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Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

DNC not alone in internal turmoil: DSCC members call leadership of Sen. Karen Carter Peterson into question

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, PACs, Politicians, Senate on November 7, 2017| 14 Comments »

New Orleans native Donna Brazile has created quite a stir over her new book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House. But her description of the infighting in the national Democratic Party is mirrored at least in part on a local scale by what has been transpiring in the Louisiana Democratic Party since State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson ousted Buddy Leach as State Chairman in 2012.

Brazile, in her book, described how candidate Hillary Clinton took over the Democratic National Committee’s funding during the primary season while still competing with Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination for President. By gaining control of the party’s finances, Brazile said, Clinton effectively rigged the process to kill whatever chance Sanders may have had to win the nomination.

But paralleling the infighting that developed between followers of Hillary and Sanders, the Louisiana Democratic Party appears to have fallen into its own state of considerable disarray on Peterson’s watch. And its problems, like that of the DNC, can be traced back to money and power.

Back room deals, endorsements, and questionable expenditures in the recent campaign for state treasurer have raised a number of questions. For example:

  • Is State Sen. Neil Riser truly a Republican?
  • If so, why did he lavish money on traditionally Democratic organizations like the Black Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD), THE New Orleans East Leadership PAC, New Orleans East Leadership PAC, Louisiana Independent Federation of Electors, Algiers PAC, Jefferson United, and Treme Improvement Political Society in his campaign for state treasurer?
  • Are the aforementioned actually Democratic organizations or are they simply a means to raising money in exchange for the endorsement of the highest bidder?
  • If they are Democratic organizations, why didn’t they endorse Democrat Derrick Edwards in the first primary instead of waiting until Riser lost—he finished dead last among the four major candidates—to direct their support to Edwards?

BOLD’s open bidding policy pre-dates Peterson. In 2003, the organization endorsed Bobby Jindal over Kathleen Blanco for governor. Of course, that was after Jindal paid BOLD $10,000 for “consulting and printing.”

During his campaign, Riser’s expenditures included $15,000 to BOLD for printing (BOLD, which Peterson’s dad, Ken Carter, co-founded, subsequently listed Riser at the top of its sample ballots), $14.500 in two contributions to New Orleans East Leadership PAC, a $10,000 contribution to the Louisiana Independent Federation of Electors, $6,000 to Algiers PAC for printing, $5,000 to Jefferson United for undetermined expenses, $5,000 to Treme Improvement Political Society.

But the treasurer’s race is merely symptomatic of a far greater problem within the State Democratic Party.

One of Peterson’s first acts as the new State Chairperson in 2012 was to nullify all parish executive committee appointments made during Leach’s tenure. And it’s been downhill ever since.

In an organization that is perpetually financially strapped, the Executive Committee, once stacked with her appointees, awarded her an annual stipend of $36,000 plus expenses. This was done without the approval of the Democratic State Central Committee, most of whom were unaware of the stipend. She has continued taking the money in her second term, again without approval.

Stephen Handwerk, Executive Director of the State Democratic Party, pulls down nearly $100,000 in salary but he has been reluctant to make use of an available database to identify and engage Democratic voters, claiming he has insufficient staff to do so. Yet, he found the time to take a second salaried job with the Democratic National Committee, according to DNC expense reports.

Peterson also has made it a point to take care of family in her role as chairperson. Her sister, Eileen Carter, of Houma, was paid $13,000 during October and November 2015 for “organizational/grassroots consultation,” according to figures provided by the Louisiana Ethics Commission.

Other payments made by the Louisiana Democratic Party under Peterson include:

  • Twelve payments of $600 each to the Chicken Shack of Baton Rouge for party card distribution and catering. Chicken Shack is a business owned by former State Sen. Joe Delpit of Baton Rouge.
  • Four separate payments of $900 each to J&M Transportation of Slidell for state party card distribution. J&M is a limousine service.

Peterson denies being among the three prominent Democrats (including then-Sen. Mary Landrieu) who met with then-State. Rep. John Bel Edwards at New Orleans International Airport in 2015 and tried to convince him to withdraw from the governor’s race so that a moderate Republican might be elected. Landrieu has since apologized for her part in that effort but Peterson has not.

