Louisiana Voice

Like the Energizer Rabbit, he just keeps on running.

Like the wristwatch in the old Timex commercial, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

Former Sheriff and former State Rep. Steve Pylant, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Heeere’s Steve! – and he’s running once again for sheriff of Franklin Parish.

He will be running to fill the unexpired term of former Sheriff Kevin Cobb who was plucked by the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association in Baton Rouge to become its new executive director.

Pylant previously served as sheriff for 16 of his 28 years in law enforcement and followed that by serving eight years in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

Apparently, all that public service was not exhaustive enough and he now wants more.

As I wrote in 2019, I omitted him from my book Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, but it was an oversight and never an intentional slight.

That was because his EYEBROW-RAISING ACTION that same year on behalf four former felons seemed somehow at odds with his rigid law-and-order stance in the legislature.

Normally, I would not open old wounds but Pylant’s re-entry into the public fray qualifies the five-year-old incident as legitimate news.

Typical of today’s brand of Republicanism, a moral code seems to be whatever happens to be convenient at the time, never mind the obvious contradictions.

Pylant obviously applies that logic to his actions, never mind that the action themselves conflict mightily with his public stand as a lawmaker.

That seems to be the trend today, from the very top all the way down to the local level.

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Donald Trump has been accused alternately of being a Russian agent, a puppet of Vladimir Putin, a wannabe dictator in the same mold as Putin, or even the subject of blackmail by Putin.

He has done little to dispel those accusations and in fact, some of his actions have only served to veriify and underscore the disturbing claims.

Take, for example a story that The Washington Post broke around 11:00 a.m. today.

Most of my close associates refuse to subscribe to or have canceled their subscriptions to the Post because of owner Jeff Bezos’s decisions to (1) refrain from making an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election and (2) dictating the editorial content of the Post.

I have to admit that their concerns over Bezos’s interference in the Post’s newsroom operations are legitimate. It’s a disturbing development to be sure.

But, it seems, the paper still can hit Trump where it hurts when occasions dictate, Bezos’s lingering presence notwithstanding.

Take that bombshell that hit my in-box today at midmorning:

Trump, it seems has nominated interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin for the permanent role.

That, despite the fact that Martin has appeared more than 150 times on RT and Sputnik, networks funded and directed by the Russian government, as a guest commentator between August 2016 and April 2024.

He told an interviewer on RT in early 2022 that there was “no evidence” of a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s borders. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, just nine days after that incredulous claim. Instead, he criticized U.S. officials as warmongering and of ignoring Russia’s security concerns.

When nominated, he had to complete a questionnaire which, among other things, asks nominees to list all media interviews. Somehow, he neglected to mention those 150-plus Russian network appearances. Obviously, they just slipped his mind.

Not only did he fail to disclose the appearances, but some national security analysists have accused him of amplifying anti-American propaganda on the Russian networks and the State Department last years said he had moved “beyond disinformation” to engage in covert influence activities aimed at undermining democracies on behalf of Putin’s administration.

This, folks, is way beyond squirreling away classified documents in Mar-a-Lago’s bathroom.

The U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. is the largest in the nation and has almost unbridled jurisdiction to prosecute important national security offenses.

Think about that for just a nano-second.

With those prosecutorial powers coupled with Trump’s “2025 retribution tour,” what odds would you give any dissident in or out of the Trump administration?

It’s a recipe for the purge of anyone with an original thought and of a frightening attack on the media, on academia, on gays, on women, on blacks, on Latinos, on Middle Easterners and anyone or anything else that might stand in this monster’s path.

A White House official told the Post that Trump had made “a brilliant choice in selecting Ed Martin to serve a full, permanent term as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia,” and noted that Martin had “a distinguished record of service,” and as such, was the perfect choice “to restore law and order…”

The kind of law-and-order Trump has in mind should send chills down all our backs.

Project 2025? Forget that. Yes, Project 2025 is a playbook for an attack on our very economic and social structure. It seeks to implement a system beneficial to the ultra-wealthy would-be oligarchs and reduce the rest of society to peonage status.

