Date: 01-28-2016

Case Style: STATE OF LOUISIANA v. ERIK NUNEZ, STATE OF LOUISIANA v. BRANDON LICCIARDI, STATE OF LOUISIANA v. TYRONE BROWN

Case Number: 2015-KK-1473

Judge: Jeannette Theriot Knoll

Court: Supreme Court of Louisiana

Plaintiff's Attorney: Leon A. Cannizzaro, Jr., Scott G. Vincent

Defendant's Attorney: Herbert V. Larson, Sara Johnson, Ralph Capitelli, Brian Capitelli

Description: Erik Nunez, Brian Liccardi, and Darren Sharper are the named defendants in
a nine-count indictment returned by a grand jury on December 12, 2014.1 Erik Nunez is charged with two counts of aggravated rape on September 23, 2013, and
one count of obstruction of justice occurring between September 23, 2012, and
February 28, 2013. Brandon Liccardi is charged with one count of human
trafficking occuring between July 1, 2012, and August 31, 2012; one count of
aggravated rape on February 2, 2013; and two more counts of human trafficking of
individuals on August 31, 2013, and September 23, 2013. Nunez and Liccardi are
not codefendants on any charge in the indictment. Upon indictment, the case was
allotted to Section “I” of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court based upon the
July 1, 2012 date, as detailed below.
Prior to the indictment, Nunez had been arrested on the two counts of
aggravated rape later included in the indictment and his bond had been set at
$400,000. After the indictment was returned, Nunez appeared for arraignment on
December 14, 2014, pleading not guilty on all counts, and the trial Judge raised his
bond to $2,500,000. Later on the same day, Nunez filed a motion to recuse, to re
allot, and to vacate prior order fixing bail. The case was re-allotted to Section “D”
1 Darren Sharper pleaded guilty on June 15, 2015; thus, he is not a party in the present matter.
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for a hearing on the motions, where the trial court denied the motion to recuse and
transferred the case back to Section “I.”
On January 5, 2015, Nunez filed a motion to quash allotment and declare the
current system unconstitutional, a request for re-allotment, and a motion to vacate
the prior order fixing bail. Louisiana District Court Rule 14.0 requires random
allotment of criminal cases unless an exception is established by law or the rules,
in accordance with the method described in Appendix 14.0A of the La. Dist. Ct.
Rules. The method of allotment provided in Appendix 14.0A for Orleans Parish
Criminal District Court at the time of Nunez and Liccardi’s case allotment
provided in pertinent part:
The Clerk will assign daily, randomly, and by allotment among the Sections having felony jurisdiction all felony indictments, bills of information charging felony offenses and appeals from Municipal Court and Traffic Courts and other pleadings shall be allotted among Sections A through L and the Magistrate Section. This allotment shall be conducted by the Clerk and shall be open to the public. The District Attorney shall be notified of the allotment. A computer generated random allotment system be and is hereby implemented by the Clerk’s Office for all cases filed with the Clerk of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.
La. Dist. Ct. Rules Appendix 14.0A (as amended effective April 4, 2014).
Although Nunez acknowledged the official method of allotment fulfills the random
allotment requirement, he asserted the actual allotment procedure violates the
requirements of both due process and La. Dist. Ct. Rule 14.0.
