INTRODUCTORY TITLE. CHAPTER I. Preamble. Art. 1. It is not enough to have defined offences and designated the punishments adapted to them: every citizen must not only be taught what actions he is to avoid as offences, but must also be informed by what means he may prevent an injury he apprehends, or bring the offender to justice if the wrong be already suffered. Judges, other magistrates, and ministers of justice, must have their duties defined not only for their own guidance, but that, being generally understood, they may receive the high reward of public approbation, or suffer disgrace or punishment; as those duties are performed, neglected, or wilfully abandoned. These considerations have induced the general assembly of Louisiana to enact this Code of Procedure, forming a part of their System of Penal Law. It is divided into three books: The first contains the means of preventing offences, and of putting an end to such as continue; it designates the cases in which the military force may be employed in aid of the civil power, and prescribes the rules by which it shall be governed in that service. The second directs the mode of proceeding for bringing an offender to punishment, from the complaint to the final judgment. The third gives the forms to be used in all the judicial proceedings prescribed or authorized by this code. CHAPTER II. General provisions. Art. 2. This code being a part of the general system of Penal Law, all the words used herein, are employed in the same sense that is given to them when they are used in any other part of the system. Art. 3. All the general provisions in the second chapter of the first book of the Code of Crimes and Punishments, and all such general provisions in other parts thereof as apply to the subject of this code, have the same force in this that they have in the Code of Crimes and Punishments. Art. 4. The objects which the general assembly has endeavoured to effect by this code, are: 1. The prevention of intended offences.-This is attained by pointing out on what occasions, and by what means an individual may call for the interference of the magistrate, or of his fellow citizens, or may use his own physical powers to resist any attempted invasion of his rights or those of others. 2. The protection of innocence against unjust accusations.—No laws can in all cases protect against perjury, error, or the combination of circumstances which sometimes gives to innocence the appearance of guilt; but they can, and ought to provide every facility that human prudence can suggest, and human power can effect, for making truth evident, and detecting error; they should also, by avoiding all entangling forms, insure an acquittal to every one who is accused unless his guilt be made apparent. 3. To take away from the guilty all hope of escape by a resort to formal or technical objections.-The great object of penal law is the prevention of offences by the example of punishment, the intent of all codes of procedure is to insure this end; therefore, every system must be imperfect which permits the form to defeat the substance of the law, and suffers a criminal ever to escape punishment, from any defect of form in his prosecution. 4. To give to criminal proceedings the greatest degree of despatch that is consistent with the prosecution of public justice on the one side, and the defence of private rights on the other.-Delay inflicts punishment on the innocent, or lessens the force of example, by punishing the guilty after the crime he has committed is forgotten. 5. To subject the innocent to no expense, and to impose none on the guilty but such as may be measured and apportioned to the of fence. To add to the evil of an unjust accusation the obligation of paying for it, would be an absurdity and an injustice that no law should sanction; and the indiscriminate infliction of costs on every conviction without regard to the circumstances of the offender or the nature of his offence, is scarcely less unjust. 6. To abolish all forms, that produce vexation to the prosecutor, to the accused or to the witnesses; and to subject no one who is concerned in a criminal proceeding to any inconvenience, but such as are absolutely necessary for the execution of the law. -The obligations and restraints imposed by the most perfect laws, are necessarily attended with inconvenience to those who are called on to execute them, or have become subject to their animadversion; to reduce them to the lowest degree consistent with public safety, is one object of the present code. 7. To render the whole form of proceeding simple and perfectly intelligible to all.-The utility of this object is so apparent as to render no illustration necessary. Art. 5. These objects: security to the innocent, not only from the danger of an unjust conviction, but the apprehension of it; the prevention of intended offences; the destruction of all hope of escape from merited punishment by a resort to formal objections; despatch; economy; the abolition of all vexatious proceedings, and the establishment of simplicity in forms, have been the principal objects in the formation of this code, and they are conspicuously placed here that future legislatures may weigh their importance, examine how far the different provisions of this code are in conformity with them, and in what points they are not adhered to, in order that the proper amendments may be made to give them effect. |