Louisiana Voice

You can’t pick up a newspaper, go to an online news service, or turn on television news these days without hearing the term quid pro quo, invariably associated with that July phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine.

But back home, there’s another quid pro quo involving a local elected official in Southwest Louisiana.

Quid pro quo is a Latin phrase meaning an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other. More familiar colloquial terms might be “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” or “One hand washes the other.”

quid pro quo

/ˌkwid ˌprō ˈkwō/

noun

a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something.

Calcasieu Parish District Attorney John DeRosier knows what the term mean—he has known since at least 2011.

A Washington Post STORY published last Friday (Nov. 1) goes into great detail in explaining how DeRosier’s office allows—encourages—offenders to literally buy their way out of community service by purchasing gift cards and money orders for the DA’s office which ostensibly were to be used for charitable purposes but which in reality were sometimes used to purchase gifts for staff members, their grandchildren and other relatives.

Of course, even when the gift cards are used for their intended purpose—to purchase toys and gifts for underprivileged children—it doesn’t hurt his reelection chances when the gifts are distributed very publicly from a fire truck that makes its way through neighborhoods, giving DeRosier ample opportunity to shake hands and to be seen handing out the gifts—all purchased not with campaign funds, but from the parish coffers.

Some of the gift cards even went to DeRosier’s friends and political supporters, even journalists.

Even after DeRosier established a non-profit foundation, the District Attorney’s Community Assistance Foundation (DACAF) in 2015, spotty record-keeping makes it impossible to document precisely how the gift cards are distributed and for what purpose.

First elected in 2005 in a special election, DeRosier, a Democrat, has served as Calcasieu Parish’s DA for 14 years and has established himself as a tough on crime DA, opposing a move to end life without parole for juveniles and even testifying against the 2018 successful constitutional amendment to require unanimous jury verdicts to convict in felony cases.

And he was quick to hire Hugo Holland and Lea Hall after they were fired by the Caddo Parish DA for falsifying a federal application to obtain automatic M-16 rifles from a military surplus program. He hired Holland because of his reputation as a strong advocate of the death penalty.

Since DeRosier first took office in 2005, revenue from fines and fees associated with pre-trial diversion programs has skyrocketed from $182,000 that first year to $5.9 million in 2017, a 30-fold increase.

Much of that revenue has come from a program called Local Agency Compensated Enforcement (LACE), a program which has come under criticism in Calcasieu, Orleans and other parishes which resulted in the temporary suspension of the program by State Police at one point.

Under LACE, local district attorneys pay overtime to state troopers and occasionally local police to stop motorists for traffic violations. Motorists are then given the choice of either taking the ticket or promising to make a direct payment to the DA’s office’s pre-trial diversion program, i.e. indirectly to the DA’s charitable foundation.

That negatively impacts local public defender offices which are already underfunded. For every traffic ticket that goes through the courts, the local public defender’s office gets $45 but for tickets issued through LACE, the public defender’s office gets nothing unless the local DA agrees to share, which isn’t often.

And when public defender’s budgets are cut—LACE tickets tripled while the number of conventional traffic tickets in Calcasieu dropped by 42 percent from 2011 to 2012—representation of indigent defenders necessarily suffers. With no money to retain expert witnesses—while prosecutors have virtually unlimited funds to hire their experts—the opportunity to discover exculpatory evidence or refute expert witnesses is non-existent. And while no one knows the precise number, there are documented cases of innocent defendants being convicted and sent to prison, some to death row.

And while the foundation is required to undergo regular audits, DeRosier has refused to make the audit reports available to reporters.

Likewise, the DA’s office is required to undergo an annual public audit of its finances. The audit of DeRosier’s office contains no line-item for gift care revenue or is the gift card program even mentioned in the audits.

But then, Nicholas Langley, the head of LANGLEY, WILLIAMS, the firm that conducts the audits, is a member of the foundation’s BOARD of DIRECTORS. Additionally, Langley once served as DeRosier’s campaign manager and he, his family and his firm have donated at least $23,000 since 2005 to DeRosier’s campaigns and his firm has in turn been paid $32,000 by DeRosier’s campaign for accounting services.

Quid pro quo.