State v. Cordero

Summary

The Supreme Court of Louisiana, per curiam, declined to reach the merits of Sandra Cordero's complaint that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal's internal operating procedures had deprived her of supervisory review conforming to La. Const. art. V, § 8(B) of her 2001 post-conviction application. Adopting the remedy proposed in the Fifth Circuit's September 9, 2008 en banc resolution, the Court transferred her application to that court for consideration by three-judge panels randomly selected from five judges uninvolved in the earlier handling and insulated from all outside contact, and exercised its supervisory authority to subject several hundred similar pending applications in both courts to the same procedure. Rehearing was denied. Justice Weimer dissented in part, preferring random allotment to the other courts of appeal or three ad hoc judges, while Justice Kimball, joined by Justices Victory, Traylor and Knoll, concurred in the denial of rehearing, endorsing the same-circuit panel solution and rejecting reliance on an unsubstantiated suicide note and police report.