Louisiana Voice

The Louisiana Courthouse on a Black Burial Ground

The Unsettling Legacy of the Colfax Massacre (Second Installment)

By Charles R. Moore

There is a place in Louisiana where the daily work of a state district court—hearings, trials, sentencing and the routine administration of justice—takes place in a courthouse which sits on and is surrounded by an unmarked mass grave of 54 or more executed Black men. When people first hear this, they are incredulous. When they learn that it is true, they are disturbed and cannot understand how a Louisiana district court can be seen as administering justice.

While we are not responsible for the past, we are responsible for deciding whether to ignore or confront its continuing injustice. That responsibility is greatest when continuing injustice undermines our system of justice and erodes confidence in our courts. That is the question which faces Louisiana at its district court in Colfax.

The men beneath the courthouse

The men buried in today’s courthouse square had been commissioned under Louisiana law by Grant Parish’s newly elected Republican district judge to defend the courthouse from an imminent attack by White supremacists who rejected the results of the election of 1872 and who sought to seize political power by force.

Only a few years earlier, many of these men had lived as slaves on plantations in what became Grant Parish. Emancipation and the Reconstruction Amendments transformed them from property into citizens, giving them the constitutional right to vote, hold office, and to participate in the political process.

The defenders dug a crescent-shaped trench in the courthouse square from which they would fight. The next morning, Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, the attackers demanded their surrender. The defenders responded that they would wait for expected state troops from New Orleans. Around noon approximately 120 heavily armed White men, many of them former Confederate soldiers, launched their attack in response to the cry of one of their leaders, “Boys, this is a struggle for White supremacy!”

The trench line held until the attackers moved a small cannon into position to fire down

the length of the trench.  The defenders broke and ran. Most retreated to the brick courthouse. Rather than storm the building, the attackers set it on fire. Some defenders burned to death hiding beneath the floorboards. Others were shot down as they tried to escape. Most surrendered. Their hands were bound and they were placed under guard.

The prisoners were told that they would be held overnight in a nearby plantation sugarhouse. Bound and defenseless, they were marched in pairs, each followed by an armed White rider on horseback. When the signal was given, the Whites opened fire. Some prisoners were deliberately positioned so that one bullet would kill two men.

Two days after the massacre a detachment from the Louisiana National Guard sent by the Governor to investigate the “troubles” in Grant Parish arrived in Colfax. Their report described a gruesome scene. The ground around the courthouse was “thickly strewn with dead.” Men attempting to flee had been “shot down without mercy.”  Many had been shot in the back of the head and neck. Bodies were cut with knives, mutilated, battered and disfigured. Most bore three to a dozen wounds. And many, the report stated, “had their brains literally blown out.”

While some of the dead had been carried away by family and friends, the military reported that 54 were buried in a trench they had dug by the courthouse from which they had fought.

Three White attackers were killed. Historians have described the Colfax massacre as the deadliest single act of racial and political violence of the Reconstruction era. Estimates of the Black dead range from about 80 to more than 150.

More than 150 years later, the men buried in the trench remain in the courthouse burial ground, still unacknowledged and unmarked.

Dead men in the way—but never moved

With its courthouse destroyed, Grant Parish rented the Shackleford store as a temporary courthouse. At the same time residents debated whether the parish—created by the reconstruction legislature in 1869 as a majority Black parish to give newly freed slaves political representation—should be abolished or whether the parish seat should be moved elsewhere.

As pressure grew to build a new courthouse, The Colfax Chronicle in February 1878 called on Grant Parish to build “your temple of justice,” describing the interim courthouse as “miserable, dirty and filthy barn-house, an eye-sore to humanity….”

Shortly afterward, the newspaper reminded its readers that the Black victims of the massacre lay buried in the courthouse square and urged that the “unfortunate victims” be “dug up and removed to some suitable place” because they were “in the way” and were being subjected to “indignity and abuse.” They were not moved.

The urgency for a new courthouse increased dramatically in June of 1878 when an arsonist using coal oil burned down the temporary courthouse and its records.

Calling again for a new courthouse, The Colfax Chronicle observed that most parish residents approved of locating it on the land which had been “baptized in blood”—the massacre site—even though it may not be fit for “divine” approval. Nevertheless, the paper conceded that it was the most desirable location.

