Louisiana Voice

Sometimes with local politics, you need a program, an organizational chart, a genealogical diagram, and perhaps even DNA data to keep up with who’s allied with whom and who’s got a vendetta against whom.

So much has been written about Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal that when another local courthouse politician finds himself in trouble, it’s natural to assume that Ackal’s name would come up somewhere in the mix.

After all, Ackal has been indicted and acquitted and there’s talk that the name on his office door may be changed from “Sheriff” to “Defendant.” The sheriff’s department has paid out judgments or settlements that equate to $23,000 per month for every month of his 10-year tenure ($2.8 million total), and that doesn’t even include the $600,000 settlement with the family of Victor White III, the 22-year-old who authorities said got hold of a gun and fatally shot himself in the chest—while his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Nor does it include the lawsuit just filed against Ackal and three of his deputies. The plaintiff, Rickey Roche, claims the deputies beat him and planted drugs on him during a retaliatory traffic stop following an altercation between Roche and one of the deputies. (Nary a word has been written by the local paper about this lawsuit, by the way.)

More on that later, but first the confusion surrounding the June 8 indictment of Iberia Clerk of Court Michael Thibodeaux by M. Bofill Duhé, the local district attorney who loves to indict people on BOGUS CHARGES.

The indictment on 14 criminal counts of perjury, racketeering, malfeasance, theft of advance court costs, filing false/altered public records was handed down by M. Bofill on the basis of an admittedly nasty INVESTIGATIVE AUDIT.

But the fact that the indictment came a full 20 months after the release of the October 2016 audit should raise eyebrows. And considering a blindfolded man could turn around three times and spit and most probably hit a legislative audit report at least as serious as this one which produced not even a slap on the wrist, and you really start wondering about the local political affiliations.

Among other things, the state audit said that from May 2013 to May 2016, the clerk’s office “improperly retained $314,495 in unused advance court costs that state law required to be refunded to the persons who originally deposited those monies. Of this amount, the Clerk of Court transferred $218,021 from the advance deposit bank account (advance deposit fund) to the Clerk of Court’s salary fund bank account (salary fund) to pay Clerk of Court salaries and other expenses. The remaining $96,924 represents monies currently in the Clerk of Court’s advance deposit fund that should be returned to the persons who made the original deposits.”

The misuse, misapplication, mismanagement and/or the misappropriation of more than $300,000 is a serious offense, one which should never be taken lightly and the DA’s office took the appropriate action in pursuing its own legal investigation once the audit came to light.

But the question must be asked: where was the DA’s office when prisoners were being abused and killed while in custody of Sheriff Louis Ackal? Yes, Ackal was indicted, but it was a federal indictment. Duhé was nowhere to be found.

But here’s Thibodeaux’s cardinal sin: Ryan Huval was an employee of the clerk’s office and Thibodeaux terminated him. The official reasons are not known and Thibodeaux is prohibited from discussing it because of privacy issues.

But the reasons, whether justified or not, don’t matter. Ryan Huval is the son of Ricky Huval.

Ricky Huval is the parish assessor and he was not happy with his son’s firing. And Ricky Huval and District Attorney M. Bofill Duhé are tight.

As a sidebar, unconfirmed rumor has it that certain property belonging to one Michael Thibodeaux might also have been reassessed by Huval’s office.

So, for a change, a local political story in Iberia Parish does not involve Sheriff Ackal.

But then, he has all he can handle with that latest lawsuit by Roche who says that after his confrontation with Lt. Col. Gerald Savoy the sheriff’s office targeted Roche with surveillance and pulled his vehicle over without probable cause. He says he was kicked, punched, choked and beaten with a baton and flashlight by then-deputies Byron Lasalle, Jason Comeaux, and Wade Bergeron and that they planted drugs on him.

All four deputies eventually were indicted for prisoner abuse, entered guilty pleas and testified against Ackal, who was acquitted.

Bergeron was sentenced to 48 months in prison while Comeaux received sentences of 40 and 30 months, Lasalle got 54 months on each of three counts to run concurrently, and Savoy was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison.

