State v. Louviere
| Decision Date | 04 September 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 2000-KA-2085.,2000-KA-2085. |
| Citation | 833 So.2d 885 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Chad Roy LOUVIERE. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Phyllis E. Mann, Alexandria, Counsel for Applicant.
Richard P. Ieyoub, Attorney General, Joseph L. Waitz, Jr., District Attorney, Ellen M. Daigle, Baton Rouge, Mark D. Rhodes, Houma, Counsel for Respondent.
This direct criminal appeal concerns the defendant's conviction for first-degree murder and sentence of death. On October 23, 1996, a Terrebonne Parish grand jury indicted Chad Roy Louviere for the first-degree murder of Pamela Duplantis. Pursuant to La.C.Cr.P. art. 557, the defendant subsequently pleaded guilty. Following a sentencing hearing before a jury to determine whether the defendant should receive the death penalty or life imprisonment without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, the jury unanimously returned a sentence of death. Specifically, the jury found the following aggravating circumstances: (1) the offender was engaged in the perpetration of an aggravated kidnapping, second degree kidnapping, and aggravated rape; and (2) the offender was previously convicted of an unrelated aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape; and (3) the offender knowingly created a risk of death or great bodily harm to more than one person. La. C.Cr.P. art. 905.4(A)(1),(3),(4).
On direct appeal to this court under La. Const. Art. V, § 5(D), the defendant appeals his conviction and sentence. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the defendant's conviction for first-degree murder and the death sentence.
The facts of this case are essentially undisputed, and by necessity, their narration requires describing the instant offense as well as other offenses committed on the same morning, but before the murder, and other offenses committed after the defendant's incarceration. At approximately 8:30 a.m. on October 17, 1996, the defendant, a Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's deputy driving alone in his marked patrol car, pulled over a vehicle on Bull Run Road in Houma. After directing the driver, D.D.,1 to provide her vehicle's registration, the defendant sprayed her in the face with mace, handcuffed her, and dragged her into his patrol car. The defendant drove D.D. to a cane field, where he removed D.D.'s clothing, photographed her, vaginally penetrated her, forced her to perform oral sex, and anally penetrated her. The defendant then returned D.D. to her vehicle, released her, and drove away.
After D.D. overcame her fear of defendant's death threats, she reported this incident to the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office, which issued a police radio alert to be on the lookout for defendant. The sheriff's office issued the alert after defendant had responded to radio calls, but refused to disclose his location or return to the police station.
Later that morning, defendant drove to the Argent Bank, where his estranged wife, A.L., was working. Still in his full deputy's uniform, defendant carried a duffle bag laden with weapons, including an AR-15 rifle, as he entered the bank. Inside, the defendant drew and cocked his sidearm and directed J.B., the bank's manager, to remove the bank's two male customers, and lock the entrance, leaving only the bank's six female employees inside the bank. The defendant then ordered the women to leave their work stations and assemble in the lobby.
The defendant then demanded that J.B. retrieve the surveillance tape from the bank's video recorder. J.B. returned to the lobby with the tape, and defendant then fired several shots from his AR-15 rifle into the tape, destroying it as it lay on the lobby's tile floor.
Meanwhile, Pamela Duplantis was seated in the lobby, but somewhat apart from the other women who were huddled together. She was crying. After conversing with his estranged wife, A.L., the defendant again shouldered his rifle. Standing some ten feet away, the defendant aimed at Pamela Duplantis and fired, striking her near the center of her forehead. She died instantly.
Thereafter, defendant ordered the employees to barricade the entrances and windows with furniture. The defendant handcuffed several of the women together, removing the restraints at times to have an employee with him as he walked through the bank, checking to insure that the law enforcement officers who had assembled outside had not infiltrated the building and observing the activity in their perimeter around the bank.
In exchange for lunch, the defendant uncuffed and released one employee to the police. In exchange for a radio, the defendant then released another employee.