Peterson also threw up roadblocks to the State Democratic Party’s official endorsement of Derrick Edwards (no relation to Gov. John Bel Edwards) for treasurer until after the first primary, in which Edwards led all candidates as the only Democrat in the race.

According to the State Democratic Party’s by-laws, “The Democratic State Central Committee (DSCC) shall conduct such activities, as it deems appropriate to elect Democratic candidates in national, state and local elections.”

Yet, there was Republican Riser’s name at the top of BOLD’s sample ballots which most likely accounts for Peterson’s reluctance to endorse Edwards at the outset.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, despite Peterson’s attempt to get him to drop out of the gubernatorial race, has been loath to support a replacement for her for fear of alienating the Legislative Black Caucus.

But the biggest concern to several Democratic Parish Executive Committee (DPEC) members is the lack of membership on no fewer than 29 parish executive committees, a condition critics attribute to Peterson’s lack of timely appointments.

“There are 29 parishes which have five or fewer members on their committee,” one DPEC member said. “There should be at least 15 members of each parish executive committee. That’s nearly half the state that has non-existent or non-functioning DPECs. Livingston Parish has only seven of 15 seats filled. One member of the Livingston DPEC has been working since February to get the seats filled but that still hasn’t been done even though names have been submitted.”

And nearly two years into Peterson’s second term as state chairperson, there are 33 DSCC vacancies. “If she fills positions at all, it’s usually with her minions,” one DSCC member said.

Parishes with one or more vacancies in DSCC representation include Caddo, Bossier, DeSoto, Sabine, Lincoln, Union, Ouachita, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, West Feliciana, Caldwell, Catahoula, Franklin, LaSalle, Tensas, Concordia, East Carroll, Madison, Tensas, Rapides, Lafayette, Vermilion, Calcasieu, Acadia, Iberia, St. Martin, East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Tangipahoa, Washington, St. Tammany, and Jefferson.

Meanwhile, Peterson in March of this year managed to get herself elected to the DNC as Vice Chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Participation. “How ironic is that?” the DSCC member asked.

“Karen Carter Peterson is an ambitious politician of questionable loyalties who has used her chairmanship of DSCC to build a fiefdom and to launch a national career, all at the expense of the organization she was elected to build and serve,” the DSCC member said.

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First Circuit Court of Appeal to hear arguments in state’s appeal of district court’s rejection of workers’ comp rules

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Governor's Office, Judges, Lawsuits, Privatization on November 6, 2017| 5 Comments »

A three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeal in Baton Rouge has scheduled arguments for Tuesday in the state’s appeal of a DECISION by a 19th Judicial District Court judge last March that knocked down much of the Jindal administration’s arbitrary rule changes in the approval of medical treatment for state employees injured on the job.

The decision was another in a long line of “reform” movements by Jindal—and pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—that were subsequently found to be unconstitutional or simply fell apart. Some of those included public education funding, group medical coverage for state employees, public-private partnerships in the operation of state hospitals, prison privatizations and tax proposals.

In his March 30 seven-page REASONS for JUDGMENT that followed a Feb. 7 bench trial, District Judge Don Johnson noted that:

Because the legislature did not authorize OWC to create a new rule creating a “tacit denial” when the provider simply ignores a request for treatment, “the Office of Workers Compensation exceeded its legislative authority as (it) lacks the authority to create and implement procedural regulations that authorize the ‘tacit denial of requested medical treatment which is statutorily obligated to the injured worker by the employer pursuant to (state statute).”

Johnson also found that OWC promulgated rules requiring injured workers to meet a higher burden than the state statute for any variance in an injured worker’s treatment schedule are “vague and the regulations are arbitrary, denying injured workers’ medical treatment that Louisiana employers are statutorily obligated to provide…”

Johnson also found that the “scheme” for determining whether an injured worker can receive medical treatment outside the Louisiana medical treatment guidelines (MTG) “is unduly burdensome.”