After much prodding, the police jury finally called for bids to build a two -story 30 by 50-foot wooden courthouse. The Chronicle’s earlier warning proved prophetic when in April 1882, the paper reported that workers ”digging a ditch around the square in which the new court house is situated” about 60 feet from the site of the courthouse burned in the massacre, “unearthed a skull and several bones of the feet and hands of some of the victims on that occasion.”

The paper wrote that the burial trench had originally been marked by a mound, but the mound had been destroyed when the ground around the courthouse was leveled during construction. Without the mound, the paper observed, the burial ground would eventually be “obliterated” unless the bodies were removed, commenting, “It looks bad to have these ghastly relics exhibited now and then, as was the case last Tuesday with that grinning cranium with a round bullet hole bored clear through it.” This warning, like the first, went unheeded.

A tourist attraction remembered, dead men ignored

The 1882 wooden courthouse lasted only 20 years before complaints about its condition led to calls for yet another courthouse.  Efforts to move the parish seat from Colfax continued but again failed.

During this same time, an artesian well was drilled to provide “pure” fresh water for the courthouse and the public.  Instead of fresh water, the well produced salt water mixed with natural gas. When ignited, the gas produced a flame on the water, becoming a tourist attraction featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

As workers were “digging the artesian well in the courthouse square,” they unearthed the skull and bones of one of the men killed in the massacre. The Colfax Chronicle reported the discovery on April 22, 1899, in an article entitled “Only a Negro’s Bones.”  The Chronicle wrote:

• At once an idle and gaping crowd gathered, and several little boys exhibited ghoulish glee digging and scratching out the grim remains for inspection. True, it was only a negro’s bones, but common decency prompts that they be covered out of sight, and humanity dictates that the children should not be allowed to play the role of jackal and grave digger.

Despite the discovery of the bones, the construction of the brick courthouse with a clock and bell tower began. The failed well was deliberately incorporated into the courthouse design. Set within an ornate octagonal basin, the flames burned in the center of the wide walkway leading to the courthouse entrance, illuminating the path into Grant Parish’s newest “temple of justice”. The flame, however, was not one of remembrance for the men who had died defending the courthouse, but instead was a curiosity meant to bring tourists to Colfax.

The flaming well died out in the early 50s. Nevertheless, a marker has been placed where it once burned. A marker for a dead well—but no marker for the dead men.

Bones continue to bear witness to the massacre

Bones continued to be unearthed at the courthouse. In 1913 a skeleton was dug up by workers fixing curbing on the north side of the courthouse square. In October 1927 workers putting down pipes for water works unearthed another skeleton. The bones were sent to LSU for their civil war relics collection, but the gift was refused as being too gruesome. The skull came with a bullet hole with the bullet still in it.

In 1965 workers digging the foundation for a new courthouse, dug up more bones. The Alexandria Town Talk reported that discovery of the bones so disturbed the workers that they refused to continue digging. The paper wrote:

• Human bones were human bones, and as far as the workers were concerned, they were laying the new courthouse’s foundation in a cemetery. And technically, they were. The bones were collected by a 12-year-old boy who put them in a box and gave them to his father who later donated them to LSU.

Only the graves of White men need to be marked

Three White men died in the fighting. They were treated as heroes. The number of Black dead remains uncertain, ranging from around 80 to 150 or more. Although the Black defenders had been commissioned under Louisiana law to protect the courthouse, they were long portrayed as “rioters,” unworthy even in death of acknowledgment, their burial ground treated as though it did not exist.

Recently Justice Alito, in referencing the massacre in a concurring US Supreme Court

opinion recognized that the defenders were the victims:

• The men had gathered at the courthouse to defend local Republican oficeholders who had been threatened by a White mob following a disputed election. After a cannon was used to set the courthouse on fire, many of the defenders were murdered after they surrendered.”

In 1951 the State erected a marker at the courthouse, referred to by local attorneys as the “scorecard.” The marker read:

• On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three White men and 150 negroes were slain. The event on April 13, 1873, marked the end of carpetbag misrule in the South.

