Louisiana Voice

That an impartial EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOPSY of Ronald Greene has rejected the Louisiana State Police (LSP) claim that Greene died from injuries suffered in a car crash should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who has followed this latest sorry chapter of the LSP story that has unfolded ever-so-slowly over the past seven years.

LouisianaVoice has chronicled the decadence of LSP since that infamous attempt at the close of the 2014 legislative session to sneak a huge – and illegal – increase in retirement benefits for then-LSP superintendent Mike Edmonson.

And while that effort was thwarted, sources within state police began providing tips that led to LouisianaVoice exclusive stories about:

• Troopers having sex with informants in their patrol cars while on duty;
• Troopers leaving their shifts several hours early to either take naps at home or to work in their personal business;
• Troopers getting into altercations with private citizens;
• Troopers issuing DWI citations to obviously sober drivers just so they could accrue days off;
• The fake retirement of a supervisor at LSP who, when caught, was ordered to repay the state – but never did;
• A Trooper getting a promotion after he was caught sneaking an underage woman who was not his wife into a Mississippi casino;
• A trooper who openly used narcotics while on duty;
• A trooper at the command level who regularly took his state vehicle to football games in Texas to see his brother-in-law play;
• Troopers cheating on their time sheets for supposedly pulling duty in a program funded by local district attorneys;
• A State Police Commission created to serve as a pseudo-civil service especially for State Police but which is riddled with politics and which featured a romantic tryst between members.

There were many more such stories, actually hundreds, so I won’t even attempt to list them all.

And while not an exclusive – The Advocate actually broke the story – there was our account of that infamous trip by car by several troopers to San Diego via Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam back in 2016 (and strangely enough, the troopers were held blameless by investigators who said they were told to take the vehicle and the one who told them to, Edmonson, was somehow also exonerated. Go figure.)

LouisianaVoice also was the first to delve into the Ronald Greene matter that LSP had successfully managed to COVER UP for 15 months and even then LSP had only disciplined one of the officers involved in what was actually the beating death of Greene – not an auto accident – and he was merely placed on leave at the time.

And yes, Greene did flee from police when they first attempted to pull him over and yes, the chase involved speeds in excess of 100 mph. But when he exited his vehicle apologizing for running, he was handcuffed. That should have been enough. When cuffed and not resisting, it would seem to the outside observer that beatings were unnecessary at that point.

The Greene beating wasn’t the only one for Troop F, headquartered in Monroe and responsible for patrol in several northeast Louisiana parishes. That same month, May 2019, Larry Bowman was struck in the head 18 times with a metal flashlight by state troopers even though he was not resisting officers.

The danger of driving while black in northeast Louisiana even got the attention of NPR.

And now, the FBI report says what we knew all along – Greene did not die from the car crash. He died at the hands of state police who then first tried to cover up the incident and then flat-out lied about it. Even the Union Parish coroner went along with the ruse, attributing Greene’s death to the vehicle accident.

And the district attorney for the 3^rd Judicial District, which includes Lincoln and Union parishes, has been strangely quiet on the matter. John Belton is an announced candidate for Louisiana Attorney General and one might think he’d be leading the effort to bring the troopers to justice.

And, of course, LSP has not responded to the latest findings.

As one retired trooper told LouisianaVoice early on, they’ve circled the wagons.

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When I woke up Friday morning, it was 2012 all over again.

The only things missing were Bobby Jindal his own self, along with cow chip-kicking political guru Timmy Teepell, and former Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols.

But there it was, in black and white in Friday’s Baton Rouge Advocate: the ghost of nightmares past in a pious pose, being prayed over by State Rep. Rick Edmonds (R-Baton Rouge), who also is an outreach pastor and vice president of Louisiana’s Family Forum, and Ben Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life.

The event was a statewide pro-life demonstration and Liz was there as the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office’s Solicitor General prior to her unsuccessful defense of the state’s anti-abortion law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

That rally was in January 2020 and the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision came the following June but now Lizzie’s back in full campaign mode – that is, so long as her boss, AG Jeff Landry opts for promotion to the fourth-floor suite across the Capitol Lake in the 2023 gubernatorial election.

