Louisiana Voice

So, John Belton wants to be the Louisiana attorney general.

The 3^rd Judicial District chief prosecutor, should he continue his quest for the state’s highest elective legal office, will no doubt roll out a campaign heavy with the usual promises of being tough on crime, a platform of putting criminals behind bars via a heavy emphasis on victims’ rights.

But Belton, the district attorney for the two parishes of Lincoln and Union, apparently feels unable to handle the gift that any politician seeking higher office would welcome: the prosecution of the state troopers involved in the 2019 beating death of Ronald Greene.

Belton has reached out to hired gun Hugo Holland, whom he describes as “one of, if not the, best prosecutors in the state of Louisiana,” to aid him in what would normally be the case of a lifetime for a local DA harboring hopes of a higher pedigree. He justified hiring the circuit rider prosecutor, saying, “I have a very small office compared to the larger jurisdictions. It would have been very difficult for my prosecutorial staff to handle this case with their normal daily docket.”

But a closer examination of Holland’s track record might seem in order. In Caddo Parish, he obtained eight death sentences – two-thirds of the 12 death penalties handed down in the entire state during that same period, according to the DEATH PENALTY INFORMATION CENTER. Many of those sentences, however, have been overturned and none have been actually carried out. Caddo ranks among the top 2 percent of US counties responsible for 56 percent of people on death row.

Holland, meanwhile, is being investigated by the Disciplinary Board of the state’s bar association for failing to turn over exculpatory evidence (evidence favorable to a defendant) in a case in which the accused was tried for the murder of a prison guard. That defendant’s death sentence was overturned in 2014.

Now Holland will participate in the prosecution of four state troopers and a Union Parish sheriff’s deputy who were indicted in December for their roles in the beating death of Greene, 49, who led officers on a chase from Ouachita Parish into Union Parish before wrecking his vehicle. When caught, he began apologizing and offered no resistance, even as the unarmed Greene was dragged by his leg shackles and beaten and tased until he went limp before dying.

G. Ben Cohen, an attorney with the Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans, said of Holland, “I don’t think there is a prosecutor in Louisiana who would look at Hugo to see whether (his multiple billings are) a crime. But, at the very least, the legislative auditor needs to look at Hugo Holland’s setup for fraud, waste and abuse of public funds.”

New Orleans attorney Nicholas Trenticosta specifically cited the case of COREY WILLIAMS during an interview with LouisianaVoice. In that case, prosecutors, including Holland, withheld evidence they were required to provide the defense pursuant to the 1963 US Supreme Court decision in BRADY v. MARYLAND. That exculpatory evidence would have strengthened the case in Williams’ favor.

Cohen said Holland has “a perverse incentive to push for the death penalty, where he gets paid a premium hourly rate to pursue capital punishment. At the same time, he is getting paid $900 a day to lobby the Legislature to reduce the funding for poor people facing the death penalty.”

He also earns $50,000 a year to operate the Webster Parish division of the 26^th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. There, he screens every felony case and shows up in court twice a week while regularly prosecuting cases in at least a dozen other parishes, according to a 2017 story by then-Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Jim Mustian, who now writes for Associated Press.

From 2012 through 2016, Holland was paid $697,000 by those 12 parishes and the State of Louisiana, according to a printout of earnings for those five years. That same printout shows that his annual earnings grew steadily during that period, from $45,000 in 2012 to $217,000 in 2016.

He also was issued oaths of office from 11 judicial districts that included 14 parishes.

In another feature story on Holland, he told a reporter that he was paid about $250,000 a year but that all the money was not for him. He claimed he had assistants in the various parishes who worked for him whom he paid from those fees.

I made a public records request for the federal forms 1099 on June 15, 2017, at 4:52 p.m. to learn how much he paid those assistants. The request was made pursuant to the state public records statute (R.S. 44.1, et seq.) but Holland replied that same day at 9:25 p.m., “Sorry. Not public records. No.”

I replied in kind at 10:00 p.m. with the following message:

“PUBLIC RECORDS LAW REVISED 07/2016 Page 1 of 26 Public Records Law R.S. H44:1 — HTU44:41

“The documents must have been used, in use, or prepared, possessed, or retained for use in the following:

• Conduct, transaction, or performance of any:  Business, Transaction, Work, Duty, or Function
• Conducted, transacted, or performed: By or under the authority of the constitution or laws of the state, By or under the authority of any: Ordinance, regulation, mandate, or order of any public body

“Records regarding public funds are public records; therefore, right to inspection of non-public foundations exists — provided that inspection is limited to records regarding the public funds. State ex rel. Guste v. Nicholls College Foundation, 592 So.2d 419 (La. App. 1 Cir. 1991).

“Here is the link provided by the Legislative Auditor (from which the above passages were taken):

http://app.lla.state.la.us/llala.nsf/7C469838E7BC1C5186257AC2004F6279/$FILE/Public%20Records%20Law%20FAQ.pdf

“If they were paid with public funds, then they are public records. You were paid with public funds, part of which claim you used to pay public prosecutors for additional public work. That makes them official expenditures for services performed on behalf of Louisiana taxpayers. They are public records.”

On June 17, at 6:53 a.m., Holland wrote me again to say:

“You write the following in your original email:

Since these were public funds paid to you in the first place, the disposition of those funds for such similar purposes would, by law, be subject to the Louisiana public records statutes, thus entitling me to be able to ascertain how much and to whom these funds were paid.

“If you show me a case that says this, I will provide the information.  However, when a road contractor receives a payment from the State, it is no one’s business what he does with the money so long as he fulfills the contract and reports the income, and that is my position in relation to others who I paid to assist with my contract duties as an ADA.

“I am quite sure that you intend to write a “hit piece” about me and I am not going to assist you in doing so without legal authority (like caselaw) requiring me to do so.”

My patience wearing thin, I again emailed Holland copies of a document written by Baton Rouge attorney John Murrill in which he said, in part, “Private entities bidding on contracts with public agencies pursuant to which they will be compensated with public funds must understand that if they are awarded the contract, they will almost certainly be subject to the Louisiana Public Records Law.”

To his report he attached a May 3, 2017, LOUISIANA SUPREME COURT DECISION in the case of the New Orleans Bulldog Society v. the Louisiana society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals which held that the SPCA, through its contract with the City of New Orleans, was “functioning as an instrumentality of a municipal corporation, and is therefore subject to the Louisiana Public Records Law, La. R.S. 44:1 et seq.”

I never heard from Holland again.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of the Hugo Holland story.

You see, he was fired from the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s office because in 2011, he and Assistant DA Lea Hall, Jr. conspired to order eight M-16 automatic weapons from the Department of Defense’s Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) under the pretext of needing the weapons because the Caddo DA’s office accompanied sheriff’s deputies on raids, a claim that the sheriff’s office would deny unequivocally.

Louisiana Inspector General Stephen Street investigated the matter and confirmed that Lea and Holland had received the weapons under false pretenses but Street’s office subsequently punted on any action against the pair, who were subsequently forced to resign by DA Chales Scott.

So, now Holland is being asked to come to the 3^rd JDC to help the local guys in doing the job they should be doing themselves.

The odd thing is when the local DA needs assistance, the Louisiana Constitution allows him to call upon the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office to participate.

And the AG doesn’t charge whereas the 3^rd JDC is going to be on the hook for what will like be a bill running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That’s something for the good folks in Lincoln and Union parishes to chew on for a while.

And it isn’t really a “hit piece” when it’s the truth. A prosecutor should understand that.