Although the marker established that the massacre had occurred “on the site”—the present courthouse grounds—it omitted that at least 54 of the 150 Black men killed were buried in the field of battle at the courthouse. The marker was removed in 2021 because it “falsely” described the massacre as a riot.

When the grave of Stephen Parish, one of the three White men who died manning the cannon, was found to be in a dilapidated condition, Grant Parish paid to have his remains moved to the Colfax public cemetery where he was reburied marked by a headstone and enclosed by a white picket fence.  For the 50th anniversary of the massacre Grant Parish contributed 40% of the cost of erecting a 12-foot-tall white marble obelisk in “Loving remembrance to the heroes…who fell in the Colfax Riot Fighting for White Supremacy.”

The monument was dedicated in soaking rain. A band accompanied by White massacre veterans marched from the LeSage Hotel, across the street from the courthouse to the graveyard where the widow and daughter of two of the White dead and the high school student body were waiting. A judge served as masters of ceremonies. On his signal the band began to play, and the students walked slowly around the veiled monument, placing flower petals at its base. The veil was then dropped revealing the inscription.

The procession then went to a nearby pecan tree which was commemorated for the role it played in the massacre protecting the White attackers.  Later reports Stated that Black men had been hung from the same tree.  A plaque from the National Forestry Service was attached, marking the tree’s historical significance.

The procession then returned to the LeSage hotel where dinner was served, veterans of the massacre were recognized, and the judge and district attorney gave speeches.

The contrast between the treatment of the White and Black dead could not be greater. A grave was marked. A picket fence was placed. A memorial was erected. Even a tree was honored.

The Black burial ground has never been treated as a burial ground. The abuse reported by

The Colfax Chronicle in 1878, continues to this day. Located on public property at the very seat of justice it has never been acknowledged or marked as a matter of public policy. Louisiana and Grant parish knowingly permit the burial ground to continue to be disturbed, ignored and desecrated, even though Louisiana law requires that unmarked burial sites be treated equally without regard to race, creed, or religion.

The Black burial ground at the courthouse is not recognized as sacred

Louisiana law and traditions recognize that burial grounds are sacred places deserving dignity, respect and protection. A 1950 letter to the editor of The Colfax Chronicle illustrates the principle. The writer urged better care of the Colfax Cemetery because it was “this most sacred place.” He explained that “strangers” often asked to see the riot monument, but he was ashamed to direct them to the cemetery because it was in poor condition. He called for every efort “to make this sacred spot one that we will all be proud of, that we will take pride in showing to others, that will show the proper respect to our dead, that will beautify and glorify our town.”

The State and Parish have chosen not to recognize the courthouse burial ground as sacred ground. It is treated as just another piece of public property, the men buried there unworthy of remembrance, their humanity denied and their memory sought to be erased. There has been no letter to the editor calling for sacred ground to be treated as sacred ground. Politicians—State and local—with the power to fix it remain silent.

What is a suitable courthouse?

As a trial attorney I tried cases in courthouses across the State but never appeared in Colfax. In those years I had heard little if anything about the massacre. It was not until I read an article about the dedication of a memorial to the massacre victims that I wanted to know more. I drove to Colfax, expecting to find the memorial at the courthouse. Instead, I found it nearly half a mile away in the right-of-way of the Kansas City Southern Railroad. I needed to understand why it was there.

Searching for an answer led me to books, historical documents, contemporary newspapers, government reports and eyewitness accounts. I discovered not only that men had been massacred defending the courthouse but that many had been buried at the courthouse where they remain today, unacknowledged, while the court goes about its

daily business.  As a lawyer who had spent much of his professional life in courthouses, I found that deeply troubling.

In my first year as a law student, Professor Robert Pascal repeatedly lectured his students that lawyers were “Priests of the Law” and the courthouse was a “Temple of Justice.” He explained that the responsibility of a lawyer extended far beyond representing clients.

Lawyers were also duty-bound to maintain the integrity of the judicial system and preserve

the public’s confidence that justice is being administered fairly, impartially, and without fear or favor.

The oath I took on admission to the bar commanded honesty, integrity, fairness, justice and due respect for the courts. The Code of Professionalism reminds lawyers of our responsibility to the judicial system, the public, our colleagues and the rule of law.

