Judge Randall Bethancourt just can’t seem to help popping up in news reports on the 32nd Judicial District Court in Terrebonne Parish. And that’s not necessarily good.
First, there was that embarrassing STORY three years ago when Bethancourt signed an illegal search warrant over a blog post critical of then-Sheriff Jerry Larpenter in which the blogger’s home was raided by the sheriff’s department and all the computers in the household – including those of the blogger’s children – were confiscated.
It took a federal judge about a nanosecond to dress Bethancourt and Larpenter down and to give them a verbal lesson on the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech. The blogger’s resulting lawsuit cost Larpenter’s office about a quarter of a million dollars to settle.
Now, a Terrebonne Parish attorney who is challenging Bethancourt’s reelection bid in next Tuesday’s election is claiming that Parish President Gordon Dove and others are paying voters up to $150 to vote for Bethancourt, up substantially from the $5 fee paid voters back in the days of Earl Long.
Dove, of course, denies the allegations and defies the alligators but the one-time chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment has had his own problems with the law in the past. His Dual Trucking Co. was CITED by the Montana Department of Environmental Equality for dumping oilfield radioactive waste from the nearby Bakken Oilfield back in 2014. (You may have seen the irony of the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment being cited for dumping radioactive waste.)
That wasn’t the only incident, though. Vacco Marine, Inc., a company owned by Dove, was the subject of several investigations, negative reports, citations, and compliance orders by and from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) over a period of several years, records show.
Also in 2014, while presiding over a meeting of the Natural Resources Committee, he joined 12 other members in passing an amendment to SB 469 that made the prohibition against suing oil companies for damages to the state’s wetlands and marshes retroactive.
So much for looking out for the environment.
But back to Bethancourt.
His honor has found himself embroiled in a couple of volatile controversies – besides the vote-buying claim – heading into next Tuesday’s election. Neither has any direct link to the election but either or both could figure in the outcome.
One is a bitter dispute between grandparents and son over the grandparents’ visitation rights to their grandson, a dispute that has gone into litigation in which resulting legal fees and fines have reportedly bankrupted the child’s parents. Caught in the middle is a seven-year-old child who has been the victim of this tug of war for four years now with no end in sight.
The other involves accusations that Bethancourt falsified court records in a separate case to show that a defendant was brought before a magistrate after his arrest when he was not.
Without more intimate familiarization with the details of the cases and charges of vote-buying, it’s impossible to provide a full-blown, detailed account of events in the 32nd JDC. But knowing what we do know about Larpenter, Gordon Dove, and Bethancourt’s willingness to sign that illegal search warrant back in 2017 (and the resultant settlement by Larpenter with the subject of that raid), suffice it to say Terrebonne Parish is a unique parish, politically speaking, where elected officials have long operated as a law unto themselves and where just about anything goes.
Like storms out on the Gulf, corrupt politicians were accepted as a fact of life in Louisiana 75 years ago and little has changed in Terrebonne in the ensuing decades.
And people generally deserve the kind of government they elect.
Louisiana Voice 
To know him is to loathe him.
This is a judge who is racist, Arrogant and stupid. This judge known as The Sheriff’s Department whore, in the streets of Houma, he will do whatever the sheriff’s department asks him to do. He intentionally put minority defendants Full Social Security numbers to ruin their credit and financial stability giving thieves opportunity to completely Steal their identity. This corrupt arrogant judge ignores the rules of law and creates his own rules. This judge should be investigated by the Louisiana Governor’s office and by the Louisiana judicial system. He had been unchallenged by any higher authority. He Brought so many harm to so many innocence and great people. It’s time to examine this stupid KKK-mentality sick person as this low trash and low life person they call a judge.