A New Orleans man with prior felony convictions was sentenced to life in prison again over a cellphone found during a jail shakedown more than a decade ago. On October 15, 2018, Criminal District Court Judge Franz Zibilich resentenced Keith Kisack to life imprisonment as a habitual offender tied to a single contraband possession count, capping a sentencing saga that has dragged through Louisiana's courts since 2014.
According to NOLA.com, a six-person jury convicted Kisack earlier in 2014 of possessing a cellphone and charger inside the old Orleans Parish Prison, an offense that on its own carried a maximum of five years behind bars. But because it marked Kisack's fourth felony conviction, prosecutors sought a far harsher habitual-offender sentence, pointing to predicate convictions for illegal discharge of a firearm, aggravated battery and possession of a firearm by a felon, dating back to guilty pleas entered in 1993, 1995 and 2001, according to court records reviewed by caselaw.findlaw.com.
Louisiana's multiple-offender statute sets a sentencing range of 20 years to life for a fourth-felony offender, the same court record notes. Zibilich left open the possibility that Kisack could one day qualify for parole, though he cast doubt on how likely that outcome actually is, per the same account.
A Sentence That Keeps Coming Back
This is not the first time Kisack has stood before a judge for the same underlying case. The Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal has repeatedly sent the matter back to the trial court over sentencing-procedure errors, including a failure to comply with Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure article 894.1, according to the appellate record. In one ruling, the Fourth Circuit found the district court still had not complied with the court's prior remand order even years after the original case began.
The appellate court has also pushed back on how the trial court justified its sentencing decisions. In an earlier ruling, judges found the trial court had improperly denied Kisack's motion to reconsider sentence based on the outcome of pending, unrelated charges against him rather than a genuine weighing of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances the law requires. The court was explicit that pending criminal charges are not among the factors a trial judge must consider under the sentencing statute.
The Louisiana Supreme Court found Kisack had not waived a mandatory 24-hour delay after denial of his 2014 motion for a new trial, giving him a chance at a new sentence. The court found no error in his habitual-offender status as a “quad bill.”
Within the Legal Range, But Still Excessive?
Central to the back-and-forth is a legal principle the appellate court has underscored repeatedly: even a sentence that falls within the statutory range, and is therefore technically legal, can still violate a defendant's constitutional protection against excessive punishment. That distinction has been the crux of Kisack's appeals, which have challenged not whether his sentence was legally permissible, but whether it was constitutionally fair given the underlying offense.
At one point, the district court set aside an earlier five-year underlying sentence combined with a 10-year habitual-offender term and instead imposed life imprisonment outright, according to the appellate record. That whipsawing between sentence lengths illustrates just how unsettled the case has remained even as it moved through multiple levels of Louisiana's court system.
A Broader Pattern in Louisiana Sentencing
Kisack's case sits within a larger debate over Louisiana's habitual-offender law and how harshly it can be applied to lower-level crimes. ProPublica has reported on Markus Lanieux, who received a life-without-parole sentence as a habitual offender for an aggravated-flight conviction that typically carries just a two-year term — a case the outlet cited while examining a 2021 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that struck down a reform law letting prosecutors revisit and reduce excessive three-strikes-style sentences through post-conviction plea agreements. That 4-3 ruling spelled out eight grounds on which prosecutors could pursue post-conviction plea agreements to correct sentences widely viewed as disproportionate.
Louisiana's Habitual Offender Law, codified as R.S. 15:529.1 under the Louisiana State Legislature's statutes, governs how prior felony convictions can escalate a sentence for a new offense. A related statutory provision states that, under certain circumstances, a person shall be imprisoned for the remainder of their natural life without parole, probation or suspension of sentence — language that has shaped the stakes in cases like Kisack's for years.
A 2026 appellate decision remanded Kisack’s case for resentencing.