That was the gist of The Advocate’s story last Friday. If Landry runs for governor as expected, Murrill intends to run for her boss’s job as the top legal mind (and I use that term ever-so-loosely) in the state. Actually, I prefer the term I heard used by an old friend from my Ruston Daily Leader reporting days, former Ruston City Council attorney Hale Walker, who somewhat cynically referred to the attorney general as “just another lawyer.”

But Landry as governor? Liz Murrill as AG? Folks, we’re looking at Jindal 2.0. (Actually, with the political baggage that Landry is totin’ around, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell he can get elected governor or possibly even reelected AG.)

Be that as it may, Murrill definitely has her sights set on bigger and better things. And why not? Her career track record is reflective of one who is never satisfied with the status quo. And while there’s nothing wrong with that – who, after all, wouldn’t want their career to progress? – it’s interesting to see WHERE SHE’S BEEN to get an idea of where she would probably like to go, and to consider the possible obstacles in her path.

Let’s go back to Oct. 1, 2012. That’s the date that Jindal named Nichols as his Commissioner of Administration. Murrill, meanwhile, worked in the governor’s office from November 2008 and served for 2 ½ years as Jindal’s Deputy Executive Counsel before she was elevated to Executive Counsel, which is the chief legal advisor to the governor.

When Nichols was appointed Commissioner of Administration, she brought Murrill over a month later, in November 2012, as Executive Counsel to the Commissioner, where she remained for two years.

While working for Nichols, Murrill became embroiled in a difference of interpretation of regulations by then Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and then-State Rep. John Bel Edwards when the Jindal administration gutted the Office of Group Benefits’ reserve fund. Through all the testimony during legislative committee hearings, Murrill was caught on camera as she continually exchanged TEXT MESSAGES with someone, probably some staffer in the governor’s office.

She left the commissioner’s office soon after that hearing and bounced around several jobs before joining Landry’s office in January 2017.

Back in 2009, while employed in Jindal’s office, Murrill became involved in a DISPUTE with LouisianaVoice over the release of public records related to the LSU Board of Supervisors’ decision to cut health care spending and to privatize state hospitals. Shelby McKenzie, an attorney retained by LSU, said that Murrill had advised him that the board should invoke the so-called “deliberative process” in order to deny the release of the records.

The deliberative process gambit is a loose interpretation by which public officials, afraid of any light being shone on what they’re doing, may refuse to allow the public to see what they’re doing or to understand the motivations behind their actions.

But let’s re-examine the employment of Shelby McKenzie in this particular issue.

Shelby was an attorney with the Baton Rouge law firm Taylor Porter at the time he gave that advice to the LSU Board. He currently serves OF COUNSEL to the firm and is an adjunct professor of law at the LSU Law Center and has taught Insurance Law there since 1971.

Likewise, one JOHN P. MURRILL is currently a partner at Taylor Porter and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. He is married to Liz Murrill.

Taylor Porter currently has at least a dozen contracts with the State of Louisiana totaling more than $3 million and until earlier this year, was the legal counsel for LSU. Such legal contracts with state agencies are generally issued by the Attorney General’s Office with the concurrence of the agency to be represented.

State law prohibits any person holding at least a 25 percent ownership in an entity from doing business with an agency that employs an immediate family member. It’s highly doubtful that John Murrill is a 25 percent stakeholder in a large firm such as Taylor Porter, which would allow the firm to legally contract with the state.

Still…

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Cory Porter is a candidate for New Iberia city marshal in the Nov. 13 election.

Problem is, he has CRS Syndrome. Cleaning it up just a bit, CRS means Can’t Remember Stuff.

In June 2019, less than a year after the New Iberia Police Department was reactivated, Porter was the subject of a complaint that resulted in a 17-page report that found Porter guilty of departmental policy violations of professional conduct and abuse of power while clearing him of intimidation and harassment charges.

It seems that Porter was taking online courses with Central Christian College, though it’s unclear if that was Central Christian College of Kansas of Central Christian College of the Bible in Missouri of even some other Central Christian College.

