Louisiana Voice

Much has been written here about the legal problems experienced by LaSalle Corrections of Ruston, problems brought about by alleged neglect and mistreatment of prisoners being held at its various locations in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia.

Several wrongful death and wrongful injury lawsuits have revealed inadequate training of employees, falsification of prisoner records and fraudulent records certifying that employees had completed certain required training when they, in fact, had not.

Thirteen months ago, reporter Cindy Chang of the New Orleans Advocate/Times-Picayune wrote a PROFILE of LaSalle founder Billy McConnell and his son, Clay. That story provided an interesting glimpse into how they regard prisons – and nursing homes – not from a standpoint of caring for living human beings but as a means to padding the corporate bottom line.

LouisianaVoice has now gone a bit further to show how far the principals – or at least one of the principals – of LaSalle will go to ensure that bottom line is not disturbed by a marital split.

Depending on the month, Louisiana and Oklahoma compete for the title of the state with the highest rate of incarcerations in a nation that leads the world in that statistic. That means that one of the two states will be at any given time, be the world’s leader in incarcerations.

Twenty-five years ago, Billy McConnell was running a family company that financed and built schools, fire stations and nursing homes. But then a federal court ordered Louisiana’s Department of Corrections to reduce the number of prisoners in its overcrowded prison system.

A light came on in Billy McConnell’s head and he subsequently entered the winning bid to construct a prison in Alexandria. That led to others and soon came the decision to not just build, but also operate correctional facilities.

Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown was elected in 2003 on a platform of replacing the parish jail that was located on the top floor of the 74-year-old courthouse in Jonesboro. But Brown had no funds and no authority to raise taxes to build the jail, which he envisioned as being large enough to house additional prisoners in order to maximize the state’s per diem payments.

Along came LaSalle, which built a $15 million, 1,147-bed facility for a relatively crime-free parish of barely 16,000 souls. That’s one prison bed for every 14 Jackson Parish residents. But then, Louisiana’s rate of incarceration is one of every seven residents, so perhaps one bed for every 14 residents isn’t so out of line for the state.

For the privilege of warehousing – and make no mistake, warehousing is the accurate term – state prisoners for about $25 per day per prisoner, LaSalle agreed to pay Brown $100,000 as a “sponsor fee” to operate the jail under his authority.

When the feds came along and upped the ante to about $65 per day for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees, that was icing on the cake. While LaSalle paid the jail’s employees, Brown retained the right to hire and fire the 130 or so personnel – a pretty good bit of political patronage for a local elected official to control.

So, obviously, the McConnells’ decision to go into the jailing business was a humanitarian gesture, right? I mean, after all, son Clay McConnell is a Methodist minister. For the answer to the benevolent question, let’s let him provide the answer:

“We realized that prisons are like nursing homes. You need occupancy to be high. You need to treat people fairly and run a good ship, but run it like a business, watch food costs, employee costs.”

To that end, I guess you’d call LaSalle an unqualified success were it not for those pesky legal costs from all those lawsuits over dead and injured prisoners, and employees either terminated or who sued when they became ill after being exposed to the coronavirus.

But to get a peek at the real heart of this man of God, one need only examine the dispute that arose between the younger McConnell and his former wife following their 2015 divorce.

Clay and Leigh McConnell were married in November 1996 and divorced in October 2016. While married, the couple jointly owned 16.66 percent interest in McConnell Correctional Center, LLC, via an operating agreement dated March 9, 2000.

But wait. On Feb. 2, 2006, McConnell Correction Center, LLC, effected a corporate name change to WMC Enterprises, LLC.

Leigh McConnell was requested to sign a “Transfer of Assets” agreement by her then-husband who she said told her that the transfer agreement was to ensure his voting rights in WMC Enterprises since she “did not attend board meetings of McConnell Correctional Center, LLC,” according to court documents obtained by LouisianaVoice.

The transfer agreement stated in part that Leigh McConnell “has no ownership interest in the entities transferred herein and accordingly no ownership interest in WMC Enterprises, LLC, which is acknowledged as being the separate property of her husband Clay.”

Those “entities” consisted of several other companies that operated under the McConnell Correctional Center corporate umbrella before being transferred to WMC Enterprises.

So, according to Leigh McConnell, she was told by her husband that the purpose of the transfer was to protect his voting rights when in fact the real purpose was to make her half of the 16.66 percent go poof.

 As of 2014, the value of that 16.66 percent was approximately $5.3 million, meaning that as of six years ago, LaSalle (or McConnell Correctional Center, aka WMC Enterprises) was worth approximately $31.6 million. One source said the estimate of today’s worth could be three times that amount, or nearly $100 million.

But Leigh McConnell said in her petition to revoke the transfer agreement filed on Nov. 9, 2016, which she says she signed under false pretenses, denied her half of that 16.66 percent, or 8.33 percent, share in the ownership of McConnell Correctional Center.

She said she was the victim of fraud perpetrated by her then (now ex-) husband, Clay McConnell, her former father-in-law, William McConnell, and WMC Enterprises.

She cited a passage of the original operating agreement of McConnell Correctional Center which said, “No transfer of a membership interest may occur without the unanimous consent of all members and any purported attempt to transfer a membership interest without such approval will not vest in such transferee any membership rights in the company.”

As so happens in such matters, one side in a legal dispute often has limited financial resources while the other has a bigger stack of chips and figuratively, at least, holds all the cards.

This was no exception. Leigh McConnell simply ran out of funds to pursue her claim and her ex-husband, the ordained minister, just kept writing checks to his attorney in order to drag out proceedings. Together, they waited her out until she eventually was more or less forced to dismiss her claim, according to a source close to the situation.

There are two lessons to be learned here:

• What’s $50,000 – or even $100,000 in legal fees – if it can save you a few million?
• Justice can indeed be bought, or at least rented, if you bring enough money to the table: just keep raising the bet until the other side is forced to fold.