The Louisiana House Judiciary Committee April 16 passed a bill essentially eliminating New Orleans’ clerk of criminal court just weeks before Calvin Duncan, a Black man who was wrongfully imprisoned for decades before being elected to the position last year, is set to take office.
The committee quickly passed Senate Bill 256 by Sen. Jay Morris, a Monroe Republican, on an 8-5 vote in a push to get it before Gov. Jeff Landry so that it can take effect before Duncan starts his term as criminal clerk of court on May 4.
The bill would combine the city’s criminal and civil courts under one clerk of court position.
Lawmakers aren't supposed to shorten a politician’s term once they start office, so backers of the bill are trying to avoid having Duncan take office before the bill goes into effect, thus letting him serve out a 4-year term.
But Rep. Kyle Green, a Marrero Democrat, said he wondered if the governor signing the bill before May 4 would count as lawmakers cutting current Clerk of Criminal Court Darren Lombard’s term short.
“We’ll just have to see what happens in the courts, I guess,” Morris said.
In her testimony during the hearing, ACLU of Louisiana Advocacy Director Sarah Whittington also questioned whether the bill would require a new election altogether.
Morris has said Clerk of Civil Court Chelsey Richard Napoleon would simply become clerk of both courts. But Whittington pointed out that the legislature is essentially creating an entirely new office and eliminating both the criminal and civil clerks, and as such, it could require a new election to fill the position.
Rep. Mandie Landry, a New Orleans Democrat, said she believed that behind-the-scenes political infighting may have given the governor and other Republicans an opportunity that they would not otherwise have had if Lombard had won.
Landry noted that Congressman Troy Carter, former Congressman Cedric Richmond and Mayor Helena Moreno all backed Lombard, who Duncan bested with 68% of the vote in November. That combined with the Landry administration's hostility toward Duncan may have created an opening the governor could use to keep Duncan out of office.
“He is being targeted, and I know you found yourself in the middle of dirty New Orleans politics,” Landry said to Morris. “I don't think you knew that before you got in because you probably wouldn't have gotten in.”
Duncan said he believed the governor and Attorney General Liz Murrill were ultimately behind the push to get rid of his job. He was exonerated in 2021 after serving 28 years in prison, but he said the attorney general’s office, then under Jeff Landry and Murrill, pressured him to drop his petition for compensation for his conviction, threatening his law license.
During his election last year, Murrill wrote a letter to Duncan telling him to stop calling himself exonerated “to avoid further action” from the AG’s office.
Nature assfucks multiple states on the yearly, but how much intention can you really assign to the forces of nature?
From the hurricanes seasons of 1851 to 2018, these are the top 10 hurricane states on record:
Don't blame forces of nature for the very intentional and unnecessary assfuckings of fuck ass fascists and authoritarians.
You can't prevent hurricanes, but you can prepare for them and minimize the damage they do. Except fuck ass fascists and authoritarians don't bother to do that because they're too busy coming up with new ways to fuck over the people they were elected to look out for.
New york being above new jersey, maryland, or virginia is surprising to me, but then, this is probably only counting where a hurricane made landfall. I tried to find a breakdown of per state costs over this time, but didn't find much that was more specific. Noaa's website lists total economic damage in the trillions, but not per state.
I would bet florida would still be at the top, followed by texas, but I would be curious about the middle of the list. Mississippi/alabama would likely move up, because they would get a lot of the brunt when louisiana/texas/mississippi took the 'direct hit,' because of the eastern side being the 'dirty side' of a hurricane. There might even be something unexpected, like arkansas/kentucky jumping up. They often take the fallout of a storm as it begins moving northeast after landfall.
It's also interesting to see how different the severity of the storms are. The eastern coast has less % of cat 3-5 storms. Moving northward, they go 13.6% / 16.6% / 12.7% / 20% / 8.3% while the gulf states are, moving westward, 30.8% / 20.8% / 42.1% / 31.4% / 29.6%. Off hand I would have agreed with that idea, but nice to see stats on it. Low numbers make bigger percentages easier to happen, but it's still surprising to see that 20% of the storms that hit new york were severe.