Those principles recognize a fundamental truth: in our courts, justice must not only be done, but it must also be seen to be done. Public confidence in the judiciary depends as much upon the appearance of fairness and impartiality as upon fairness itself. The perception of injustice can be as damaging as actual injustice because both erode public confidence in the courts. Every person entering a courthouse should have confidence that justice is being administered in a place that itself respects the law rather than contradicts it.

Louisiana law requires the parish to provide a “suitable” building to be used by its district court. Suitability embodies the fundamental principles upon which the administration of justice rests and encompasses far more than the physical structure itself. It includes not only the courthouse building but also the land on which it sits and the courthouse square, together form the setting in which justice is administered.  For a building to be suitable for use as a courthouse, its structure, grounds and setting must support—not undermine—the dignity, integrity, impartiality and public confidence upon which the administration of justice depends.

Furthermore, our courts, under the Louisiana Constitution, possess the inherent power to protect the integrity of the judicial system to ensure that justice is done and appears to be done.

Measured against those standards—or any other measure in a society committed to equal justice under law—the Grant Parish courthouse as presently constituted is not a suitable building for use as a district court.  It sits on and is surrounded by an unmarked mass grave of Black men who lawfully defended the courthouse against what Justice Alito described as a “White mob” using violence to enforce White supremacy because they rejected the results of an election. When the defenders surrendered, they were bound, executed, brutalized and mutilated. They were hastily buried in the trench they had dug to defend the courthouse.

These men were executed because they acted as freemen exercising their rights under the Constitution and federal law. The violence against them was not merely political retaliation. It was retribution—punishment for refusing to submit to the will and dominance of White supremacists.

They have remained in the same unacknowledged, unmarked trench on the same courthouse grounds. Requests to remove their remains have been ignored.  Bones have repeatedly been unearthed, testifying to the massacre yet public officials have always chosen to build their courthouses on the same soil “baptized by blood.”

These repeated decisions send a message that the courthouse is a place for White justice and a warning, which to this day has not been repudiated, that exercising one’s rights and defying White supremacy could be answered with violence and death.

Their resting place has never been treated as sacred ground. They have never received the same dignity and protection afforded to those buried in the Colfax Cemetery. Today, government action by the parish—and inaction by the State—prohibits the placement of any marker at the courthouse acknowledging the massacre and the men buried there.

Louisiana has chosen to continue to permit the racial violence and injustice of its past to undermine the integrity of the administration of justice in our own time. At Louisiana’s flagship public law school, Professor Pascal repeatedly emphasized that lawyers were “Priests of the Law” and that the courthouse was a “Temple of Justice” where law was applied equally and fairly. The Colfax courthouse is no such temple. It is an anachronism—a relic of an era of White supremacy where Whites ruled over Blacks through violence. It represents a past so deeply embedded in Louisiana that today neither the State nor the parish can summon the courage to act to free the courthouse from the legacy of racial violence and White supremacy.

Although we bear no responsibility for the past, it falls upon us to transform this ground—baptized in blood and for more than 150 years a symbol of unresolved injustice—into the Temple of Justice that Louisiana law requires and that Professor Robert Pascal envisioned.

Louisiana today should not tolerate the message that still lingers in the courthouse square. We—and our leaders—have a choice. We can continue the legacy of violence and bigotry that has shaped this place for generations, or we can break that chain of injustice and restore this ground so that it reflects the justice, equality, and human dignity our judicial system is sworn to uphold.

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One of the properties of Rock Bordelon and Allegiance Health Care in Ruston has reportedly been sold at a sheriff’s sale for unpaid taxes of nearly $19,000 to a resident of Alabama who is an officer in a newly formed multi-regional electric utility company.

Northside Family Practice, formerly Northside Green Clinic at 1402 Celebrity Drive in Ruston was reported purchased by BECKY WALDING of Hoover, Alabama.