At the hearing on the motions, defense counsel called Keith Johnson, the
office manager for the Clerk of Court’s office, to testify to the Orleans Parish
Criminal District Court allotment procedure. According to Johnson, the Clerk’s
office receives a daily email from the Judicial Administrator’s office containing a
computer-generated allotment of a Judge for first, second, and third class felony
cases and a second Judge allotted for fourth class cases. Each day’s allotment is
recorded on a publicly available calendar. When the Clerk’s office receives a bill
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of indictment or information, Johnson looks at the date of the offense indicated and
refers to the calendar to find out what section of court has been allotted for that
date. Johnson further testified he uses the “first date of the first offense” to
determine the pertinent date where multiple offenses are charged. Use of the first
date of the oldest offense is, however, unwritten procedure and not part of the local
rule according to Johnson’s testimony.2
2 In November of 2015, defendants’ counsel moved to supplement the record before this Court with a unauthenticated document entitled “New Case Allotment Process” which, on its face, purports to have been approved en banc by the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court on February 4, 2011, along with an apparent email from the Court’s Deputy Judicial Administrator, Shannon Sims, stating the rule has been in effect since February 4, 2011. The substance of the “New Case Allotment Process” document is substantially similar (but not identical) to the current version of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court local rule on allotment, as amended by court order and effective August 13, 2015, which provides as follows: 1. The Clerk will assign daily, randomly, and by allotment among the Sections having felony jurisdiction all felony indictments, bills of information charging felony and misdemeanor offenses. and appeals Appeals from Municipal and Traffic Courts and other pleadings shall be allotted among Sections A through L and the Magistrate Section. A computer generated random allotment system is hereby implemented by the Clerk’s Office for all cases filed with the Clerk of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. a. The allotment process shall randomly assign one of the twelve sections of court as the allotment court for the day. For allotment purposes, the offense date will be compared to the calendar. The section of the court assigned to the date that corresponds to the offense date will receive the case when it is filed with the Clerk of Court. In the event there are multiple offense dates for a case(s)/defendant(s), the highest class offense with the oldest date of offense will control for allotment purposes. If the specific date of the offense is not known, then the date of the first report of the offense will be used. b. The District Attorney shall be required to identify clearly the offense date with the case filing, so that allotments may be easily audited. If the number of cases allotted to sections of the court varies by more than five percent between the sections receiving the most and the fewest cases, then the court will review the allotment process and make any modifications or adjustments that may be required to correct the problem.
….
This allotment shall be conducted by the Clerk and shall be open to the public. The District Attorney shall be notified of the allotment which shall be published daily to the public. A computer generated random allotment system be and is hereby implemented by the Clerk’s Office for all cases Filed with the Clerk of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.
2015 LOUISIANA COURT ORDER 0115 (C.O. 0115), amending La. Dist. Ct. Rules Appendices, Appendix 14.A, Criminal District Court Orleans Parish (underline indicates text addition, strikethrough indicates deletion). (continued on next page)

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After the hearing, the trial Judge denied Nunez’s motion to quash allotment
and request to re-allot, finding the allotment procedure was constitutional and
Nunez presented no evidence the State manipulated the allotment system in this
case. The Judge also denied Nunez’s motion to vacate the prior order fixing bail.
Nunez timely filed applications for supervisory writs. The Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeal ordered oral arguments be heard on the issue of the allotment procedure
and invited the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court to provide a per curiam
explaining the allotment procedure.
Brandon Liccardi filed his motion to quash the indictment and/or strike the
allotment system as unconstitutional and order re-allotment, which was denied by
the trial Judge with the same ruling and reasons assigned for the denial of Nunez’s
motion. Liccardi subsequently filed for supervisory writs along with a request for
expedited consideration and consolidation with Nunez’s writ. The Fourth Circuit
heard oral arguments en banc for both defendants’ applications on May 26, 2015.
Tyrone Brown
On November 19, 2014, Tyrone Brown was charged by bill of indictment
with six counts for offenses allegedly occurring between August 1, 2012, and
(cont.) Defendants assert this email from Sharon Simms indicates a rule substantially similar to the one above— which also requires the first date of report of the offense to dictate the date used for allotment where the date of the offense is unknown— has been in effect since February 4, 2011. Thus, they argue the cases at issue were improperly allotted under the wrong procedure, further suggesting possible manipulation. We disagree. We take judicial notice of Court Order 0115 amending the District Court Appendices, Criminal District Court Orleans Parish, which states in its text it was adopted by the Court en banc August 13, 2015, and made effective the same date. La. Code Evid. art. 202(B)(d). Prior to August 13, 2015, the pertinent local rule was the one at issue in this case, as quoted above on page 2.
We hereby deny defendants’ motion to supplement the record, as we find the purported unpublished rule is of no moment in this case. Until this late point, neither the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court nor any party to this litigation has disputed the allocation procedure which was in effect at the pertinent time, as testified to by a deputy clerk of Criminal District Court called by defendants at trial. Defendants do not have a right to allocation as provided in an unpublished internal court policy. Furthermore, even if the procedure recounted by the deputy clerk were followed in error in these cases, this Court stated in State v. Cooper a defendant “is not denied due process as a result of an error in a particular judge’s selection unless he can point to some resulting prejudice.” State v. Cooper, 10-2344, p.20 (La. 11/16/10), 50 So.3d 115, 131 (citing Sinito v. United States, 750 F.2d 512, 515 (6th Cir. 1984), and cases cited therein). As demonstrated below, the defendants have failed to demonstrate any prejudice in this case.