Special Assistant to the Director Carey Holliday testified that he was hired to help “bring the judges into conformity,” according to the answer to the state’s appeal filed by attorney J. Arthur Smith III on behalf of several plaintiffs. Holiday did that by implementing judicial performance evaluations. While he acknowledged he could not tell judges how to rule, he could “put them together and let them talk” and that “there will be some conformity…to come out of that,” Smith said in his answer.

The most damning revelation to come out of last February’s trial was testimony of improper Ex Parte communication between insurance carriers and defense attorneys about the merits of injury claims pending before OWC judges. Those communications were usually in the form of emails.

For example, one such email from a workers’ compensation defense attorney to former OWC Director Wes Hataway, Holliday, and the OWC chief judge contained complaints that one judge had ruled against an employer. The email went on to say of the judge, “He should be fired immediately,” and implied that the judge’s skills were less than those of a first-year law student. “He will do as he pleases no matter what,” the email said. “If this isn’t grounds to fire a judge, I don’t know what is.” The defense attorney ended his email by saying, “I think it’s time for the W.C. judges to become accountable for their actions.”

Judge Johnson took a dim view of this disregard for judicial independence by the 2011 decision to remove of the decision-making authority of the OWC judges and place it in the hands of the OWC Medical Director, Dr. Christopher Rich.

Johnson ruled that OWC “has violated the separation of powers doctrine by compromising judicial independence” by giving unpreceded powers to Dr. Rich, who was awarded a $500,000 contract to serve as medical director.

Rich, if nothing else, is consistent. Previously involved in ethical problems with another state contract, LouisianaVoice wrote about an apparent conflict of interest. In March 2011, the State Ethics Board ruled that he was prohibited, in his capacity as Medical director of OWC from participating in any matter involving Central Louisiana Surgical Hospital, a facility in which he owned an interest and which provided medical treatment to injured workers.

As OWC Medical Director, he could deny coverage to a state employee and then refer the employee to Central Louisiana Surgical Hospital for private treatment.

And did he ever deny coverage to state employees once ensconced as medical director. He even testified in February that he ignored the clinical judgment of treating physicians, even specialists, giving no weight to the recommendations of treating physicians. Moreover, according to his own testimony, he never examined an injured worker even though he made the final decision on what, if any, medical treatment the employee would receive. He even overruled a neurosurgeon’s recommendation that an employee undergo a cervical fusion because he, Rich, did not deem it necessary.

Attorney Janice Valois Barber testified in February that Rich had denied 100 percent of her clients’ requests for medical treatment variances. Dr. John Logan also testified by deposition that 100 percent of his variances likewise had been denied by Dr. Rich. Dr. Logan said that many of his patients simply gave up, knowing they would never get approval for the medical treatment they needed.

Dr. Pierce Nunley testified that he performs spinal surgery on almost a daily basis. He said he has attempted to contact Dr. Rich regarding Rich’s repeated refusals of request for treatments that vary from the MTG but was never able to get through to Rich nor did Rich return his calls.

So now, the state is continuing to pour good money after bad by appealing the decision of the lower court in an effort to uphold what was—and is—a very bad policy in dealing with people’s lives.

To us, it doesn’t seem quite right that one man, who never even once examined a patient would deny 100 percent of all requests for variances in the normal medical treatment guidelines. Surely there were a couple of valid claims in all of that.

But by consistently rejecting each and every claim, Dr. Rich was enforcing the Bobby Jindal code of justice and fair play.

It might be fine for Jindal to sell his books to his foundation in order to divert money from his non-profit into his pockets but no injured worker had a right to receive treatment for his injuries.

It might be fine for a legislator to lease luxury automobiles, pay ethics fines or even income taxes from campaign funds or for legislators to place relatives in state employment, but we just can’t have judges giving these deadbeat state employees a decent break.

And why not? The money-sucking appeals aren’t costing elected officials and bureaucrats anything. The tab is being picked by those clueless taxpayers. And besides, the state has plenty money.

The three-judge panel hearing the case includes appeal court judges John Michael Guidry, John T. Pettigrew and William J. Crain.