BECKY WALDING

Walding worked for Southern Company, an American gas and electric utility holding company based in Atlanta, with offices in Birmingham. According to her Linkedin profile, she worked for Southern Company for nearly 17 years, more than four years as Transmission Planning Manager. She then worked for Southern Power for two-and-a-half years as director of Transmission & Market Policy before spending three years as Senior Director of Business Management at NextEra Energy Transmission and then three years as Chief Development Officer for VIRIDON, a three-year multi-regional electric utility out of Chicago that builds, buys and manages transmission assets.

It was unclear what her intentions are in purchasing a defunct medical clinic founded by two physicians who have since signed on to practice with Willis Knighton, which is building a facility in Ruston. The building reportedly cost $800,000 to build. Also unclear was her connection, if any, to Bordelon.

A provision of the sale gives Bordelon the opportunity to reacquire ownership of the property if he pays the tas liability of $18,926.76 within three years of the purchase by Walding.

Meanwhile, tension continues to build between Bordelon and his Allegiance Health which runs North Louisiana Medical Center, the subject of a scathing 84-page report by the Louisiana Department of Hospitals which found NLMC falling far short in a number of areas of required services.

Bordelon has engaged in exchanges with Ruston critics of his administration of medical facilities in an online web service called Ruston Rants:

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In keeping with our policy of chronicling the arrests of those so-called Christians who use their positions to abuse children for the satisfaction of their sick sexual urges even as evangelicals accuse others such as gays and drag queens of grooming children, LouisianaVoice is reporting that a former member of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s church in Benton has been arrested on 90 counts of child molestation, dating back nearly 40 years.

David Mercer, 72, of Folsom in St. Tammany Parish, WAS ARRESTED by Bossier Parish sheriff’s deputies, with assistance from the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, following an investigation of four child victims between 1989 and 1995 while he was serving as youth minister at Cypress Baptist Church of Benton. He resigned in 1995.

CYPRESS BAPTIST CHURCH OF BENTON is the home church of U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, the U.S. House Speaker.

Mercer was employed as a youth pastor at a local Folsom church at the time of his arrest.

He is just the latest in a string of literally hundreds of Protestant ministers and Catholic priests who have been arrested over the years for child sexual molestation, many of whom are identified by name in my book, The Dinosaur Club, which also names judges, cops, politicians and celebrities who have been identified as child sexual predators.

In Mercer’s case, he was returned to Bossier Parish where he was taken to the parish’s maximum security facility bond was set at $2.5 million.

Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington said the investigation in ongoing and additional charges and victims are expected.

“Although nearly 40 years have passed, the passage of time does not lessen the seriousness of these crimes or the impact they have had on those affected,” Whittington said. “I want to encourage anyone who may have been a victim or witnessed these actions to come forward and contact the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office. We are committed to thoroughly investigating these allegations and seeking justice for those who may have been impacted.”

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Among the many self-perpetuated myths of Donald J. Trump, the Grand Pooh-bah of Superficial Unctuousness, is his oft-repeated claim of being pro-law and order, tough-on-crime and otherwise a harsh opponent of those who would scheme to lie, cheat, steal, scam, defraud, riot, deal drugs or otherwise harm the American citizenry.

The truth is far different as evidence by his disdain for the Capital Police officers injured in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, or by his propensity to pardon or commute the sentences of the very ones who have committed of any of the aforementioned atrocities.

One of those Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump subsequently was arrested of her threat to kill Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

In other words, like the claim of stolen elections, a “vandalized” Reflecting Pool, the Epstein files, his IQ, weight, tax returns, grades at Wharton and literally everything else, he lies.

And just as all his other lies are so easily refuted by the record—with the exceptions being his tax returns, his grades and the Epstein files, all of which he stubbornly refuses to release—his dedication to law and order is easy to debunk, perhaps even easier.

The sad truth is Trump is not only a serial liar; he also is a willing participant in a major criminal enterprise—an abettor, an accomplice.