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September 19, 2014: two counts of aggravated rape; two counts of indecent
behavior with a juvenile under the age of seventeen with greater than two years
difference between the age of the juvenile and that of the defendant; and two
counts of sexual battery. The case was allotted to Section “F” pursuant to the
court’s allotment calendar; Brown appeared for arraignment and entered a plea of
not guilty. On January 5, 2015, Brown filed a motion to quash the indictment for
improper allotment, arguing the date range beginning with August 1, 2012, had
been selected arbitrarily. After a contradictory hearing, the trial Judge denied the
motion to quash and Brown appealed. The Fourth Circuit ordered the case be
presented for oral argument to the Court en banc on May 26, 2015.
Fourth Circuit Opinions
The Fourth Circuit issued opinions for both cases on July 6, 2015. In State v.
Nunez, the Court of Appeal held the District Court erred in denying the defendants’
motions to quash the allotment, finding Louisiana Supreme Court jurisprudence
contains no explicit requirement for a showing of actual manipulation of
challenged allotment procedures. State v. Nunez, 15-0164, p. 12-13 (La. App. 4
Cir. 7/6/15), 174 So.3d 105, 113, writ granted, 15-1473 (La. 10/2/15), -- So.3d --.
The Court of Appeal further found the procedure used in Orleans Parish Criminal
Court violates the principles of due process as well as La. Dist. Ct. Rule 14.0,
because the allotment procedure “gives the District Attorney the ability to
manipulate the allotment of cases by alleging certain dates in the indictment.” Id.
Thus, the Court reversed the trial Judge’s denial of defendants’ motions to quash
allotment and remanded the matter for the adoption of allotment procedures in
compliance with the law and jurisprudence and for re-allotment in accordance with
the new procedures. Id. at 114. Judge Bonin, dissenting, found there was no legal
basis for ordering the re-allotment of the case, as defendants did not show the
District Attorney intentionally selected or even attempted to select the trial Judge.
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Id. Judge Bonin also cited the en banc per curiam the Judges of the Criminal
District Court filed with the Fourth Circuit, which stated the current allotment
procedure had been adopted after a period of trial-and-error and upon consultation with the National Center for State Courts. Id. at 116. In Tyrone Brown’s case, the Court of Appeal held “the Orleans Parish
Criminal District Court allotment system violates the principles of due process set
forth in Simpson because under the circumstances presented in defendant’s case,
the District Attorney had the ability to choose the date of the offense, which
dictates the section of court to which the case is allotted.” State v. Brown, 15-0122,
p. 10 (La. App. 4 Cir. 7/6/15), 174 So.3d 95, 101, writ granted, 15-1486 (La. 10/2/15), -- So.3d --. The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial Judge’s denial of
Brown’s motion to quash the indictment, but granted the writ in part, remanding
the matter to the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court for “the adoption of
allotment procedures that comport with the jurisprudence discussed above” and for
re-allotment of the defendant’s case under the newly-adopted procedure. Id. LAW AND ANALYSIS These consolidated cases turn on whether the lower courts legally erred in
their interpretation and application of the pertinent due process principles and
Louisiana Court Rules; thus, the cases are subject to this Court’s de novo review.
As this Court stated in its per curiam on rehearing in State v. Simpson, 551 So.2d
1303 (La. 1989), “[d]ue process of law requires fundamental fairness, i.e., a fair
trial in a fair tribunal.” Id., citing Turner v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 466, 85 S.C.t 546,
13 L.Ed.2d 424 (1965); State v Mejia, 250 La. 518, 197 So.2d 73 (1967). This
Court, beginning in Simpson, has recognized the allotment of criminal cases among
Judges for trial implicates due process concerns. In order to meet due process
requirements, the Court in Simpson held “capital and other felony cases must be
allotted for trial… on a random or rotating basis or under some other procedure
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adopted by the court which does not vest the district attorney with power to choose the judge to whom a particular case is assigned.” Id. at 1304 (emphasis added). The issue in the present case is whether the Orleans Parish Criminal
District Court’s allotment procedure violates this rule, articulated in Simpson and
further expounded in later cases. Notably, in Simpson, defense counsel and the District Attorney stipulated the State had the discretion to choose Judges to preside over criminal cases, and the Court found this system to be “facially unfair.”
