27 May 2025
By Julie O’Donoghue
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — After outcry from several corners of the legal community, Louisiana lawmakers scuttled a controversial proposal backed by Attorney General Liz Murrill that could have moved thousands of criminal cases involving children and teenagers from juvenile to adult courts every year.
The Louisiana Senate Finance Committee voted 6-5 Monday to reject Senate Bill 74 by Sen. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport. The committee’s decision came a few weeks after state voters overwhelmingly rejected a similar constitutional amendment.
The legislation would have mostly affected Orleans, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge and Caddo parishes, where juvenile courts operate separately from district courts.
Larry Frieman, chief deputy attorney general, told senators the bill was crafted specifically to address New Orleans juvenile court judges who are too lenient on the teens and children who come before them.
“They are one of the ones that have created this problem that we are trying to fix,” Frieman said.
Pushback for the bill came from a wide swath of people involved in the criminal justice system who often aren’t aligned with each other. District attorneys, public defenders, judges and anti-incarceration groups all spoke out against the proposal.
“The logistics of it are not as simple as everyone seems to think,” said Kyla Romanach, chief public defender for East Baton Rouge Parish, who opposed the legislation.
Had it been approved, the bill would have allowed district attorneys and the attorney general to transfer 15- and 16-year-olds accused of felony crimes from juvenile courts to state district courts that mostly handle adult cases.
District attorneys and the attorney general also would have gained the ability to move cases involving children under 15 accused of any crime, misdemeanor or felony, from juvenile courts to city and parish courts that focus on adult cases.
District attorneys can already move 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds into the adult criminal justice system, but only when they are accused of the most serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter and rape.
The Louisiana Legislature also passed a statute last year that reclassifies all 17-year-olds as adults in the eyes of the criminal justice system. They are automatically tried in adult court and face adult prison sentences.
The attorney general’s failed legislation would have further blurred the lines between punishments for adults and minors in Louisiana, though the additional children and teenagers transferred from juvenile to adult courts under the bill would have been subjected to juvenile law standards, Frieman said.
Judges, prosecutors and public defenders from the four parishes with juvenile courts indicated the attorney general’s proposal would cost their courthouses and offices hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
District attorneys and public defenders from East Baton Rouge, Jefferson and Caddo all said they would have to hire more staff to track cases in juvenile and district court if the legislation had been approved.
Federal and state law also require minors to be separated from adult detainees. District courthouses in the four affected parishes don’t have the appropriate accommodations for minors and would have had to retrofit their buildings.
East Baton Rouge judges said the changes they would have to undertake at their courthouse would have cost between $3 million and $10 million, according to a legislative financial analysis.
Legislators initially delayed a vote on the bill last week over questions about the accuracy of the fiscal review attached to it. An earlier version didn’t have as many of the potential costs included, in part, because State Public Defender Rémy Starns told the legislative staff to disregard information provided by his office.
Daniel Druilhet, a member of the Legislative Fiscal Office staff, said Starns asked him to ignore any costs public defenders had initially said would be associated with the bill when drafting the fiscal review.
“[W]hile I did receive an initial response from the Office of the State Public Defender, including information from those four jurisdictions related to potential costs, I was contacted by Mr. Starns on May 2, 2025, instructing me not to include that cost in the fiscal note,” Druilhet told senators at a public hearing earlier this month.
In response to Druilhet’s comments, the senators put off a vote on the matter for a week so a new financial write-up could be put together.
Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, chastised Starns for intervening in the legislative process.
“I want our state employees to understand there’s not a time when they can tell our fiscal office not to consider costs that have been submitted,” she said after Druilhet’s testimony.
Starns told Jackson he had decided, after an amendment was added to the legislation, that the expenses his office had turned over to the fiscal office were no longer relevant.
Starns has been working closely with the attorney general on other criminal justice bills filed this session that would give Starns more authority over local public defender office budgets and personnel.
This article originally published in the May 26, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.