But that aside, what this nomination does easily transcends Project 2025 in its severity, its threat to democracy and a free society. If Trump can plant one such person in the most powerful U.S. attorney’s office in the nation, what do you expect him to attempt next? Do you seriously believe he’ll stop there? This is just a preview, the opening act, if you will, of what’s to come.

Folks, Trump is as dangerous as a snake – a deadly venemous snake.

He is either (a) a knowing and willing agent of Russia, (b) an aspiring dictator willing to stop at nothing to assert complete control over Congress, the Supreme Court and each of our lives, (c) a total incompetent, in over his head with no idea what he’s doing or (d) a combination of two or all three.

Take your pick: either way we’re doomed if we allow him to continue to run amok, shredding the Constitution and ignoring the courts and the rule of law.

We can sit back and enjoy our SUVs, our flat screen TVs and our Z-turn mowers in a happy little vacuum of obliviousness or we can get off our asses and demand the return of our government to us, the ones to whom it was endowed in the first place, nearly 250 years ago.

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The all-out Nazi purge has come to Louisiana in spades.

First, it was Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University who was deported despite no real evidence that he was a terrorist of any description.

The ICE brownshirts seized him from his New York City apartment on March 8.

But hey, that was way up there in New York. No problem for us, right?

Then, on March 25, masked ICE SS stormtroopers abducted Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk off the street and shipped her off to Pine Prairie, Louisiana.

Why Pine Prairie? Well, it’s remote. So remote, in fact, that any character witnesses in Somerville, Massachusetts, might find it a tad difficult to travel all the way to Jena to testify on her behalf at deportation hearings. It also makes obtaining legal counsel an almost insurmountable task and if they do get an attorney, the lawyer is usually located hours away. Convenient for The Party. Not so much for the Ampleforth-like victim.

Then, the ICE palace guards swooped down upon University of Alabama student Alreza Doroudi. They said he posed “significant national security concerns,” but refused to provide further details or any evidence to that effect.

He, too, was hustled off to Jena, a privately-run prison that has had issues in the past with treatment of prisoners. It’s a black hole where detainees are allegedly abused or, at best, neglected and is every bit as remote as Pine Prairie. See a trend here?

Suddenly, the encroachment of ICE had crept closer to our daily lives.

And now…they’re here.

We mentioned in a previous post that there were engineering students at Louisiana Tech and LSU who were foreign nationals who might be walking on eggshells these days in the legitimate fear that ICE might come calling.

Well, it wasn’t at either of those schools, but that’s not to say they’re being overlooked. Fourteen international students in Louisiana have had their visas revoked, nullifying their permission to continue their studies at four Louisiana universities.

No reasons were given for the action.

Seven of those were students at Southern University in Baton Rouge. Three were from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and two each were students at University of New Orleans and Tulane University.

The Trump administration has launched his own terror campaign against anyone with dark skin or an accent. Due process is not even an afterthought for these people. In fact, U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Indiana) even said incredulously at a town hall meeting that people in America are not guaranteed the constitutional right to due process. “You break the law, you don’t have due process,” she said, apparently having been absent the day her high school civics class learned that that is literally what due process is for.

But such is the crop of Republicans we seem to have in Congress these days. It seems that the era of Everett Dirkson, Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller is of another age.

Today, we live in the age of the new Machtergreifung and we’re all subject to its wrath.

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Please do not forget we are two weeks into our April fundraiser for LouisianaVoice. It’s one of the oldest blogs going in Louisiana and I do this because I love this state. It’s where I was born and where I grew up, married and raised my children. Like any state, we have our shortcomings but as I like to point out, at least we’re not Mississippi.

I try to point out the shortcomings and warts when I see them. They will not correct themselves if we just look away and pretend they’re not there. We have to be vigilant – both to keep the good and to improve on the bad. You may not always agree with me. For that matter, you may never agree with me. But one thing you can say is I speak my mind on controversial subjects without shrinking in the face of authority. In other words, to use what is fast becoming a cliche, I speak truth to power – and I hate cliches, so that’s probably the last time you’ll see me quote that one.

