender statute. The case received national attention, and Grimes later entered a guilty plea in which he was sentenced to two years in prison.
Cognizant of such excessive sentences and Louisiana’s title as the most incarcerated state in the U.S. at the time, state lawmakers tackled habitual offender reform. In 2017, they lessened mandatory minimum punishments for felonies, narrowed the period of time that prior conduct could be used under the statute, and prohibited life sentences for nonviolent offenses. Under the old habitual offender law, for example, a conviction on a fourth offense of possession of two grams or less of cocaine triggered a 20 year to life sentence. Under reform of the statute, a fourth offense resulted in a maximum of 20 years in prison. The Louisiana Legislature enacted habitual offender reform as Act 282, which Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law on June 15, 2017.
Special Litigation Attorney Sarah O'Brien has fought this battle both on the ground and at the Capitol for her clients, and countless others. However, recent changes by the legislature is trying to do away with those reforms.
“The government can go back and grant people more rights retroactively, which is exactly what the legislature did for this group of people in 2017. But they can’t provide someone a right one year and then go back and strip them of that right the next year. People get to know what rules they’re playing by.”