 

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AG’s rape investigation 18 months along and no resolution but Criminal Division head is nominated for U.S. Attorney

Posted in Attorney General, Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Fraud, Media, Politicians on November 3, 2017| 7 Comments »

General Jeff Landry remains the same self-serving, opportunistic, suck-up sycophant he has been since his first run at public office.

This is the same attorney general who almost daily sends out glowing press releases designed to put him in the best possible light as he gears up for what he hopes will a run for the state’s highest office—if not in 2019 against John Bel Edwards, then sometime in short order thereafter.

By taking full advantage of his agency’s public information office which by now is sorely challenged to keep coming up with sufficient superlatives—at taxpayer cost, no less—Landry has managed to see to it that every single news release is all about him first and the attorney general’s various enforcement divisions second.

Landry, taking over from another cruel joke of attorney general foisted upon Louisiana’s electorate in 2016, has made a career of nabbing deviates who like to download kiddie porn (or at least announcing that he, apparently personally nabbed them), low-ranking civil servants with no political connections who attempt to rake money off the top of various programs, including Medicaid, and a scam artist here and there.

All that’s well and good. Those people should be arrested. But where has Landry been in cases involving the politically powerful appointees, legislators who use campaign funds to pay for personal expenses like luxury autos, payments of income taxes and even ethics fines? It’s relatively easy to bust a town clerk somewhere in north Louisiana or even a DHH employee who gets a little greedy. But there are other big-time crooks a-plenty in state government who Landry seems to be able to quietly ignore.

The Louisiana Attorney General’s office is different from its counterparts in other states, thanks to the lobbying efforts of Louisiana’s district attorneys way back in 1974 when the current State Constitution was written and subsequently adopted by voters. The District Attorneys Association, jealous of its turf, managed to overcome the objections of then-Attorney General William Gueste in ramming through the Constitutional Convention a provision that the attorney general’s office could not intervene in local investigations unless invited to do so by the local DA.

Yet, here we have Landry churning out those news releases almost daily about some major arrest of some perpetrator somewhere in the state, raising the question of how he manages to interject his office into so many of these local matters. Even in the case of low-hanging fruit like state civil servants, should he involve his office in the arrest of say, a DHH employee for stealing from Medicaid and Medicaid or the intended recipient of the Medicaid benefits decides to sue DHH, Landry has himself a sure-fire pickle called conflict of interests.

You see, under the present structure of his office, his primary job is to defend, not prosecute, state agencies. Yet, in case of such litigation, he would be in charge of overseeing the AG attorney or contract attorney who is called upon to defend DHH. That in turn raises another question: How can he investigate an agency and defend it?

And most recently, LouisianaVoice received in its email inbox a puff piece from Landry lauding the nomination of Brandon Fremin as U.S. ATTORNEY for Louisiana’s Middle District. Fremin, you see, is Criminal Director “for General Landry’s office,” the news release says, where he oversees several sections, including general prosecutions, insurance fraud “and the award-winning Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.”

“Under his watch, over 15 public officials have been arrested for public corruption charges—many of whom are currently being prosecuted by the LADOJ (Louisiana Department of Justice, as the AG’s office is officially known).”

But how many of those 15 held positions of supervisors or higher? Better yet, how many cases of supervisory sexual harassment cases has Landry investigated during his brief tenure? Several such reports have been received by LouisianaVoice in recent months and we are attempting to investigate them ourselves, despite the lack the personnel and authority that Landry has at his disposal.

And just for good measure, it would be interesting to learn why he hired an employee for his Fraud Division who herself had been convicted of FRAUD.

Calling Fremin’s nomination a “grand slam homerun,” Landry lost no time in moving the dialogue to a me, me, me theme. “Under my administration,” he trumpeted (emphasis added), “our office (did he really say “our”?) has created a strong partnership with our federal partners and we look forward to continuing this with Brandon in leadership. Brandon will continue to help make Louisiana an even better place to live, work, and raise our families. I hope he is quickly confirmed by the Senate.”

There is one thing we’d love to see occur before the “Criminal Director for General Landry’s office” departs for the Federal Building downtown. As Director of the AG’s Criminal Division, we can only assume it is he who is ostensibly conducting the investigation of that jailhouse  RAPE of a 17-year-old girl in April 2016—an investigation now moving into its 19th month without a sign of resolution.

