Supreme Court of Louisiana
State of Louisiana v. Fred Reimonenq
October 22, 2019
Summary
The court held that the state violated due process and fundamental fairness by dismissing and reinstituting the prosecution to obtain a continuance and evade a correct trial-court ruling excluding the state's expert testimony. The court granted the motion to quash and prohibited the state from using the excluded expert or comparable expert testimony if it reinstituted the charges. The court distinguished situations involving genuinely unavailable witnesses or exhibits because this case involved an evidentiary ruling caused by the state's own procedural failure.