Involuntary servitude to remain a permitted punishment for crime in La.
17th May 2021 · 0 Comments
By JC Cannicosa
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — A bill that sought to give Louisiana voters a chance to outlaw involuntary servitude in the state — even for people who’ve committed felonies and been sentenced to prison — was killed in a Louisiana House committee on Tuesday of last week by Republicans who noted that state law is consistent with federal law and who argued that removing the slavery exception would be dangerous.
According to the state constitution, “Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, except in the latter case as punishment for a crime.” Rep. Edmond Jordan (D-Baton Rouge) introduced a proposed amendment that would put a period after the word “prohibited.”
The exception for involuntary servitude in the state constitution mirrors the exception found in the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, the first added to the Constitution after the Civil War, outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”
Five Democrats on the state’s House Civil Law and Procedure Committee supported Jordan’s proposed constitutional amendment, but they were outnumbered by nine Republicans voting against it. Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) said Jordan’s bill “may be one of the most dangerous bills we’ve seen this session. I’m afraid this (bill) might open the door to some legal challenges of every felony conviction in Louisiana. And that’s just not a can of worms I’m willing to open.”
In response, Jordan said, “There are a host of states that don’t have this language in their constitution, and they’re imprisoning people just fine.”
Curtis Ray Davis II, the executive director of Decarcerate Louisiana, was convicted of second degree murder in 1990 and served 25 years at Louisiana State Penitentiary before he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was released. (Davis has said in previous media reports that he was wrongly convicted.) During Tuesdays’ committee hearing, he said during his imprisonment, “I didn’t have the same level of rights and human decency as another human being.”
He illustrated that point by telling a story about picking cotton and okra at Angola: “This is beneath human decency to have to squat out in the field like an animal and defecate,” he said.
Davis said the exception for involuntary servitude was put in the law “ to make sure African-Americans or Black people remain marginalized.” Black Louisianians make up 33 percent of the state’s population and make up 68 percent of the state’s prison population.
Louisiana uses its 32,000-person prison population for a range of services, including many tasks performed outside of the prisons. During the 2019 fiscal year, the state paid the Department of Corrections $2.8 million for the services of incarcerated people who clean downtown Baton Rouge office buildings. During that same fiscal year, the Louisiana Department of Corrections’ factories and workshops — which make everything from furniture to mops — brought in $9.8 million.
People who are imprisoned by the state earn as little as 4 cents an hour. Even those who earn the most make less than 10 percent of what minimum-wage workers make.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Pineville) agreed with Jordan that Louisianians being held in prison are underpaid, but he told Jordan he should “file a bill that deals with that” because a bill banning involuntary servitude could have unintended consequences.
Rep. Lawrence Frieman (R-Abita Springs) told Jordan, “The fact that our constitution is consistent with the federal Constitution tells me I don’t really think there’s a need to have to address this.”
Republicans Beryl Amedee of Houma , Michael Echols of Monroe, Julie Emerson of Carencro,, Nicholas Muscarello of Hammond, Richard Nelson of Mandeville, Thomas Pressly of Shreveport and ), Johnson, Frieman and Seabaugh opposed the bill.
Democrats Wilford Carter of Lake Charles, Patrick Jefferson of Homer, Sam Jenkins of Shreveport, Mandie Landry of New Orleans and Ed Larvadain of Alexandria supported it.
Asked after the committee hearing if he envisioned his bill having a practical effect or if he meant for it to be a symbolic statement, Jordan said, “It had a practical purpose and a symbolic purpose, but … symbols mean something. If they didn’t, people wouldn’t be fighting so hard to preserve them.”
Louisiana Illuminator (www.lailluminator.com) is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization.
This article originally published in the May 17, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