We’ve asked before and we’ll ask again: “General” Landry, just how long does it take to investigate a rape in the known confines space of a jail cell where the date of the assault and the identities of the victim and the assailant are all known to investigators?

Because the Union Parish district attorney sits on a governing board that runs the Union Parish Detention Center, he rightly recused himself and asked the AG’s office to conduct an investigation.

Inspector Clouseau could’ve hit a “grand slam homerun” on this one in a week. Yet that great champion of law and order, Jeff Landry, he of higher political aspirations, can’t seem to get traction after 18 months.

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After 40 years, what’s a few more days? Angola fails to transport prisoner to hearing on exculpatory evidence

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Prison on October 26, 2017| 28 Comments »

So, just why didn’t the officials at the Department of Corrections transport Vincent Simmons to Marksville for Wednesday’s hearing?

Or better yet, what do prosecutors of the 12th Judicial District have to fear? Are they trying to cover for Eddie Knoll’s mistake? A mistake that has cost Vincent Simmons 40 years of his life?

Most probably, it’s just a matter of someone at Angola State Penitentiary dropping the ball, says New Orleans attorney Robert Hjortsberg.

A hearing was scheduled to be held on Wednesday on a motion by Hjortsberg to recuse Judge Kerry Spruill for a hearing on Simmons’s application for post-conviction relief. Hjortsberg wants Judge Spruill recused because of his association with Knoll, who originally prosecuted Simmons in 1977.

But officials at Angola inexplicably failed to transport Simmons to Marksville even though they “assured us he was going to be here,” Hjortsberg said on Wednesday after the Angola no-show. “In fact, my office also called to make sure he was going to be here because there is a lot of people, including myself, who have come from all over the place in order to be here to support him.”

Vincent was convicted for attempted aggravated rape of twin 14-year-old white girls in 1977 on the basis of what Hjortsberg says was “flawed and contradictory testimony” and in spite of there being no physical evidence of any description against Simmons.

Among the discrepancies that cast doubt on Simmons’s guilt:

  • The girls waited two weeks to report the incident;
  • There was never any physical evidence that the rapes occurred;
  • No forensic tests were carried out on the clothing of the alleged victims, Simmons’s clothing, or the interior of the car in which they said the rapes occurred;
  • The doctor who examined the girls reported that he found no signs of injury on either girl and that one of the girls was still a virgin two weeks after the supposed rapes;
  • Simmons was convicted on July 24, 1977. Yet, on June 10, some six weeks earlier, Dr. F.P. Bordelon, Jr. wrote of his examination of one of the girls, “There was (sic) no bruises on her body. The vaginal examination showed that the hymen was intact.” Contents of Dr. Bordelon’s letter were never admitted into testimony during the trial. That’s exculpatory evidence and grounds for a new trial;
  • The girls initially said they did not know their attacker’s name but testified in court that he had told them his name before assaulting them;
  • The girls said they would not be able to pick out their assailant “because all black men looked the same” to them;
  • Yet, they later picked Simmons out of a police lineup in which he was the only one handcuffed;
  • The police investigation reports did not include a single lead pointing to Simmons, yet he was picked off the street and charged with the crime;
  • Two reports by the same police officer written 24 hours apart gave two completely different locations of the place of arrest;
  • There is no indication that police, at any point, had an official interview with Simmons or that he gave any statement. Yet, when he was arrested and taken into custody, a police officer who was related to Keith Laborde, the supposed victims’ cousin, shot Simmons in the chest, nearly killing him;
  • Police claimed that Simmons disarmed one of the officers and attempted to shoot him but his gun misfired. Yet, this was not mentioned at trial, nor was he ever charged with resisting arrest any other crime related to that claim;
  • The arresting police officers never testified at trial;
  • No pre-trial or investigations by Simmons’s court-appointed legal counsel were ever made;

Simmons has been attempting to win an evidentiary hearing for several decades but the state has never afforded him one.

Simmons’s application for post-conviction relief has offered another piece of exculpatory evidence that was in the prosecution’s possession but never revealed to the jury.

