EZIDORE v. HOOPER (2025)

Writ granted. The stay previously issued by the district court is lifted, and the matter is remanded to the district court for a bail hearing pursuant to La.C.Cr.P. art. 930.5(B).

I agree with the Court's decision to grant this writ application, lift the stay, and remand the matter to the district court for a bail hearing pursuant to La. C.Cr.P. art. 930.5(B). The trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting a stay, but considering this court's denial of the state's writ application in 25-KP-1161 that stay issued is no longer effective. Therefore, the controversy underlying this particular writ application is moot. I write separately to note a potential unintended consequence of the legislature's recent amendments to post-conviction relief.

With the passage of Act 393 by the legislature earlier this year, La. C.Cr.P. art. 930.6(B) now provides that “[t]he district attorney and the attorney general shall have a right to suspensively appeal any order granting post conviction relief.” If a trial court grants post conviction relief the state can always stay its effect by appealing. However, in this case, there was nothing for the State to appeal because it was the victor in the district court. Mr. Ezidore applied to the appellate court for supervisory relief, which was granted. When an appellate court first grants the relief, there is no right to appeal to this Court unless it falls within our constitutionally mandated appellate jurisdiction. La. Const. art. V, § 5. Of course, the parties may always apply for a writ for this Court to exercise is supervisory jurisdiction. Id.

The legislature also provided in La. C.Cr.P. art. 930.5(A) that “if a court grants relief under an application for post conviction relief, the court shall order that the petitioner be held in custody pending a new trial.” However, subsection (B) provides that the petitioner be entitled to bail “as though he has not been convicted of the offense.” Everyone agrees that when a trial court grants post conviction relief, the effectiveness of the relief, and concomitant right to bail, is stayed during the pendency of any suspensive appeal by the state. The matter then remains stayed through the consideration of any writ application by this Court. See La. C.Cr.P. art. 922 (D) (“if an application for a writ of review is timely filed with the supreme court, the judgment of the appellate court from which the writ of review is sought becomes final when the supreme court denies the writ.”)

The legislative history shows that the legislature clearly intended that any grant of post conviction relief should be final before a bail hearing. However, the law adopted includes a hole since there cannot be a right to suspensively appeal to this Court unless the death penalty was originally imposed. La. Const. art. V, Sec. 5.

The trial court stayed the bail hearing pending this Court's disposition of the state's writ application on the underlying grant of post conviction relief. In this case, now that the state's writ has been denied, the matter is final, the stay is lifted, and there is no question that petitioner should receive a bail hearing pursuant to La. C.Cr.P. 930.5.

While subject to the supervisory authority of higher courts on review, appellate courts do not hold bail hearings or make bail determinations. La. C.Cr.P. art. 314. Even when a trial court is divested of jurisdiction by an appeal, the law expressly reserves to the trial court the right to make bail decisions. La. C.Cr.P. art. 916(4). The trial court's authority to hear the issue of bail inherently includes the authority to stay its own consideration of that matter. La. Const. art. V, § 2 (“A judge may issue all other needful writs, orders, and process in aid of the jurisdiction of his Court.”). The stay in this case delayed addressing issue of bail until the review of the court of appeal's judgment was complete by disposition of the state's writ application to this Court. The trial court's grant of that stay concerning bail was, of course, subject to supervisory review by the courts of appeal and this Court.¹ There was no abuse of discretion; the trial court's remedy was a valid way to plug the hole created by Act 393.

In my view, quirks of procedure should not result in dramatically different outcomes depending on which level of court first granted the underlying relief. While the trial court did not abuse his discretion in authorizing a short stay pending this Court's review of the underlying writ application, in the future a diligent appellate court should seek to alleviate the chaos created by this procedural hole.

I believe that when an appellate court grants post conviction relief in the first instance then it should also stay its own Judgment for the brief time needed to allow for the timely filing of a writ application with this Court, with provisions that if an application is timely filed then the stay remains in place through the final disposition of the writ application by this Court. Any such stay would be automatically vacated upon the handing down of this Court's decision on the writ application, or this Court could be asked to lift any such stay in the interests of justice.²

FOOTNOTES

1.   See also generally, section (H) of La. C.Cr.P. art. 312 (“Right to bail before and after conviction”): “A person held without bail or unable to post bail may invoke the supervisory jurisdiction of the court of appeal on a claim that the trial court has improperly refused bail or a reduction of bail in a billable case.”

2.   See, e.g., Wolf v. Innovation Law Lab, ––– U.S. ––––, 140 S.Ct. 1564, 206 L.Ed.2d 389 (2020); Food Marketing Inst. v. Argus Leader Media, 585 U.S. 1055, 139 S.Ct. 5, 201 L.Ed.2d 1127 (2018) (examples with similar language applicable to stays issued pending review of writs by the Supreme Court of the United States).

PER CURIAM:

Crain, J., dissents. McCallum, J., dissents. Cole, J., concurs and assigns reasons.