Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Corruption’ Category

Two publications, two versions of dispute between Judge Lori Landry & District Attorney Bo Duhé in Iberia Parish

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Judges on October 30, 2019| 1 Comment »

Iberia Parish continues to generate negative publicity that only serves to underscore the racial divide in that parish. This time, though, it’s not the sheriff’s office but the office of District Attorney Bo Duhé and instead of silencing African-American prisoners, Duhé’s office is attempting to undercut the authority of an African-American judge

Sarah Lustbader, writing for http://theappeal.org/, described on Tuesday the legal effort of the DA’s office to force the recusal of 16th Judicial District Judge Lori Landry from more than 300 criminal cases.

On Wednesday, Katie Gagliano, writing for the Acadiana Advocate, put a slightly different spin (the DA’s spin, as contained in Duhé’s office’s legal filings) on the same story.

While Gagliano’s STORY dealt with confrontations between Judge Landry and attorneys for the district attorney’s office, Lustbader chose to hard statistics that reflect harsher penalties for blacks who commit felonies than for their white counterparts. You can read that story by going HERE.

But there’s more to the story—as there nearly always is.

And it’s not that First Assistant DA Robert Vines, who is white, filed the recusal motion—the same Robert Vines who was named LEAD PROSECUTOR in a case involving alleged illegal manipulation of the Cypress Bayou Casino’s employee and payroll databases.

Cypress Bayou Casino is run by the Chitimacha Indian Tribe in St. Mary Parish and in June 2016, the tribe’s chairman, O’Neil Darden, Jr., was arrested by State Police on charges of felony theft, accused of stealing from the tribe by tinkering with the casino’s data bases that resulted in his receiving an “annual bonus” of several thousand dollars to which he was not entitled.

The only problem with Vines serving as lead prosecutor in that case is that Darden hired Vines in January 2016, six months before his arrest, as prosecutor for the Chitimacha Tribal Court.

Apparently, the question of recusal never came up in that case.

Of course, the Cypress Bayou Casino case is not related to the latest controversy arising in the DA’s office, but it does illustrate how the district attorney’s office—along with the office of Sheriff Louis Ackal—operates as a law unto itself.

As further illustration of the manner in which justice has been turned on its ear in Iberia, there is the case of DONALD BROUSSARD. In July 2016, Broussard, who had begun a drive to recall Sheriff Ackal, was rear-ended in adjacent Lafayette Parish by a hit-and-run driver named Rakeem Blakes.

Broussard followed Blakes, getting close enough to read the license number, which he gave to a 911 dispatcher before falling back. Moments later, after entering Iberia Parish, Blakes was killed when he collided with an 18-wheeler.

Broussard was subsequently indicted for manslaughter by Duhé and sentenced to four years hard labor. Thus, the message was sent loud and clear: Broussard, a black man, should have known better than to initiate a recall of Ackal.

So, there is obvious acrimony between Judge Landry and Duhé’s office, but when one looks beyond the legal motions filed by Vines and analyzes the data provided by Lustbader, it’s easier to understand why there might be some undercurrent of resentment in Iberia Parish’s black community.

There is a real disparity in the manner in which justice is meted out and there has been little effort to address that disparity.

The Appeal is a non-profit media organization that produces original journalism about criminal justice that is focused on the most significant drivers of mass incarceration, which occur at the state and local level.

Its job is to address that disparity.

Duhé’s job, apparently, is not.

 

Read Full Post »

Louisiana author Aimee Edmondson’s book ‘In Sullivan’s Shadow’ examines landmark case vital to press freedom

Posted in Book Review, Corruption, Courts, Lawsuits, LSU, TV News on October 25, 2019| 1 Comment »

For those who prefer the fast-paced action of James Patterson, John Grisham or James Lee Burke, In Sullivan’s Shadow isn’t for you.

