Louisiana Voice

LouisianaVoice has received numerous complaints about the abrasive manner in which a St. Tammany Parish family court judge conducts her court but the latest one takes on ominous implications in that her honor reportedly refused to view photographic evidence of alleged physical abuse of a child.

While it’s one thing to anticipate some grousing from the aggrieved party in court proceedings—you expect that because one side always loses—it’s quite another when the attorneys begin complaining about bias or ham-handed rulings by presiding judges.

And that’s what we’re getting more and more often: complaints from attorneys who grumble bitterly but privately that a particular judge favors certain attorneys and ignores compelling evidence. Of course, those attorneys don’t wish to give their names because they still must ply their trade before these same judges.

But one who consistently generates complaints about unfairness, bias or just plain rudeness is the Hon. Dawn Amacker, judge of the 22^nd Judicial District’s Division L and who is described on the 22^nd JDC’s web page as being “instrumental in the establishment of the 22^nd JDC Family Court” and “one of the first two judges elected in 2008 to the division of the 22^nd JDC that exclusively hear Family Court cases.”

Amacker has been the subject of growing whispered criticism for some of her decisions involving custody of children.

One such case involves a mother who said her husband was convicted of second-offense abuse after being booked on four separate counts—two for abuse of the couple’s daughter, the other two of the mother of the child. His first offense saw him found guilty of three counts after two others were dismissed. One of the two counts thrown out, the mother claims, was for child endangerment.

In Amacker’s defense, child protective services was never called for that first offense. The district attorney’s office allowed the child endangerment charges to be used for him to enter a plea for the 894 Diversion program so he would not lose his rights, according to the child’s mother.

“The court ordered investigations by a child advocate from the sheriff’s department and Department of Family Services,” the mother said. “Both ruled this case as child abuse. Amacker refused, while in her courtroom, to make a logical, common-sense decision and sent all three of us back to [a clinical psychologist],,who in early 2005 recommended to the courts that my ex (before his custody rights were restored) seek a psychiatric evaluation and diagnosis, long- term treatment for OCD and anger issues.”

The mother provided LouisianaVoice with half-a-dozen photographs that revealed injuries to the child. Because of the child’s age, we will not publish the pictures which show bruises and abrasions to his head, face, arms and legs that the mother said were caused by the father. “When I tried to tell the judge, I was told to shut up—that she didn’t believe a word I said,” she said. “He literally beats my son and is getting away with it.”

Not only did Amacker award full custody to the father, but she also ordered the mother to pay $350 per month in child support. “I was served with it (the order) by email,” she said. “I also was ordered to pay all court costs—and I don’t have a job.”

Why would a judge refuse to examine evidence of child abuse in a custody case?

There are no clear answers but court observers say flatly that certain attorneys coming before family court judges never seem to lose. One attorney said if a certain attorney is representing the adversarial parent before a particular judge, “I won’t even take the case because it’s a waste of time and effort.”

The term “court observers” is somewhat misleading, however, because family courts traditionally do not allow those with no connection to a case to remain in the courtroom. Sometimes, they even clear the courtroom of family members in order to confer with attorneys for each side. No one really knows what goes on in such cases but normally, one attorney—not those mentioned earlier who tend to be favored—will emerge with a “deal” that in reality is anything but a “deal” for a parent who has spent tens of thousands of dollars fighting to maintain custody of a child only to be told they have no choice but to bend to the judge’s wishes.

The alternative, besides being hit with court costs and losing custody, could be jail time. How do you fight a system like that?

In this particular case, the mother says her ex-husband’s attorney “threatened my non-local attorney and myself that if we didn’t go along with what ‘they’ were doing that day and went before Amacker, she always favored the dads. She actually told us that. So, the bullying worked and a consent judgment was signed. My ex-husband’s family is very wealthy and they’ve threatened me for years they’d do whatever it takes to win and take my child away from me.

“I’ve spent more than $45,000 in court costs and legal fees and not once has Amacker made him (her former husband) be responsible for my fees.”

Her ex-husband’s attorney was suspended from practice for three years by the Louisiana State Supreme Court for neglecting legal matters, failure to refund unearned fees and failure to property supervise his non-attorney staff in an unrelated case.

Tomorrow: Judge Amacker removes teenage girl from mother’s custody and awards custody to a dad who had never developed any kind of relationship with his daughter. The father, a physician, promptly had Judge Amacker send his daughter to a Utah home for problem girls. That home was subsequently closed down by the State of Utah after a child died there.

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Uh, yes, Speaker DeVillier…that’s exactly what it means.

In our LouisianaVoice masthead at the words, “It is understandable when a child is afraid of the dark but unforgivable when a man fears the light.”

After Donald Trump was elected in 2016 (and, unfortunately, before the newspaper was purchased by Jeff Bezos), The Washington Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” for its masthead.

The New York Times masthead slogan dates back a few years further. Adopted in 1896, it says simply, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

Even the weekly Shongaloo Tattler, if it existed, might have “World News Guardian” plastered at the top of Page One.

That’s all because newspapers, since the days of old Ben Franklin, have been the backbone of this country’s informed citizenry.

Gov. Jeff Landry, in his inaugural address in January 2024, called TRANSPARENCY the primary goal for his administration.

He lied.

We had warnings. As attorney general, he sued a Baton Rouge Advocate reporter for submitting a public records request to his office. He even tried to pass a law saying only Louisiana citizens had a right to public records. He tried to get Bob Mann fired at LSU because Mann had the temerity to criticize Landry for sending a flunky to a meeting at LSU to address Landry’s opposition to Covid mandates. Seeing the writing on the wall after Landry was elected governor, Mann resigned on that same inauguration day.