Regardless, I do my best here to keep readers aprised of what I consider to be dangerous trends – like the attempts to destroy our public libraries, the abuses in the Louisiana State Police ranks or the far-too-many wrongful convictions in our judicial systems (see story below).

But it takes certain finances to accomplish this and I humbly implore you to help in any manner you can, be it large or small. Every dollar helps. The largest single contribution will win a first-edition copy of Huey Long’s autobiography, Every Man a King and evern contributon of $50 or more will get a signed copy of my latest book, 101 Wrongful Convictions in Louisiana.

To pay or contribute by credit card, just click on the YELLOW BUTTON to the upper right of this post and follow the instructions. If you prefer, you may simply send a check by mail to Tom Aswell, 107 North College West, Denham Springs, LA. 70726.

Thank you for your generous support through these 13-plus years!

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I thought you might like to peruse a sample chapter from my newest book, 101 Wrongful Convictions in Louisiana. This chapter reveals the cost of wrongful convictions – in costs to arrest and hold a person, the cost of his prosecution and conviction, the cost of his housing and medical care, the cost to taxpayers when he is finally exonerated by evidence that should have been revealed at his trial, but wasn’t and last but not least, the cost to society in the fact that the guilty person may still be free to commit more acts of violence. (You may order a copy of the book for $25 by credit card by clicking on the YELLOW BUTTON, below right, and following instructions, or by sending a check for $25 to: Tom Aswell, 107 North College Street West, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70726.)

Exoneree Compensation

            Dozens of Louisiana exonerees would like – deserve – to be compensated for their wrongful convictions but, like Jerome Morgan, they’re finding their efforts make for a long, arduous battle. Morgan, moments after his release when Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro dropped efforts to re-try him, reiterated that he never knew sixteen-year-old murder victim Clarence Landry and couldn’t have killed him, based on evidence from a police report that a jury at his trial was never allowed to see. Cannizzaro’s refusal to sign onto Morgan’s claim of innocence blocks compensation for Morgan because the Louisiana attorney general has refused to compromise on a 2005 statute that requires former inmates to prove “factual innocence” by “clear and convincing evidence.” That’s a higher bar than it required to free Morgan.

            Louisiana’s rigid interpretation of the statute was drafted as a technicality to force the innocent to prove a negative so as to prevent payments to freed inmates from receiving compensation, advocates claim. The stakes are a relatively modest – forty thousand dollars per year, capped at four hundred thousand dollars spread over ten years – or a lump sum of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. There were, at the time this was written, about twenty former inmates receiving a cumulative six hundred thousand dollars for having served a combined three hundred fifty years in prison.

            It took Earl Truvia, wrongfully convicted, along with Gregory Bright, for the murder of a fifteen-year-old, years to recover a cent. The two were freed in 2002 after twenty-seven years in prison after it was revealed that a schizophrenic heroin addict was the lone witness in their trial and that he testified under an alias. The money recovered by Truvia, he said, barely covered the cost to his family to maintain contact with him and to feed his commissary fund during his imprisonment. “It was real disheartening to know the state of Louisiana acknowledged my criminal conviction was dismissed with volumes of evidence, and then they fought in opposition of a small compensation,” he said.

            Of course, there are always those who manage to exploit the system. When Huwe Burton was exonerated almost twenty years following his 1989 wrongful conviction for a murder he did not commit, he left prison with no money, no credit, and no one to borrow from. So, while his lawsuit for compensation crawled through the legal system, he took an advance of five hundred thousand dollars from a company whose investors include Further Global Capital Management and Blackstone Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world. USClaims, a Florida company, charged Burton 28 percent annual interest on the advance.