Either way, it just seems sort of wrong on several levels that Porter would seek help from fellow officers in writing essays, doing other homework assignments and taking exams in his name – at any Christian college. That’s generally considered cheating and only allowed at big-time college football programs where such activity is the norm.

But the complaint went a little further in asserting that in addition to soliciting the writing and testing skills of the other officers, who just happened to be female, Porter attempted to get one such officer, Det. Coquina Mitchell to attend a New Orleans Saints game with him. Mitchell said when she informed him that she didn’t date fellow officers, Porter told her he had fathered a child with another co-worker.

She said he also once demanded to know why she didn’t answer her home phone on one occasion when he called her and that he drove slowly past her house several times. On still another occasion, she said he was assisting with a traffic stop when Porter appeared at the scene and demanded that she leave with him because he had a class assignment due that night that she needed to finish.

Several other officers were interviewed in the internal investigation and, for the most part, corroborated Mitchell’s story – particularly the story of his demanding that she leave the scene of a traffic stop in order to complete his class assignment.

Porter, when interviewed by Capt. Seth Pellerin, denied asking her to attend the Saints game, contending that he had never even been to a Saints game. He also denied seeking a relationship with Mitchell and said he never asked Mitchell to help him with school work but that she volunteered her assistance.

Porter said he did drive in front of Mitchell’s house but it was for the purpose of surveilling a burglary suspect in the neighborhood.

He was unable to remember, however, just when she began her help although he did remember installing his class program on her computer. Nor did he remember ever phoning her or asking help on assignments from clerk Kristen Broussard even though Broussard had computer screen printouts of work she’d done for him. Porter also could not recall arriving at the traffic stop and demanding that Mitchell leave with him.

“I told Capt. Porter that this was a huge conflict of interest, having a subordinate of his do his online college courses,” Pellerin wrote in his June 21 report.  “Capt. Porter stated that he did not realize it at the time (probably couldn’t remember the regulations) but can see it now. Capt. Porter sated in all his years in law enforcement he has only tried to help people, including his co-workers.”

In his conclusion, Pellerin wrote, “After reviewing all the documentation and interviews, the alleged policy violations against Capt. Corey Porter are sustained. Capt. Porter violated New Iberia Police Department General Order 113 Professional Conduct and New Iberia Police Department General Order 115 Abuse of Power. After reading the policies to Capt. Porter, I asked him if he admits to violating the above-mentioned policies and he said yes.”

Pellerin wrote that he found no evidence that indicated Porter had romantic feelings for Mitchell. Nor did he feel that Porter was seeking retribution against Mitchell.

The Internal Affairs report became public during a court procedure during which Porter was impeached as a witness, a source told LouisianaVoice.

Nor is Porter the only candidate with a certain amount of political baggage.

During a recent forum, candidate Brett Lang was asked about his service with the Iberia Sheriff’s Office, and particularly whether or not the rumors floating around about him being on the Brady List were true.

The Brady List is part of the Brady Disclosure Doctrine, which requires that the prosecution disclose any and all evidence that is favorable to the defendant, also known as exculpatory evidence. The Brady List is a list kept by DAs containing the names of law enforcement officers who are known to have lied, coerced, mislead or withheld information during their scope of duty as a police officer.

The prosecution must make the defense aware if a particular officer played any part in the arrest investigation, handling of evidence etc. of the defendant’s case. This essentially means that any officer who is on the Brady List has no standing in court. The officer, for lack of a better term, is impeached. Though there may be no legal charges against them, his testimony is not tainted.

“As a former police officer, I know that a Law Enforcement Officer’s most important weapon is his word,” said an observer. “It is extremely concerning that Mr. Lang admitted to being on the Brady List. He also mentioned at the same meeting that he would have himself removed from the list, which, as far as I know, cannot be done, nor has he ever re-addressed being removed to by knowledge.”

There are three candidates for the Iberia City Marshal’s office: Porter, a Democrat; Lang, No Party, and Dickie Fremin, a Republican.

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