But if you are a political junkie with an eye for a scholarly work about a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that was key to the simultaneous support of the First Amendment and the American civil rights movement, then you will definitely fine In Sullivan’s Shadow riveting reading.

Author Aimee Edmondson, a native of East Carroll Parish, never really appreciated the stark reality of having grown up sheltered from exposure to blacks, attending as she did, an all-white private school, until she bumped into an African-American student from her home town her freshman year at LSU. Only then did she realize that even in a small town like Lake Providence, they had grown up worlds apart. When she innocently observed that she didn’t attend public school back home, he simply shook his head and said, “No s**t.”

Edmondson, who teaches journalism at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, has crawled back through the legal archives of civil rights litigation to give us a long-awaited examination of SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) lawsuits used as weapons against national publications like Time, The New York Times, Look, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and even The Ladies’ Home Journal and bold local editors who saw resistance to the civil rights movement for what it was: a desperate attempt to keep blacks “in their place” while preserving the comfortable—and separate—lifestyles of whites.

While local television stations in the South would display “Technical Difficulties” on viewers’ screens whenever their networks would air footage of blacks being beaten in Southern bus stations, the national publications—and to a lesser extent, courageous small town editors like Hodding Carter, Buford Boone and Hazel Brannon Smith—were providing graphic coverage that left people like Lester Sullivan, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, Lawrence A. Rainey, and retired Army Gen. Edwin Walker in a litigious mood.

Sullivan was Commissioner of the Police and Fire Department of Montgomery, Alabama, Connor was Birmingham Police Commissioner, and Rainey was Sheriff of Neshoba County, Mississippi.

In a series of separate SLAPP filings, they launched a full-scale attack on the national publications, CBS News, CBS reporter Howard K. Smith, himself a native of Ferriday, Louisiana, and local newspapers that dared to take a stand against arrests, beatings, arson, and even murders. And of course, black newspapers and civil rights leaders were not exempt from the costly litigation.

Edmondson calls up some familiar names when she describes how the struggle for equality made its way to Baton Rouge. Names like Police Chief Wingate White, U.S. District Court Judge E. Gordon West, 19th Judicial District Court Judge Fred LeBlanc, and District Attorney Sargent Pitcher, Jr., Mayor John Christian, and Rev. Arthur L Jelks surface in her recounting of the volatile struggle.

She even manages to provide us with a brief account of the ongoing battles between blacks and Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal.

But more than just a rehashing of police dogs, fire hoses and clubs, Edmondson’s book focuses more on the legal struggles that came out of the multitude of SLAPP actions brought by Sullivan, Connor, Rainey, and Walker.

In frightening detail, she shows how these lawsuits bullied CBS into a public apology for Smith’s reporting and how editors at The New York Times genuinely feared for the financial existence of the publication should it lose its landmark case brought by Sullivan.

But then, in 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that even if a publication had factual errors in its reporting on a public official, that public official must show that the publication new its story was false and published it anyway, with malice and reckless disregard for the truth.

But then, when Gen. Walker sued over stories that he instigated rioting during the integration of the University of Mississippi, the Supreme Court went a bit further in declaring that Sullivan protected publications from litigation not only from public officials, but from public figures, as well, thus cementing the right of freedom of the press.

In Sullivan’s Shadow is a must-read for political junkies, especially in a time when the adversarial relationship between the media and public officials–particularly on the national stage—is more acrimonious than it’s been since Montgomery, Birmingham and Neshoba County.

 

Read Full Post »

Former BR hospital foundation head gets 33 months for embezzling $800k; a good thing it wasn’t for two joints

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Governor's Office, Judges, LSU, Prison on October 24, 2019| 8 Comments »

John Paul Funes walked into federal district court in Baton Rouge on Thursday, not in an orange prison jump suit but in a dark business suit with a nicely-pressed blue shirt accented by a pink tie, for his sentencing in connection with his EMBEZZLEMENT of nearly $800,000 from a Baton Rouge hospital foundation—a children’s hospital foundation at that—and received a whopping 33 months in prison.