All this is not to claim either that Thibodeaux is guilty or that he’s as pure as the driven snow, but it is rather curious that Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal was never indicted by Duhé’s office for some of the transgressions he was accused of—little things like turning vicious dogs loose on defenseless prisoners or forcing prisoners to simulate oral sex with deputies’ nightsticks.

Here are a few other lowlights of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, as itemized in a letter to then U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch by U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond of New Orleans, none of which attracted the diligence of Duhé’s office:

• In 2005, a former inmate alleged that deputies beat him so badly when he was booked into jail that he had to spend two weeks in a hospital.
• In 2008, a man alleged that a deputy beat him so badly during an arrest that he coughed up blood and then a muzzle was put over his mouth. The man later settled a suit with the Sheriff’s Office for $50,000.
• In 2009, Michael Jones, a 43-year-old man who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, died in the jail after an altercation with then-Warden Frank Ellis and then-lieutenant Wesley Hayes. This year, a judge ruled that two Sheriff’s Office employees were responsible for Jones’ death. The judgment in the case totaled $61,000.
• In 2009, former inmate Curtis Ozenne alleged that officers began a contraband sweep by forcing him to remain in the “Muslim praying position” for nearly three hours. Mr. Ozenne alleged he was kicked in the mouth multiple times, threatened with police dogs and then his head was shaved. In his complaint, Mr. Ozenne also alleged that Sheriff Ackal threatened him with a dog and watched as an officer struck him with a baton for smiling. Mr. Ozenne’s suit against the Sheriff’s Office was later settled for $15,000.
• In 2009, Robert Sonnier, a 62-year-old mentally ill man, died as the result of a fatal blow delivered by an IPSO Deputy in the course of a physical altercation. After Mr. Sonnier was unable to receive a psychological evaluation authorized by his wife, he was left in a wheelchair to stew in his own waste for several hours. He eventually became agitated which led to altercations with Deputies that resulted in Sonnier being pepper sprayed twice and eventually leading to the fatal blow.
• In 2012, Marcus Robicheaux, an inmate at Iberia Parish Jail, was pulled from a wall and thrown to the ground as IPSO correctional officers ran a contraband sweep. A deputy’s dog then attacked Mr. Robicheaux, biting his legs, arms and torso, as the deputy stomped and kicked the prone inmate. The whole three-minute incident was captured on video from the jail’s surveillance cameras.
• In 2014, Victor White III died as the result of a fatal gunshot wound while handcuffed in the backseat of an IPSO car. The sheriff’s deputies who arrested Mr. Victor (sic) alleged that he wouldn’t leave the car and became “uncooperative.” They say he pulled out a handgun, while his hands were cuffed behind his back, and shot himself in the back. However, the full coroner’s report indicated that Mr. White had died from a single shot to his right chest, contradicting the initial police statement that he had shot himself in the back.

But Duhé was right there when Ackal needed him to help shut up a New Iberia black man who initiated a recall petition after the Victor White shooting.

On July 8, 2016, Broussard was rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver In Lafayette Parish who minutes later collided head-on with an 18-wheeler and was killed in adjacent Iberia Parish.

Yet it was Broussard who was indicted on a charge of manslaughter by an Iberia Parish grand jury on March 19, 2017, just nine days before the seven deputies were sentenced.

So just how did Broussard find himself in Ackal’s crosshairs? On July 1, a week before the auto accident, Broussard committed the unpardonable sin when he became the impetus behind a recall of Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal.

Broussard, an African-American, was one of the organizers of The Justice for Victor White III Foundation which filed a petition on July 1 to force a recall election. White was the 22-year-old who died of a gunshot wound while in the back seat of a sheriff deputy’s patrol car in March 2014. The official report said the gunshot was self-inflicted. The coroner’s report said he was shot in the front with the bullet entering his right chest and exiting under his left armpit. White’s hands were cuffed behind his back at the time.

Ackal, of course, skated on that issue and was later indicted, tried and acquitted on federal charges involving beating prisoners and turning dogs loose on prisoners, as well. But when you’ve got retired federal judge and family member Richard Haik helping with the defense, you tend to land on your feet.

But hey, Ackal also didn’t fire Ryan Huval.