Now we learn that Landry required that at least 121 state employes sign NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS (NDAs) with his office. That number does not include your legislators (77 Percent of state Senators and at least a dozen House members) local police jury, school board and city council members who are almost certainly parties to this shroud of secrecy being pulled over public information about the machinations of government.

We’re still learning the extent of that requirement. For instance, there’s the big one between Landry and Meta on that $50 billion-dollar data center in Richland Parish. We don’t know what’s in that agreement, of course; all we have are Meta’s promises which are probably about as reliable as those of Trump.

The fact is, there is only one reason for an NDA: the concealment of information from the public. That’s it. No other explanation is possible.

Oh, the Landry administration did offer one very weak explanation. Executive Counsel ANGELIQUE FREELsaid the restrictions prevent workers from sharing sensitive government information with lobbyists and other private parties who Louisiana ethics rules may not cover.

Since when is Landry concerned about ethics? Other, that is, than passing HOUSE BILL 674   (which became Act 301) last year which made it more difficult to penalize public officers for ethics breaches and which increase Landry’s control over the ethics board. Does that sound like more transparency? Well, it did leave Landry so transparent Stevie Wonder could see through him.

The sudden—and apparently unanticipated—disclosure of the NDA practice has sent legislators diving for cover. SEN. BOB HENSGENS (R-Abbeville) claimed he had decided not to sign an NDA prohibiting him from discussing a potential aerospace project in Vermilion Parish, according to a story in the Louisiana Illuminator.

But he did just that. He received a call from Louisiana Economic Development on July 20 informing him that he was, indeed, under a “general NDA” with the state agency. He said he must have signed the document without reading it because he still did not remember doing so.

That’s quite a comfort, Senator. Do you always sign documents without first reading them?

Now, according to KATC-TV in Lafayette, some Senators are attempting to back out of their agreements. They are Hensgens, Valerie Hodges (R-Denham Springs) and Bill Wheat (R-Ponchatoula). Joining them is State Rep. Joy Walters (D-Shreveport).

Loath as I am to use this analogy, it isn’t until you switch on the light that the roaches run for cover. I am not calling legislators roaches, mind you, but you seldom see lawmakers scatter in unison until the spotlight is on them. Just sayin’.

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 Iran has a strait. The Trump administration doesn’t have a pair.

–The Wall Street Journal

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It’s almost so surreal that the entire episode becomes hilarious.

Except it’s not funny at all.

If it wasn’t the leader of an entire nation and his whack-o U.S. attorney causing the scene, it might be funny, but it isn’t.

If the whole affair wasn’t a national embarrassment, it might be funny, but it wasn’t and it isn’t.

If this was a SNL skit or a John Oliver monologue (and it probably will be before long), it would be funny, but it isn’t.

If it wasn’t a total waste of some $16 million (against an initial cost estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million), it would be humorous, but it’s not.

If this had not attacked and damaged the reputation of a patriotic American, it might be funny, but there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—funny about a false arrest.

If some TV writer had written a sitcom pilot with a plot this absurd, it would have never made it to prime time; it’s that bad.

After holding a high-profile press conference in which she said with such conviction that the Reflecting Pool was damaged by David Hearn’s “forcefully and violently pulling at the pool’s liner and destroying it,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro ate a ton of crow that had to have a bitter taste when she abruptly dropped all charges against Hearn.

That, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is the Trump administration in a nutshell.

To begin with, Pirro treated the entire event as if it were the Linberg kidnapping, the Brinks robbery, the JFK assassination and D.B. Cooper all rolled into one big crime spree. In her press conference, she had all the intensity and earnestness of Elliot Ness in hot pursuit of Al Capone.

And, of course, there was Trump insisting that some unpatriotic vandal had taken a box cutter and sliced a 350-foot gash in the liner. He neglected to explain how such a devious act went unseen despite 24-hour camera surveillance of the entire pool.

On Friday, typical of elected officials when there’s embarrassing news, opted for a Friday evening news dump—a time when most Capitol reporters have headed out of town for the weekend and there’s little actual coverage of non-catastrophic events, Pirro moved to dismiss the indictment against Hearn, admitting in the court filing that the damage to the sealant was caused by “flawed installation.”

She said her office had received information and evidence that “significantly undermine the evidentiary basis for the indictment.” That’s a far cry from her initial pronouncement that there was “no doubt” Hearn had single-handedly destroyed a national landmark with his fingers which, by no means, resemble a box cutter.

Trump, as is his wont, absolutely blew a gasket. He flew into a rage at Pirro, saying he disagreed “100 percent with Jeanine Pirro…I don’t know what she was thinking. To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM (El Trump-o loves banging out his messages on Truth Social in all caps).”

Pirro, however, stuck to her guns, blaming in typical Trumpian style, the Interior Department.

Hell, everybody in that group of crazies has to blame someone else. No blame for employing off half-cocked, looney-tune accusations with no supporting evidence in order to obtain a shamefully illegitimate indictment of an innocent person.

It goes all the way back to 1989 when he took on the so-called Central Park Five (now known as the Exonerated Five) who were wrongfully convicted of raping a woman jogging in New York City. Even though they were eventually exonerated, Trump never once admitted he was wrong about them; he even took out a full-page ad in four major New York newspapers in which he screamed in his usual all-caps, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”

Like everything else Trump does, that, too, was not funny.

What should transpire now is that Hearn should file a multi-million-dollar defamation lawsuit against Trump and Pirro and ask that the trial be held at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, adjacent to the Reflecting Pool.

Now that would be funny.

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