“Recently, Vincent Simmons became aware of an affidavit signed by Pamela Jones, a witness present at the J&J Snack Bar the night of the alleged rapes,” Hjortsberg says in the application. “The withheld information given by Pamela Jones was known by the state because they and/or their agents are the ones that initially acquired the information.”

The rapes allegedly occurred when the girls said they were abducted at a 7-Eleven convenience store by Simmons who then forced Laborde, their 18-year-old cousin, to drive down a remote dirt road where they said they were raped near a lake.

Hjortsberg said that after Jones heard about Simmons’s arrest, she called the District Attorney’s office, gave her name and number, and explained that she knew that Simmons could not have committed the crime. “She was told that someone from the state would contact her, which never happened,” he wrote in his motion.

“After the phone call, Pamela followed up by going to the District Attorney’s office to tell them her side of the story,” he said. When she arrived, she was met by a white male who identified himself as an investigator. “He told Pamela that someone would get in touch with her in a few days to get her statement because there was no one present in the office to take it at the time. No one from the District Attorney’s office ever contacted her again.

“…At least one other individual that described himself as an investigator had knowledge of this information and never turned it over to defense counsel or notified them that the statement had been made.

“This favorable evidence related to Pamela Jones’s statement clearly shows that the Avoyelles Parish District Attorney’s office was aware of the evidence because they are the ones that heard the statements initially. Furthermore,” Hjortsberg says, “the prosecutor in this matter, Edward Knoll, was responsible for disclosing this favorable evidence even if he was unaware of it.”

The trial transcript and official court records shows “that the jury heard nothing about Pamela Jones and the fact that she saw Vincent at the J&J Snack Bar,” the motion says. “Pamela was never subpoenaed nor called as a witness. She also states in her signed affidavit that she never testified at trial nor did she speak to Vincent’s defense counsel. It would be inexplicable for the defense not to have used this evidence if they in fact had it in their possession at the time of the trial.”

Hjortsberg says, “A series of unorthodox and unexplained actions by the Avoyelles Parish District Attorney’s office prevented any reasonable possibility that Vincent Simmons’s trial attorney could have learned of the favorable evidence. Despite the fact that the office was called and physically approached by Pamela Jones—yet never documented her testimony nor made any mention of it to defense counsel—shows that they not only were aware of this favorable evidence but willfully withheld it from the defense.

“The state of Pamela Jones gives a detailed account of what time and day she arrived at the J&J Snack Bar, when Vincent arrived at the snack bar, what time Vincent arrived, what Vincent was doing when he arrived, and finally, what time Vincent left the bar, the motion says.

“The evidence withheld by the state would have been favorable to Vincent because it could have been used at trial to exculpate him—by demonstrating that Vincent could not have been in two places at once.”

Hjortsberg says that in Simmons’s case, the suppressed evidence “discredits the caliber and reliability of the state’s investigation and prosecution of Vincent, because it shows that the state zeroed in on one suspect with little to no investigation despite the weakness of the evidence against him. The suppressed evidence shows that investigators were aware that a credible alibi witness had come forward on Vincent’s behalf and (they) did nothing. It further shows that they had no interest in finding who actually committed these acts but rather focused solely on closing the case as quickly as possible.”

He said that while he is disappointed at the failure of prison officials to follow through on transporting Simmons to his hearing, “The hearing will be held and I’m confident that Vincent will be granted a new trial based on this new information and I don’t think he will be convicted again.”

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Terror-Bonne Sheriff refuses to help judge who signed his unconstitutional search warrant with courthouse security

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Judges, Politicians on October 24, 2017| 7 Comments »

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there Jerry Larpenter goes again.

Larpenter, the controversial sheriff and apparent strong man of Terrebonne Parish, seems to make decisions on the fly, a-la Donald Trump, about what is and what is not illegal in his parish, established laws be damned. And make no mistake, he is convinced it’s his parish.

Larpenter’s most recent dust-up is over the provision of security in the parish courthouse—which he refuses to do despite laws on the books that clearly say that is part of his job.