            With literally billions in potential payouts at stake, companies offering high-interest cash advances while the exonerated pursue their claims are attracted like flies to a carcass in efforts to victimize the wrongfully convicted a second time. Because civil litigation may languish in the court system for years, exonerees may find themselves paying back more than double their advance. It’s a win-win for all concerned in one sense. It’s a short-term bet on an almost sure thing for the company and for the exoneree whose litigation fails, there’s no obligation to repay the advance. Still, with compensation almost a certainty, it’s a smart investment for the company. Felipe Rodriguez, for example, is another exoneree. When he settled with the state of New York for five million dollars, he repaid five hundred ninety thousand dollars on his advance of three hundred eighty thousand dollars. That represented an accrued interest rate of 55.3 percent.

            Sometimes, when the state resists payment, forcing a lawsuit to recover, the strategy can backfire. In North Carolina, the state refused to compensate Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two black, intellectually disabled half-brothers who spent thirty-one years in prison for the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl, a crime they did not commit. They sued and a jury in their federal civil rights suit awarded the seventy-five million dollars – thirty-one million dollars each and thirteen million dollars in punitive damages.

            As of July 1, 2022, anyone convicted in Louisiana whose conviction has been vacated and who can prove factual innocence may file a petition for compensation of up to forty thousand dollars per each year of wrongful incarceration, with a maximum award of four hundred thousand dollars. That’s up from the twenty-five thousand dollars per year, up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars maximum. Exonerees have the option of receiving a payment of forty thousand dollars per year for up to ten years or of receiving a one-time payout of two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

            Where some awards are made by boards or commissions, Louisiana and several other states allow the courts to determine if an award shall be made. In Louisiana, that decision rests exclusively with the Nineteenth Judicial District Court, located in Baton Rouge.

            In January 2024, a Shreveport television station, relying on figures obtained from the National Registry of Exonerations, which in turn relied of a study by High Rise Financial, a pre-settlement legal funding company, said thirty-seven Louisiana exonerees had received more than fourteen million since 1989 – an average payout of about three dollars for each of Louisiana’s 4,600,000 million residents.

            The report was only off by more than twice that amount because it neglected to factor in additional payouts of more than eighteen million dollars for wrongful convictions in Louisiana. That bumped the per capita share up to $7.08, third-highest in the nation behind Connecticut’s $14.04 and higher than Maryland’s $5.98 per capita rate.  New York had the highest payout with, more than three hundred thirty-eight million dollars to two hundred forty-four exonerees. Texas was second with one hundred fifty-five million dollars to one hundred forty-one wrongfully convicted persons.

            Louisiana is among thirty-five states and the District of Columbia which have laws to compensate the wrongfully convicted up to fifty thousand dollars for each year of wrongful incarceration.

            Several other Louisiana exonerees had claims or lawsuit pending as this book went to press. Sullivan Walter was convicted of rape but later DNA results showed he was not guilty. That information was withheld by the prosecutor who even asked that the criminologist who testified at his trial to “fudge” his findings in an appeal hearing. Walter is seeking four hundred thousand dollars in state compensation.

            In May 2023 the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld an appeals court ruling that Wilbert Jones was “factually innocent” of a 1971 rape for which he was convicted and spent the next forty-six years in prison largely on the strength of withheld information about eyewitness identification or that a different person had been arrested for similar rapes in Baton Rouge within the same time frame. The Supreme Court’s decision cleared the way for him to claim state compensation for more than four decades behind bars for a crime he did not commit. Then-Attorney General (since elected Louisiana’s governor) Jeff Landry opposed Jones’s compensation claim, arguing before the state’s highest court that the appeals court had misinterpreted the litmus test for wrongful conviction compensation.

            That same month, the largest wrongful conviction lawsuit settlement was agreed upon when New Orleans agreed to pay John Floyd five and one-half million dollars. Floyd had been wrongfully convicted of a 1980 double slaying after he was allegedly beaten into confessing by detective John Dillman, who was implicated in at least two other wrongful convictions.

Not all exonerees are awarded compensation nor do most of them prevail in litigation they initiate. Most struggle to find and keep jobs, reestablish long lost family ties, or pay for every day essentials. Innocence Project New Orleans attorney Zac Crawford put it in perspective when he said, exonerees “come home with a ten-dollar bus ticket. That’s all the state gives you when you get out of prison. You’re thrown back into a world that you don’t recognize. You are forced to work for a living, despite having really no skills gained in prison.” He said that’s without even addressing the “trauma and stress” enduring by exonerees while waiting for some kind of compensation for having years, even decades, taken from them.