Take for example Ross Ulbricht, Larry Hoover, Garnett Gilbert Smith and Juan Orlando Hernández. Even as his administration was bombing boats he accused of smuggling drugs, he was granting pardons to Silk Road founder Ulbricht who was convicted of creating the largest online black market of its time for illicit goods, including illegal drugs; Chicago gang leader Hoover, Baltimore drug kingpin Smith and Honduran president Hernández who had received a 45-year prison sentence for running a widespread “narco-state” in his native Honduras that helped to move some 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

As for the victims of criminal activity, there is this: Last December, Mr. Law and Order pardoned convicted securities and wire fraudster Tervor Milton. It’s bad enough Milton had received only a four-year federal prison sentence, a sentence for which he never served a day, but the $660 million in restitution to defrauded investors prosecutors had requested was wiped clean in a single stroke of Trump’s Sharpie. Milton and his wife, by the way, donated more than $2.5 to Trump’s campaign but insisted he did nothing wrong.

Trevor Milton

But it was the pardon of ADAM KIDAN, a former business partner of Abramoff, who seems to have flown under the radar. Kidan pleaded guilty in 2005 to fraud and conspiracy in connection with his purchase of a fleet of gambling boars which was connected in turn to a wider investigation of the lobbying scandal involving Abramoff, the Interior Department of members of President George W. Bush’s administration. The following year, he was sentenced to almost six years in prison. Kidan, was released from prison in 2009 and last March, he was among the hosts of a fundraiser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which was probably a mere coincidence.

Milton wasn’t the only beneficiary of Trump’s compassion that not only restored their civil rights after imprisonment or allowed them to avoid prison altogether, but who also were allowed to walk away from tens of millions of dollars in financial penalties. Marian Morgan was one of those. He was sentenced to nearly 34 years in prison in 2013 for running a Ponzi scheme and was ordered to repay $17.5 to investors. Trump commuted her sentence “to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions.”

Earlier this month, on July 5, Trump issued pardons to a former partner of lobbyist/swindler Jack Abramoff and nine others convicted of violating vehicle emissions controls but who Trump said were merely trying to “repair their automobiles.”

But it was the pardon of ADAM KIDAN, a former business partner of Abramoff, who seems to have flown under the radar. Kidan pleaded guilty in 2005 to fraud and conspiracy in connection with his purchase of a fleet of gambling boars which was connected in turn to a wider investigation of the lobbying scandal involving Abramoff, the Interior Department of members of President George W. Bush’s administration. The following year, he was sentenced to almost six years in prison. Kidan, was released from prison in 2009 and last March, he was among the hosts of a fundraiser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which was probably a mere coincidence.

Paul Walezak was a health care executive who was ordered to pay more than $4 million to the IRS after he pleaded guilty to tax crimes. His pardon miraculously came through only 12 days after his sentencing, relieving him of the obligation of his plea bargain agreement.

There is also Leonard Glenn “Fat Leonard” Francis, the con man who plied Naval personnel with booze, bribes and prostitutes on the way to defrauding U.S. taxpayers of $35 million before fleeing the country only to be recaptured. Now, he’s asking for a pardon. The Justice Department has opposed his overtures but with Trump in the Oval Office, don’t be surprised if DOJ has a sudden change of heart.

Besides the damaged inflicted on the victims who, with the pardons, lost all hope of ever recovering any of their investments, there is the cost that went into the process of investigating and prosecuting the criminals only to see Trump award them with a Get Out of Jail Free card as if he were playing a high-stakes game of Monopoly.

After an investment of hours spent prepping witnesses in a case against Culpeper County, Virginia, Sheriff Scott Jenkins for accepting $75,000 in bribes from wealthy business owners and undercover agents, Trump pardoned him one day before he was scheduled to begin his sentence and the restitution he had been ordered to pay was…you guess it, eliminated.

Nursing home magnate Joseph Schwartz pleaded guilty to failure to pay more than $38 million in employment taxes and then laundering the money by moving it from account to account after an extensive investigation into his complicated case. He was sentenced to three years—another slap on the wrist– only to have Trump to wipe out the investment of time and money when he pardoned Schwartz and a host of other criminals, many of whom were politically connected.

In Schwartz’s case, $960,000 paid to two lobbyists to advocate for a pardon, may have greased the skids just a little, though Trump, of course, denied any such link.

Former U.S. pardon attorney Liz Oyer, who was fired by Trump, said there was concern that there is “a special tier of justice for people who can afford to pay.”