During the approximately 30-hour standoff with police, defendant ordered J.B. and A.L. to undress and perform oral sex on each other. The defendant also directed J.B. and A.L. to insert a wooden martial arts weapon, a kubaton, into each other's vagina. The defendant raped J.B. on two separate occasions, vaginally and anally, and ordered her to perform oral sex upon him.
After pulling another employee, B.T., through the bank for a perimeter check, defendant brought B.T. into a storage room where he ordered her to perform oral sex upon him. The defendant unsuccessfully attempted to penetrate B.T. vaginally. The defendant later brought A.L. into the storage room, where he likewise ordered her to perform oral sex.
On October 17, 1996, pursuant to police negotiations, the defendant released B.T. around 8 p.m. and also placed the rifle outside the bank, retaining two handguns. The next day, on October 18, 1996, around noon, after further negotiations, J.B. carried the remainder of the weapons outside the bank, then returned inside. The defendant then released both A.L. and J.B., and surrendered.
Following the Terrebonne Parish grand jury's indictment of first-degree murder, the defendant pleaded not guilty. Venue was transferred to Lafayette Parish pursuant to defendant's motion for a change of venue. While awaiting trial in the Lafayette Parish jail, defendant, armed with a sharpened toothbrush "shank," overpowered a female deputy. Pressing the weapon to her neck and threatening to kill her, defendant held the deputy hostage until he was allowed to see a female inmate, J.R. The jail and J.R. complied with defendant's demand, whereupon defendant released the deputy, whose neck was gouged by the shank. J.R. remained with the defendant for several hours in the jail's control room. Upon her release, J.R. stated that she and defendant had consensual sex in the control room. Later, J.R. testified that the sex was not consensual, and that her earlier statement was made out of fear of retaliation.
After the hostage offenses in the Lafayette jail and the attending publicity, the state moved that venue again be transferred. The trial court granted the motion, and the case was set for trial in Terrebonne Parish with jurors selected from East Baton Rouge Parish.
Thereafter, on December 22, 1998, by joint stipulation with the state and with consent of the trial court, the defendant changed his original plea and entered a plea of guilty to the charge of first-degree murder. The trial court then conducted the capital sentencing hearing. Following four days of testimony, which included 19 defense witnesses, the jury returned a recommendation of death after finding all the aggravating circumstances advanced by the state. On February 24, 2000, the trial court formally sentenced defendant to death by lethal injection.
The defendant filed twenty-five assignments of error. Of these, four merit discussion in the published opinion and are addressed under headings designating the primary procedural stage implicated; the others are discussed in an unpublished appendix.2
Constitutionality of Guilty Plea in Capital Cases (Assignment I)
In his first assignment of error, the defendant argues that despite the specific statutory provision in La.C.Cr.P. art. 5573 which allows a guilty plea in a capital case, La. Const. Art. I, § 174 prohibits allowing a defendant from pleading guilty and then proceeding to a trial on the issue of punishment alone. In support of his contention, defendant points to language in this court's opinion in State v. Brogdon, 426 So.2d 158 (La.1983). In Brogdon, when the defendant argued that the trial court erred in refusing to accept his guilty plea, we stated: Brogdon, 426 So.2d at 165.
While we noted in Brogdon that the interests of justice require that no mere procedural device such as a plea should deprive the state from pursuing the full range of penalties for murder, including capital punishment, our holding rested on the defendant's right to a jury trial. Our statement in Brogdon that referenced the state's interests in capital procedure, while dicta, was not improvidently made. Indeed, as we will explain further below, we note that the current statutory framework properly balances both interests that we recognized in Brogdon—the defendant's right to a jury trial and the state's interest in seeking the death penalty when appropriate.
At the time we decided Brogdon, there was no statutory mechanism for a defendant to plead guilty while still preserving the defendant's right to a jury trial on the penalty issue. Without the statutory mechanism, there would have been no authority for the trial court to convene a jury and try the penalty issue. See La. Const. Art. I, § 2: "Except as otherwise provided by this constitution, no one of these branches, nor any person holding office in one of them, shall exercise power belonging to either of the others." Enacting procedures for punishment is a legislative...
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