State v. Gravolet

• Decision Date: 20 May 1929
• Docket Number: 29859
• Citation: 123 So. 111,168 La. 648
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. GRAVOLET

123 So. 111

168 La. 648

STATE v. GRAVOLET

No. 29859

Supreme Court of Louisiana

May 20, 1929

Appeal from Twenty-Fifth Judicial District Court, Parish of Plaquemines; J. Claude Mereaux, Judge.

Anson Gravolet was convicted of purchasing a vote at a primary election, and he appeals.

Annulled, with directions.

Oliver S. Livaudais, of New Orleans, for appellant.

Percy Saint, Atty. Gen., and L. H. Perez, Dist. Atty., and E. R Schowalter, both of New Orleans, for the State.

ROGERS J. ST. PAUL, J., dissents. O'NIELL, C. J., absent, takes no part.

OPINION

ROGERS, J.

The defendant, Anson Gravolet, was charged in an information filed by the district attorney of the Parish of Plaquemines with having purchased the vote of one Robert Williams at a certain primary election held to select the Democratic nominee for parish representative in the state Legislature in violation of section 33 of Act 97 of 1922. Defendant demurred to the information, and also filed a motion to quash, both of which pleas were overruled by the court below. The trial on the merits resulted in a judgment of conviction on which defendant was duly sentenced, and, his motion for a new trial having been denied, he has appealed therefrom.

There are three bills of exception in the record, only one of which we deem it necessary to pass upon. This bill was reserved to the action of the trial judge in overruling defendant's motion to quash. The gravamen of defendant's complaint under his motion is that section 33 of Act 97 of 1922 is unconstitutional, in that it is violative of sections 23 and 6 of article 8 of the Constitution of 1921. We think the plea is good, and that the trial court erred in failing to sustain it.

Act 97 of 1922 is the primary Election Law, and section 33 of the act is the general penalty clause. The section provides, among other things, that "any person who buys any vote * * * shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less than Fifty Dollars nor more than Five Hundred Dollars and imprisonment [sic] for not less than two months nor more than one year in the parish jail and shall further be ineligible for four years thereafter to hold any office of trust or profit in this State."

It is plain from the mere reading of the foregoing statutory provision that ineligibility to hold office for four years necessarily carrying with it removal from office, is an essential part of the punishment that must be imposed upon violators of the law. But section 23 of article 8 of the Constitution of 1921, which is self-operative, provides the method of excluding from the right of suffrage and from the right to hold public office any person who has committed the offense with which the defendant is sought to be charged. The constitutional provision, so far as pertinent, is as follows, viz.: "No person, who shall * * * promise to pay * * * to another * * * any money, * * * as a compensation or reward for the giving * * * of a vote at any * * * primary election, * * * shall be...