Id. Similarly, this Court in State v. Payne, 556 So.2d 47 (La. 1990), found
modified local rules were not in compliance with the rule articulated in Simpson because the “district attorney may still have the power to select judges by making unchecked motions for certain trial dates.” (Emphasis added).
In State v. Reed, 95-0648 (La. 4/28/95), 653 So.2d 1176 (per curiam), the
allotment procedure in question was a “numerical rotation in which any indictment
or information filed by the district attorney was allotted to the ‘next judge up,’”
and the Court’s one page per curiam noted “[s]uch a system not only invites manipulation of allotments, but also violates the court rule which requires random allotment of each case.” Id. (emphasis added). Thus, the Court held “[r]elator is entitled to enforcement of the court rule without proving actual manipulation in his particular case” Id. (emphasis added). Although defendants and the Fourth Circuit rely heavily on Reed for the proposition defendants need not
prove actual manipulation in order to successfully challenge an allotment
procedure, we find Reed to be clearly distinguishable from the present case. As in
Simpson and Payne, the Court in Reed found the system in violation of the court
rule requiring random allotment because it vested in the District Attorney power to
select Judges by controlling the order of filings; thus, no showing of actual
manipulation was required. In contrast, we find the record reflects the District
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Attorney’s actions do not drive the selection of Judges in the system at issue;
rather, the defendant’s conduct drives the date of offense listed on the indictment.
The rule articulated in Simpson was also applied in another short per curiam
issued by this Court in State v. Rideau, 01-3146, p. 1 (La. 11/29/01), 802 So.2d
1280 (per curiam) (Knoll, J., dissenting). “Because the District Attorney has the
ability, by process of elimination, to know the final judge in the pool to be assigned
the next numbered capital case, and because the district attorney has the right to
assign the next numbered capital case when indictments are handed down,” the Court found the system violated the principles adopted in Simpson. Id.3 Again in
Rideau, the system struck down by this Court was one in which the District
Attorney could routinely control the assignment of Judges, here, by way of
controlling the numbering of cases.
As noted by Judge Bonin in his dissent in Nunez, this Court declined
extreme application of the principles articulated in Rideau in State v. Broussard,
03-1340 (La. 6/26/03), 852 So.2d 978 (per curiam). The allotment at issue in
Broussard was one at which Judges were assigned randomly, but a Judge was
deleted from the random allotment after he or she was assigned a case and until all
Judges had been assigned one case. See id. The District Attorney could, therefore,
determine which of the Judges remained available. However, in this particular case
only one Judge had been deleted as of the time of the defendant’s allotment, so the
3 Justice Knoll, however, dissented from Rideau, stating:
The majority fails to recognize in its zealous effort to micro-manage the criminal process in Calcasieu Parish that Simpson requires that the District Attorney not have the “power to choose the judge.” Simpson, 551 So.2d at 1304. Here, the ball falls out of the machine randomly, allotting capital cases over the seven judges until all seven judges are assigned a capital case so no one trial judge gets more capital cases than any other…. The District Attorney does not have input as to how the balls fall out of the hopper. The majority finds a violation of Simpson because the District Attorney knows which judge is left when there is one ball left in the hopper and the District Attorney has more than one capital case for random allotment. I fail to see how this simple knowledge of what judge is left amounts to a violation of random allotment.
802 So.2d at 1281.
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defendant’s case had been randomly allotted to one of the remaining ten Judges.
Furthermore, a witness for the Clerk of Court’s office testified no one from the
District Attorney’s office had ever attempted to figure out which case had been
allotted to whom or to inquire which Judges remained in the allotment pool. Id.
Finding the District Attorney’s office had no “direct role in the allotment
procedure in violation of Simpson and Rideau,” this Court further found
respondent had shown no “actual prejudice to his due process rights.” Id. at 979.
Thus, no basis for ordering re-allotment existed. Id.
This Court’s most recent and fullest examination of the due process
implications of allotment in criminal cases came in State v. Cooper, 10-2344 (La.
11/16/10), 50 So.3d 115, in which this Court upheld an allotment system which
defendants challenged both on due process grounds as articulated in Simpson and
as an alleged violation of La. Dist. Ct. R. 14.0. In Cooper, the Fifteenth Judicial
District’s allotment system contained multiple criminal tracks for each of the
district’s three parishes, and each division of court within that parish was randomly
assigned on one of the criminal tracks for specified period of time. Id. at 121-23.
