Louisiana Voice

If you are unfortunate enough to become the victim of a crime, you wouldn’t want to compound your problems by having it occur in Iberia Parish.

The Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, it seems, has problems keeping up with its investigative records.

What’s more, there seems to be a problem maintaining a consistent explanation as to why a record is no longer available.

But then, the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office is not exactly the model you want to hold up as a model of efficiency, forthrightness, or competence.

Take the 2006 murder of Jamon Rogers, for example.

Ricardo Irvin entered a GUILTY PLEA in 2009 to the killing, that much is known.

But when a freelance writer recently made a routine request for the file on the investigation of the killing he was told:

• The sheriff’s office’s computer was hacked last August and the records are no longer accessible;
• If you want the record, you’ll have to get a subpoena.

Well, of course that raised the obvious question of how would a subpoena help if the records were hacked and are “no longer accessible”?

Somehow, those two explanations just don’t reconcile.

It’s similar to the old joke about the lawyer’s answer to a lawsuit that his dog bit a man walking past his office:

• My dog doesn’t bite;
• I keep my dog inside a fence;
• I don’t own a dog.

But that’s nothing new for the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.

After all, in March 2014, Victor White III was stopped by Iberia Parish deputies who said they found marijuana and cocaine on his person. He was placed in a deputy’s patrol car, his hands cuffed behind his back. But while cuff, deputies said, he somehow managed (a) to get a gun and (b) to commit suicide by shooting himself…in the chest.

Lloyd Grafton of Ruston, an expert retained by the White family, said the entry wound was more to the right side than frontal area and that the bullet exited from White’s left side. “There is no way he could have shot himself the way they (officials) described it, with his hands cuffed behind his back,” Grafton said.

Grafton isn’t your typical hired gun retained by attorneys to say whatever supports their case. He is a veteran of twenty-one years as a special agent for the Justice Department’s U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and with the U.S. Treasury as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He has what is commonly known as street creds.

Last month, Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal quietly settled a federal lawsuit brought by White’s family. As has become a trend in civil lawsuits, terms of the settlement were sealed and White’s family was prohibited by a confidentiality clause from disclosing the settlement amount.

Word is, the settlement was paid from sheriff’s department funds and not by an insurance carrier because Ackal’s liability policy was cancelled because of either unaffordable premiums because of repeated violations of basic rights or because no insurance company wants anything to do with providing coverage for the department.

But then again, maybe the department’s policy was simply lost in that massive computer “hacking” last August.

Pursuant to the puzzling response to the freelance writer, LouisianaVoice made an identical request for the investigation records under terms of the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.).

The response this time came from someone named Steve Elledge, general counsel for the sheriff’s office:

“According to the records custodian at the Bureau of Investigations, that investigation case file cannot be located,” read the terse email from Elledge on Wednesday. “Therefore, we are unable to comply with your public records request.”

We couldn’t resist being a bit flippant over what looks from our vantage point as a deliberate effort to avoid compliance with state law:

“You’ve ‘lost’ the file on a murder investigation? Really? Your office yesterday informed another person making the same request that (a) the sheriff’s office records were ‘hacked’ and therefore unavailable and (b) if he wanted the record he would have to get a subpoena. My question is how would a subpoena help if the records were hacked and unavailable?

“When did this ‘hacking’ occur and why was nothing ever publicized about it? There were no news stories about the records being hacked.

“Convenient, to say the least. I wonder if a court order might make them reappear?”

There has been no further correspondence between LouisianaVoice and the sheriff’s office.