Funes, 49, was already receiving more than $350,000 per year in salary from the foundation he headed but that, apparently, was not enough.

He could have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for his transgressions but U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, who earlier accepted Funes’ guilty pleas, apparently felt that 33 months was punishment enough for the white-collar crimes of wire fraud and money laundering.

Contrast that, if you will, with the sentence handed down to one BERNARD NOBLE, an African-American not pulling down $350 thou a year.

Back in 2010, he was arrested while biking in New Orleans—a bicycle, mind you, not a Lexus or BMW—for possession of three grams of marijuana. It would be seven years before he saw his family again.

Sentenced to 13 ½ years in prison at hard labor without the possibility of parole as a habitual offender—he did have previous drug arrests, none of them violent and none which involved stealing from cancer-stricken children—he spent seven years behind bars before being finally freed on parole, thanks in large part to the efforts of billionaire New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb who spent years lobbying courts and Louisiana elected officials to reverse Noble’s sentence.

Three grams. Enough for two whole joints.

Meanwhile, Funes pilfered gift cards intended for cancer patients. He flew family and associates to LSU and Saints football games on charter flights he labeled on the books as “outbound patient transports,” and funneled nearly $300,000 to the parents of two former LSU football players–$107,000 to the mother and sister of former quarterback Rohan Davey (they kicked back $63,000 to Funes) and $180,000 to James Alexander, father of former LSU offensive lineman Vadal Alexander.

But for DEREK HARRIS of Abbeville, an unemployed Gulf War veteran, things didn’t turn out so well. He’s currently serving life imprisonment for selling $30 worth of weed to an undercover agent.

After posting bond following his 2009 arrest, Harris, who also happens to be African-American, waited three years for his trial to start. He chose a trial by judge rather than facing a jury. On June 26, 2012, the judge found him guilty and imposed a 15-year sentence.

But that apparently wasn’t enough for the district attorney, who then filed a habitual offender bill of information based on Harris’s prior arrests and on Nov. 15, 2012, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole—his service to his country be damned. For $30 worth of marijuana, which shouldn’t rise to the level of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a foundation intended for children suffering from cancer and giving it to football players’ families.

Did I mention that Funes got just 33 months for that? Or that he was making $350,000 a year when he went off the rails?

Noble was riding a bicycle and Harris was unemployed and were sentenced to 13 ½ years and life, respectively, for pot. Funes stole from sick babies. And he’ll serve maybe half of those 33 months before he’s a free man again. Maybe.

Following Noble’s conviction, two district court judges attempted to lower his sentence to five years because of his lack of a violent record but Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro put the kibosh on those attempts. Loeb, a major supporter of criminal justice reform efforts, eventually learned of his case and became involved.

Appeals to then-Gov. Bobby Jindal fell on deaf ears and it wasn’t until John Bel Edwards became governor and efforts were begun to reduce maximum sentences for marijuana possession. Finally, through the combined efforts of Loeb, Nobel’s attorney Jee Park of the Innocence Project of New Orleans (IPNO), Cannizzaro finally relented and he was re-sentenced to eight years.

Funes, however, received 33 months for embezzling from a charitable foundation to which people contributed in good faith in the belief they were helping sick children, some of them terminally ill.

Of course, Funes did help a couple of LSU football players and he did make restitution of $796,000, which is equivalent to little more than two years’ salary for him, so that must make it all right.

 

Read Full Post »

Rispone is no ‘outsider.’ Campaign contributions & Lane Grigsby link make him a consummate ‘insider’ politician

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians on October 23, 2019| 7 Comments »

Eddie Rispone, who will face incumbent John Bel Edwards in the Nov. 16 general election for governor, calls himself a political outsider. In fact, that appears to be about the only position he has taken in the entire campaign other than proclaiming ad nauseam that he is a “job creator.”

And if running for public office for the first time serves as the barometer for which the term is defined, then yes, he is a political outsider.