Notably, the date of a criminal offense determined the allotment of the case to a
particular track, and thus division of court, in two of the parishes at issue. La. Dist. Ct. R. 14.0, originally enacted in 2002 and amended in 2010, establishes a uniform rule for the random allotment of criminal cases, providing in
pertinent part:
(a) The clerk of court shall randomly allot all criminal cases, unless an exception is established by law or these Rules. The method of random allotment established by each district court, or by each parish within a district, where applicable, is described in Appendix 14.0A....
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This Court, examining the issue of allotment in light of this rule for the first
time, upheld the District Court’s finding the system at issue complied with La.
Dist. Ct. R. 14.0, noting:4 Our inquiry here is not to determine whether the district judges selected the “best” or “easiest” method of allotting criminal cases. Our focus here is only on whether the [allotment system] which was adopted violates the law. We have established a framework in the uniform rules whereby district judges may tailor their case allotment plans in ways that will take into consideration the unique characteristics of their judicial district and the resources available to them. In our goal of ensuring due process is provided to litigants, we have never required an allotment system which was purely random. Id. at 126 (emphasis added).
Rather than requiring a perfectly random allotment system, this Court examined
and synthesized Simpson and Reed to hold “a rotation or allotment system is not
acceptable if the event which triggers application of the system is dependent upon
an action taken by the district attorney.” Id. at 124. Applying this rule to the
present case, we find the allotment procedure at issue is random and not dependent
upon an action taken by the District Attorney. The District Attorney has no input as
to what Judge is selected for any particular date, and judicial assignment is made based on the earliest date of the charged offense, which is driven by the defendant’s conduct. Although the State concedes the allotment procedure at issue could be manipulated under certain circumstances, we note virtually every allotment system is susceptible to manipulation. As Judge Bonin aptly states in his dissent from the
Court of Appeal’s decision in Nunez, the District Attorney’s “vast prosecutorial
authority” makes “any random allotment system vulnerable to a district attorney’s
‘manipulation’ because he can make so many choices which affect the allotment,
4 This Court also affirmed the District Court’s finding that one limited aspect of the allotment system, allowing the prosecutor to elect to bring a felony to the same track in which a defendant already had a pending felony and thus select the presiding Judge, violated La. Dist. Ct. R. 14.0 and the requirements of Simpson. Id. at 126.
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including refusal to prosecute, joinder of offenses, joinder of defendants,
subsequent joinder of a co-defendant after allotment, and on and on.” 174 So.3d at
117. See La. Code Crim. Pro. art. 61.5
Although not impervious to manipulation by a determined and unethical
prosecutor, we find the allotment system at issue “adequately minimizes the risk of
docket manipulation by either side.” State v. Coleman, 96-1768 (La. 7/10/96), 677
So.2d 435 (per curiam). Unlike in Reed, where the District Attorney could
routinely file bills of information in a particular order to ensure certain judicial
assignments, or in Payne, where the prosecutor could file an unchecked motion for a particular trial date, here, the prosecutor is constrained by the defendant’s conduct in selecting the date of the earliest charged offense. Thus, the allotment
procedure at issue ensures Judge selection is driven by a random process anchored
in a fact-based allegation of the date of the crime, rather than vested in the ordinary
control of the District Attorney. We find all defendants have a right to a fair trial in
a fair tribunal, but defendants are not denied due process simply because an
allotment system is not perfectly random. As aptly stated by this Court in Cooper:
[D]ue process does not entitle a criminal defendant to selection of the manner in which the judge of that tribunal is designated. A criminal defendant does not have the right to have his case heard by a particular judge, does not have the right to have his judge selected by a random draw, and is not denied due process as a result of an error in a particular judge's selection unless he can point to some resulting prejudice. 50 So.3d at 131 (citing Sinito v. United States, 750 F.2d 512, 515 (6th Cir. 1984),
and cases cited therein).
An allotment procedure does not violate due process principles or the
requirements of La. Dist. Ct. Rule 14 by merely being susceptible to manipulation.
To hold otherwise would have far-reaching consequences, as numerous
5 La. Code Crim. Pro. art. 61 provides: “Subject to the supervision of the attorney general, as provided in Article 62, the district attorney has entire charge and control of every criminal prosecution instituted or pending in his district, and determines whom, when, and how he shall prosecute.”
