Philip Landry v. Judge J. Robert Hoepfner and William Guste, Jr., Attorney General, State of Louisiana

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge:

The question presented in this habeas corpus case is whether in a Louisiana prosecution for a first offense of operating a vehicle while intoxicated (DWI), the Sixth Amendment, as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, entitles the accused to a jury trial notwithstanding that the five hundred dollars fine and six months’ imprisonment maximum penalty prescribed for the infraction does not exceed that appropriate for “petty” offenses under Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66, 90 S.Ct. 1886, 26 L.Ed.2d 437 (1970). Disagreeing with the panel’s contrary…