Three successive Louisiana attorneys general fought compensations. Charles Foti compensation for two of the four exonerated during his tenure. His successor, Buddy Caldwell, opposed nine of twenty-seven during his eight years and Landry, who served from 2016 until his election as governor in 2023, opposed ten of twelve cases.

            Landry relied on DNA evidence to convict criminals but refused to recognize DNA evidence that cleared Wilbert Jones and Malcolm Alexander for their compensation, according to New Orleans television investigative reporters Lee Zurik and Dannah Sauer.

            Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams, elected in 2020 largely on a platform to reform and to correct past errors and misconduct by his predecessors, suddenly found himself on the defensive when two men exonerated of unrelated convictions in 2021 filed separate lawsuits against the DA’s office in an effort to get compensation for their time wrongfully imprisoned. Kaliegh Smith served nearly fourteen years in prison and Kuantau Reeder was behind bars for twenty-eight years.

            Williams, whose civil rights division was instrumental in obtaining the men’s release, said that his taxpayer-supported office should not be held financially accountable for the sins of his predecessors, Harry Connick, Sr., and Leon Cannizzaro.

            In order to collect compensation for a wrongful conviction, it’s not just a simple matter of having a conviction overturned or even to be exonerated; he must prove “factual innocence” by “clear and convincing evidence.” That’s a higher legal standard than is required for freedom. Proponents of compensation claim that requirements amount to proving a negative in order to qualify.

            Following is a list of thirty-five Louisiana exonerees who have been paid state compensation, lawsuit judgments, or both:

• Reginald Adams:        $330,000 state compensation, $1.25 million lawsuit settlement;
• Gene Bibbins:             $250,000 compensation, $1.15 million lawsuit settlement;
• Dan L. Bright:             $251,320 compensation, $78,000 legal fees;
• Gregory Bright:          $330,000 compensation
• Dennis Brown:            $357,871 compensation, $1.4 million lawsuit settlement;
• Nathan Brown:           $330,000 compensation;
• Gerald Burge:             $150,000 compensation, $5,030,000 lawsuit settlement;
• Clyde Charles:            $250,000 compensation, $200,000 lawsuit settlement;
• Royal Clark:                $330,000;
• Allen Coco:                 $150,000 state compensation;
• Rodricus Crawford:    $25,000 lawsuit settlement, compensation pending                          
• Glenn Davis:               $330,000 compensation;
• Douglas Dilosa:          $330,000 compensation;
• Jack Favor                   $55,000 lawsuit settlement
• John Floyd:                 $330,000 compensation, $5.5 million lawsuit settlement
• Larry Delmore:           $330,000 compensation;
• Roland Gibson:          $11 million judgment reversed on appeal;
• Darrin Hill:                 $330,000 compensation;
• Willie Jackson:           $330,000 compensation;
• Henry James:             $330,000 compensation;
• Anthony Johnson:      $330,000 compensation, undisclosed lawsuit settlement amount;
• Rickey Johnson:         $245,000 compensation, confidential federal lawsuit settlement;
• Robert Jones:             $2,050,000 lawsuit settlement;
• Wilbert Jones:            $400,000;
• Curtis Kyles:               $150,000 compensation;
• Terrence Meyers:        $330,000 compensation;
• Jerome Morgan:          $330,000 compensation, $800,000 lawsuit settlement;
• Michael Shannon:       $313,750;
• Kia Stewart”               $259,646 compensation;
• John Thompson:         $330,000 ($14 million lawsuit judgment overturned on appeal)
• Eddie Triplett:             $250,000 compensation;
• Earl Truvia:                 $330,00
• Archie Williams:        $330,000 compensation;
• Calvin Williams:         $330,000 compensation
• Michael Anthony Williams: $330,000 compensation;
• Calvin Willis:              $330,000 compensation;                    

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