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jurisdictions in this State use date-of-arrest, date-of-offense, or other date-based
systems which could conceivably be manipulated by a bad faith actor.6 Thus we
decline to adopt such a burdensome and untenable rule.
Where an allotment system is sufficiently random and does not vest in the
District Attorney the routine ability to select Judges, the burden is on the defendant
to show some actual manipulation or resulting prejudice in his particular case.
Here, we find the allotment procedure is sufficiently random and not dependent on
the District Attorney’s actions. Therefore, our next inquiry is whether defendants
can point to some actual manipulation or resulting prejudice caused by the
allotment system as applied in their cases. This Court finds defendants failed to
present any evidence of such manipulation or prejudice during their opportunities
to do so at their respective hearings on the motions to quash and/or re-allot. Indeed,
as noted by Judge Bonin in his dissent in Brown, counsel for Tyrone Brown
“virtually stipulates at the contradictory hearing that the district attorney did not engage in misconduct nor attempt to manipulate the allotment system.”7 Brown,
174 So.3d at 102.
If the dates selected by the District Attorney were found to be unreasonable,
then one might be able to draw an inference the District Attorney manipulated the
system in this case. However, defendants have not shown the dates selected by the
6 For example, the First, Second, Sixth, Twelfth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, TwentySecond, and Fortieth Judicial Districts all rely on a date-of-offense based system to some extent. Other Judicial Districts rely on date-of-arrest or other date-based systems, and many Judicial Districts require random allotment without specifying a method in the local rules. La. Dist. Ct. Rules Appendix 14.0A (effective January 1, 2016). 7 Counsel for Brown states at the hearing:
MS. PASQUERELLA: Well, I’m not saying that they sat down and said “How do we get this case in Section F;” I’m not saying that, judge. I’m saying that for whatever reason they chose a date that is based not in anything that they have given me in Discovery [sic] and not anything that their complainant has said. So if they are alleging that acts occurred on dates where they have no information to say that those acts occurred and by doing that they are, they may be manipulating the system but I don’t have any reason to believe that they are…
Transcript of Motion Hearing, January 5, 2015, p. 10.
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District Attorney to be unreasonable. In Brown’s case, the acts charged in the
indictment are alleged to have occurred between August 1, 2012, and September
19, 2014. According to Brown’s arrest warrant, dated September 19, 2014:
Brown acknowledged he understood his rights and signed waiving his Miranda Rights against self-incrimination to make a statement to the detective. Mr. Brown admitted that the sexual incidents involving the ten year old female victim started two years ago when the victim was eight years old and all of the incidents occurred in Orleans parish.
The victim turned eight on August 9, 2012. The State avers its internal policy is to
use the first of the month when specifying date ranges where an exact time range is
uncertain. Given the youth of the victim and the strong possibility neither party
would recall exactly when the alleged crimes occurred, the State’s specification of
a date a mere week before the victim’s eighth birthday is eminently reasonable.
Furthermore, the State’s policy of selecting the first day of the month when an
exact date is uncertain underscores the District Attorney is not attempting to
manipulate the system in the matters presently before us, as this policy is
applicable to all cases where the date of the offense is unknown.
In Nunez, the earliest date alleged in the indictment is found at count one,
namely Brandon Liccardi’s charge of human trafficking between July 1, 2012, and
August 31, 2012. A transcript of the victim’s statement was entered into the record
under seal, and our review of this transcript supports the reasonableness of this date range. The beginning date of July 1, 2012, is also consistent with the District Attorney’s stated internal policy of selecting the first date of the month. Far from
being arbitrary, the dates selected by the District Attorney in these cases are well
supported and highly reasonable considering the evidence on record. None of the
defendants have put on any evidence the District Attorney has engaged in
manipulation in their cases. Likewise, none of defendants have specified or given
evidence for any prejudice which will result from their respective judicial
allotments, having been unable to even speculate as to why the District Attorney
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would want the particular Judges assigned or as to any potential harm caused by
the procedure at issue or by the selection of these particular Judges. Thus, we find
defendants’ challenge of their case allotments on constitutional and statutory bases
fails.

Outcome: For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the decisions of the Court of Appeal
granting defendants’ motions to quash allotment and ordering re-allotment in these cases, and we reinstate the trial Judges’ denials of said motions. Otherwise, the decisions of the Court of Appeal are affirmed. These cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. REVERSED IN PART; AFFIRMED IN PART; REMANDED.

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