But if you include participation behind the scenes—as in pouring hundreds of thousand of dollars into various political campaigns in order to make one’s influence felt in the halls of the Louisiana Legislature—then no, Eddie Rispone is anything but a political outsider.

If allowing someone like Baton Rouge contractor Lane Grigsby control your campaign—even to the point of boasting that he will chair your transition committee following your election (as claimed Wednesday over a Baton Rouge radio program)—then Eddie Rispone would have to be considered the consummate political insider.

Rispone, by necessity, had to participate in the gubernatorial debates because he was pitted not against Edwards in the first primary, but against Congressman Ralph Abraham, to see who would face Edwards in the general election.

And now that he’s in the runoff, he seems to be dodging any face-to-face confrontation with Edwards. Just last night (Tuesday), he was a no-show at a statewide forum sponsored by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber of Commerce, leaving Edwards alone to field questions.

It’s a strategy, regrettably, that may be in Rispone’s favor. With no real proposals forthcoming from him other than his repeated claim that he is a “job creator,” and knowing that as the only Republican candidate in a very red state, he need only keep his head down and avoid major gaffs for the next three weeks.

The two are scheduled to participate in one final debate one week from today. We’ll see if Rispone keeps that date.

Since 2003, the first year that Bobby Jindal ran for governor, Rispone and various family members have forked over more than $944,000 in political campaign contributions to various candidates—including $19,000 to Jindal and $35,000 to David Vitter’s 2015 campaign for governor.

Rispone and family have also contributed:

  • $72,600 to Citizens for a Better Baton Rouge Political Action Committee (PAC);
  • $50,000 to Education PAC;
  • $100,000 to Empower Louisiana PAC (chaired by Grigsby);
  • $250,000 to the Louisiana Federation for Children PAC;
  • $40,000 to the Republican Party of Louisiana;
  • $175,000 to the Fund for Louisiana’s Future.

Like his protégé, Grigsby likes to play behind the scenes, preferring to act not as a king, but as a kingmaker. And by holding the purse strings, he wields far more power than many office holders do themselves but without the pesky necessity of answering to constituents.

As such, he has been the chief “sponsor” of Rispone’s candidacy, hoping to install his own candidate in the fourth floor of the House that Huey Built so that he, like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, can call the shots without being subjected to voters’ scrutiny.

And now we have Donald Trump spewing disinformation about John Bel Edwards on behalf of Rispone. Trump’s TV ads, which are peppering the airwaves, claim that Edwards is pro-abortion and anti-Second Amendment. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, Edwards has alienated the Democratic Party with his Pro-Life stance, based on his Catholic background—and don’t forget, he supported and signed a strong anti-abortion bill into law that is presently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

And his pro-Second Amendment record is out there everyone to see—even Donald Trump. But in a political campaign, anything goes—even outright lies.

Grigsby’s campaign contributions dwarf those of Rispone. He and his family members have poured more than $2 million into various political campaigns since 2003, meaning that between him and student Rispone, they have spent just a shade under $3 million on a wide array of candidates and causes.

Unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Rob Maness was on the Jim Engster Show on Wednesday morning and he made the claim that Grigsby is already spreading the word around Baton Rouge that he will chair Rispone’s transition committee after he’s elected governor on Nov. 16.

But Grigsby recently may have crossed an ethics line, assuming such a line even exists anymore—or ever did—in the world of Louisiana politics.

In the Oct. 12 primary election for State Senator from Baton Rouge’s 16th District, Democrat Beverly Brooks Thompson led a five-candidate field with 14,213 votes (34 percent) while incumbent Republican Steve Carter and Republican challenger Franklin Foil finished in a tie for second place.

With a three-candidate runoff looming, which would have been in favor of Thompson since only a plurality would be needed to win, Grigsby, desperate to install a Republican, tried to entice Foil into dropping out by promising him a judgeship.