The result of his refusal is that the Houma Police Department is now performing security at the Terrebonne Parish governmental building and parish courthouse—all with the blessings of Parish President/Environmental Watchdog Gordon Dove GORDON DOVE.

Dove, while serving in the State Legislature as Chairman, of all things, of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment, managed to get one of his companies, Vacco Marine, Inc., cited on several occasions by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), a feat almost impossible to accomplish in Louisiana. Another company, Dual Trucking, was cited by the Montana Department of Environmental Equality for dumping radioactive waste from the nearby Bakken Oilfield in neighboring North Dakota.

Rumor has it—and this is strictly the word on the street, which more often than not, has more than a grain of truth to it—that 32nd Judicial District Court Judge Randal Bethancourt wanted more security details assigned to the courthouse in beautiful downtown Houma.

This is the same Judge Bethancourt who, apparently without consulting a law book about probable cause or the First Amendment, signed off on a warrant that allowed the high sheriff to come calling on an Internet blogger sometime around dawn to seize computers, cellphones and other electronic equipment—for no other reason than he was pissed because the blogger said some uncomplimentary things about him and the political establishment of Terror-bonne Parish.

To read the LouisianaVoice story of the infamous Free Speech Raid, click HERE.

After a federal court ruled the raid and seizure of the electronic equipment unconstitutional, the blogger, Houma policeman Wayne Anderson and his wife filed suit against the sheriff who SETTLED out of court for an unknown but substantial sum.

Apparently, if the scuttlebutt is correct, Larpenter said no to the request for additional security and he and His Honor got into something akin to a minor verbal war that ended with Larpenter telling Bethancourt that it was the judge’s fault that he, Larpenter, had to lay out some major cash on the Andersons, forgetting, apparently, that it was he, not the good judge, who asked for the search warrant in the first place.

Larpenter must have also forgotten for the moment that he didn’t have to pay a dime of the judgement—or his attorney bills. Those were covered by his office’s liability insurance policy.

But hey, we already said Larpenter thinks and acts a lot like Trump so this is validation of that descriptive analysis.

And just as with the raid on the Andersons was unconstitutional, Larpenter’s refusal to provide courthouse security appears to be at loggerheads with what the law says his duties are.

State statutes leave little wiggle room when they say:

  • “Court criers are to be provided by the sheriff of each parish to each district judge.”
  • “The crier of a court (notice this is not restricted to Orleans) shall attend all sessions thereof, under the direction of the judge shall open and close court at each session, and maintain order and decorum in the court room, and shall perform such other duties as are assigned to him by law, the court, or the sheriff.” (emphasis added)
  • “Each sheriff or deputy shall attend every court that is held in his parish…”
  • “Security in the courthouse is the responsibility of governing authority (Gordon Dove), but an agreement may be made between the parish officers and the building to share the expenses.”
  • “The principal functions of the criminal sheriff are that of being keeper of parish jail and executive officer of the Criminal District Court.”

And then there is Opinion 12-0187 of the Louisiana Attorney General’s office dated Feb. 7, 2013 which says in part:

“…security provided in the courthouse is the responsibility of the parish governing authority under this statutory regime…” and that “…the governing body of the parish shall pay to the sheriff or his deputies attending upon the sessions of their respective courts of appeal and district courts…” Click HERE to read the full opinion:

Even the Texas Judicial Council addressed the issue in a 2016 REPORT on Court Security. Of course, policies in Texas and other states have no bearing on what Louisiana policy regarding courthouse/courtroom security. Still, it’s significant to note that the report says:

“The sheriff in each county is responsible for providing courthouse security.5 The municipal governing body is responsible for doing so in municipal court buildings. While the judiciary itself does not have responsibility or authority for providing court security, it is often in the position to advocate for appropriate security to ensure that individuals in the courts are not threatened as they seek access to justice. In addition, sheriffs and municipalities are not generally responsible for providing direct security to judges and court personnel when they are away from a courthouse, unless specific circumstances warrant such. Rather, it is judges and court personnel who are responsible for ensuring their own safety.”

All of which, of course, means exactly nothing to Larpenter. After all, he makes up his own laws and who are we—or judges, for that matter—to question that authority?

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