“The president has the authority to grant a pardon, but when you have a strong case, and it is a good case, and you are holding elected officials accountable for wrongdoing, it is frustrating,” said prosecutor Melanie Smith 

Complex cases can take years to investigate before charges are filed. Prosecutors interview dozens of witnesses before grand juries to build their cases. Typically, years can pass before those cases reach a trial date. Once the trial date arrives, prosecutors may spend upward of 80 hours a week preparing witnesses and getting exhibits ready. A lengthy trial can involve more than 1,000 exhibits that need to be prepped and reviewed.

“To bring a case to trial is just an incredible effort and use of department resources,” John Keller, the former acting head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, said. “There’s an intensity of experience and effort and emotion that doesn’t come at any other stage of the case. It’s the pinnacle of the practice.”

All that expense and preparation appear to matter little to Trump who somehow saw fit to even issued a commutation of sentence of disgraced former congressman George Santos (R-New York), who was expelled from the House after being accused of financial misconduct and for spewing an endless stream of lies about his background. He was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges of aggravated identity theft and wire fraud. He served less than three months of his sentence before Trump, describing him as “somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” ordered his release.

And then there are the brothers Andrew and Tristen Tate, mysteriously pardoned from sex trafficking charges in Romania. Though Trump was not the one who issued the pardons of the two, a pair of New York Times reporters quoted a text message by Andrew Tate from Jan. 14, 2025 in which he said, “I had word from the Trump admin that theyre on top of things. Ive been told ill be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami.

The very next month, The Times reporters wrote, “an extraordinary order came down from the highest levels of the Romanian government. The prosecutors were told to find a compromise with the Tates. Despite their misgivings, they lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.”

In his current term of office, Trump granted executive clemency to more than 1700 INDIVIDUALS charged or convicted of federal criminal offenses. That number includes some 1,500 persons arrested and charged in the Jan. 6 coup attempt but does not include those arrested in connection with alleged vandalism of the Reflecting Pool. It also does not include new reporters and others who have been subpoenaed because Trump was pissed at something said or written.

When all is said and done, the bottom line is:

• If you can still support those who have defrauded widows and other innocent investors of hundreds of millions of dollars;
• If you can overlook the pardoning of sex traffickers;
• If you can look the other way as drug kingpins go free;
• If you still insist on saying, “But whatabout Obama or whatabout Biden…

…then you are no better than the very worst traits of a ruthless tyrant named Donald Trump and it is you who is afflicted with TDS.

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LouisianaVoice told you back on JUNE 30 that the running dispute between Rev. Tony Spell and his neighbors, Scott Sherwin and son Toby was the gift that keeps on giving, that it should be a soap opera called As the Tony Spell Turns.

Actually, maybe it should have been billed as a Netflix series called simply Hooper Road or perhaps The Life and Times of Life Tabernacle Church.

First, back in 2020, Snell sued Scott Sherwin for installing security cameras on Sherwin’s own property. The minister of Life Tabernacle’s flock said the cameras were installed so that Sherwin could spy on Snell, though it was never made quite clear what Sherwin was seeking to learn by spying church property.

Back on July 20, 2025, Toby was accosted by someone in a pickup truck whom he identified as Vance Gossett, a former resident of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and smacked around a bit before Gossett got back in his truck and drove away.

Then, nearly a year later, on June 23 of this year, Spell took it upon himself to conduct his own version of tough love by running across Hooper Road onto the Sherwin property where he pounced upon the younger man and struck him nearly three dozen times.

Two days after that, the good reverend was going about mowing the church’s grass—at 400 a.m. when the elder Sherwin called the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office out because…well, who mows grass at 4:00 a.m., anyway?

So, what’s the latest in this sordid display of don-do-as-I-do, do-as-I-say-do?

A protective order has now been issued against Spell on Toby Sherwin’s behalf that says Spell is forbidden to contact Toby or his family directly or electronically, including through the medium of social media and also orders Spell to maintain a distance of at least 50 yards from the Sherwins’ residence except for checking his mailbox.

Depending on how for the church property line is from the Sherwin property line, there could be a strip along Hooper Road where the grass is going to be growing a little taller from neglect—unless, that is, some devoted church member can be persuaded to mow as Spell’s proxy.

We’ll keep you posted on any subsequent episodes of this tacky little drama.

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