Rep. Dixon McMakin, R-Baton Rouge and Gov. Jeff Landry
Louisiana Republicans April 23 rammed through legislation to keep Calvin Duncan, a wrongfully convicted Black man and attorney, from taking office as New Orleans’ Clerk of Criminal Court, a move that will likely cause significant delays to pending criminal court cases and throw the city’s court system in chaos.
Duncan, who was elected last year, was ceremonially sworn in on April 21 and was scheduled to take office May 4.
Prior to the vote, members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus spoke out against the measure in passionate terms. “We are stepping into dangerous territory … you do not change the rules of the game once the game has been played,” said Rep. Candace Newell, a New Orleans Democrat.
“Today they’re coming for this right, tomorrow they’re coming for yours,” she added.
Their warnings didn’t work. On a vote of 63 to 28, the state House of Representatives approved Senate Bill 256, which will shutter an entire criminal court system and place it under the office of the Clerk of Civil Court in the next 6 business days. The bill’s author, West Monroe Republican Sen. Jay Morris, has acknowledged the bill was introduced at the behest of Gov. Jeff Landry, who has previously opposed Duncan’s election and reportedly sought to block him getting compensation for the time he wrongfully spent in prison.
Landry is expected to sign the legislation before Duncan formally takes office.
The House rejected an amendment by Marrero Democratic Rep. Kyle Green Jr. to postpone the consolidation by four years.
Rep. Dixon Wallace McMakin, a Baton Rouge Republican — who was only lacking the seersucker suit to be straight out of central casting for a white, Southern politician — shepherded the bill across the floor.
McMakin spent most of his opening statement engaged in levels of Newspeak that would make George Orwell blush. For instance, McMakin described the complete restructuring of the city’s courts as simply “changing the name of an office,” and an exercise in “continuity through modernization.”
He also repeatedly sought to cast the measure as part of a decades-long deliberation over the city’s court system that has been thoroughly vetted and carefully written — before quickly rattling off some 24 so-called “technical” amendments that were needed. Those included a change to the bill designed to end-run the need to hold a new election for the newly created Orleans Clerk of Court. No one in New Orleans has ever voted for an Orleans Clerk of Court.
Black lawmakers from New Orleans and Baton Rouge deftly dismantled McMakin’s various arguments.
Rep. Delisha Boyd, a New Orleans Democrat, for instance took issue with McMakin’s claim that immediately eliminating the office and combining them into one office in a week’s time was in line with previous changes to city offices, including consolidation of New Orleans’ tax assessors and sheriffs offices.
“How long did that process take?” Rep. Boyd pointedly asked about the tax assessors. “I do not know,” McMakin responded.
“Four years,” Boyd said, before raising concerns about how consolidating the offices would almost assuredly result in delays to cases and potentially violating citizens’ 6th Amendment right to a speedy trial.
Pressed by Baton Rouge Democratic Rep. Denise Marcelle on how he’d feel if the governor had decided to eliminate his district before he took office, McMakin improbably claimed he’d have been fine with it.
No word on whether he has a bridge for sale.
McMakin’s rhetorical gymnastics aside, the bill is clearly being rushed through over the objections of everyone in New Orleans to keep Duncan out of office — and at the behest of Landry. McMakin acknowledged that there is no precedent for eliminating an elected office before a duly elected person can take their position. Indeed, Landry earlier this month said he’d take the unusual step of signing the bill immediately to ensure Duncan doesn’t take office May 4.
Before the vote, McMakin apologized — not to Duncan, but to other Republicans for being called racist for voting to disenfranchise a Black elected official.