As it turned out, that was unnecessary because a re-count gave Foil a four-vote win over Carter, placing him in the Nov. 16 runoff alone against the Democrat.

But Grigsby’s offer brings into sharp focus the problem with big money in political races. It is indisputable that any candidate—whether he has anything to offer or whether he is just an empty suit—with sufficient money for enough sound-bite television ads has a tremendous advantage over a candidate with plenty of substance but no money.

No one should be able to purchase a judgeship—or any other office. That flies in the face of everything this country is supposed to stand for, but apparently no longer does.

Kris Kristofferson wrote a beautiful song entitled Me and Bobby Magee. There’s a line in that song that says “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

To paraphrase that line, “Free elections is just another term for plutocracy.”

 

Read Full Post »

Mike Edmonson refuses to ride off into the sunset; reports have him as head of New Orleans French Quarter security

Posted in Audit Reports, Boards, Contracts, Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Legislature, Public Records, State Police on October 16, 2019| 5 Comments »

Mike Edmonson, a veteran of 35 years with Louisiana State Police (LSP) and nine years as the state’s top cop, is reported to have been named Program Administrator for Police Patrol by the New Orleans French Quarter Management District (FQMD).

LouisianaVoice received an unconfirmed report on Tuesday that Edmonson, who retired at $128,559 per year after being forced out in March 2017, had been named to the post, advertised by the FQMD earlier this year.

An LSP spokesman said he had heard similar reports but could not confirm them.

Prior to making that request, LouisianaVoice attempted to obtain verbal confirmation from the New Orleans municipal offices but it took six calls to various offices before anyone even answered the phone.

Efforts to confirm the appointment and the salary of the position with the New Orleans mayor’s office by email met with referrals of all public records requests to an outfit called NextRequest.

NextRequest, headquartered in San Francisco, serves as a clearing house for public records requests for governmental agencies, schools, special districts, etc.

Apparently governmental agencies’ rush to privatize services now extends to responding to and complying with public records requests.

Edmonson retired from LSP in March 2017 following a San Diego conference attended by several LSP officials, including four troopers who made the trip in a state vehicle and who took a side trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon in 2016.

The investigation of that trip resulted in two of the most convoluted, confusing and controversial—and conflicting—findings by the State Board of Ethics. In April 2018, the ethics board cleared—in secret—the four troopers of any wrongdoing, concluding that they were simply following orders from higher-ups and had taken the vehicle and the side trip with the approval of Edmonson.

Sixteen months later, in August of this year, that same board CLEARED EDMONSON of any wrongdoing for that same trip. Edmonson, it should be noted, was represented before the board by Baton Rouge attorney Gray Sexton who once headed the ethics board.

Sexton said at the time that other agencies investigating Edmonson were dropping their investigations, as well. It’s unclear whether or not the FBI has actually dropped its investigation of Edmonson, who was harshly criticized for his management practices in an audit by the Legislative Auditor’s office.

If reports of Edmonson’s hiring are true, he would find himself working in a familiar—and friendly—atmosphere, given his ties to Robert Watters, owner of RICK’S CABARET.

Edmonson was instrumental in negotiating a cooperative endeavor agreement (CEA) whereby LSP would provide patrol duties in the French Quarter to augment New Orleans police.

In 2015, French Quarter residents approved a special quarter-cent sales tax increase in the district to pay for a PERMANENT LSP PRESENCE. Thirty-two troopers from Troop N were assigned permanently to the Quarter.

When proceeds from the sales tax proved insufficient, the Louisiana Legislature appropriated an additional $2.4 million to cover the shortfall.

In December 2018, a STATE AUDIT said LSP had not provided proof that $2.4 million in state funds set aside for policing the Quarter was actually spent there, a finding with which LSP disagreed.

If Edmonson has indeed been appointed program manager for the district, he will undoubtedly have interactions with his old agency that he left under a cloud two-and-one-half years ago.

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »