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Alleged victim of sexual abuse by Baton Rouge physical therapist accuses DA, sheriff’s office of dragging heels

Posted in Boards, Courts, Ethics, Senate on November 8, 2019| 4 Comments »

A Baton Rouge physical therapist has been formally charged with inappropriate touching of female patients and inappropriate comments about their bodies, but the bill of information from the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s office might never have been submitted had it not been for the dogged pursuit of one woman who refused to allow her complaints to be ignored despite the best efforts of the DA’s office and East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s investigators to do just that.

Physical therapist Philippe Veeters, doing business as Dutch Physical Therapy, was first arrested last February on the basis of complaints by several of his female patients, but East Baton Rouge Parish DA Hillar Moore didn’t get around to submitting a bill of information against Veeters until Nov. 1.

The woman, who requested that her identity not be revealed, says she was assaulted by Veeters on June 7, 2018, said, “After dealing with the sheriff’s office for months, I contacted the FBI with all my documentation showing how the police kept lying to me and changing their stories. they did try to investigate them. However, Mr. Hillar Moore apparently invited himself to that meeting and shut that meeting down. Moore told the FBI that it is just too hard to go against a doctor,” she said. “This was disturbing and sickening, knowing Mr. Veeters had already admitted to the detectives within one week what he did to me without consent—trying to pretend it was a normal Medical procedure.

“I have since learned another victim went to the sheriff’s office in 2012…but no one ever took her seriously or even investigated her assault,” the woman said. “I had to fight so hard against the people who should be protecting us. They had his admission on tape, they had others who reported it to them and the board yet they kept lying to me. Why?”

She said sheriff’s office investigators initially were supportive and told her she was doing the right thing in filing charges against Veeters. But then she said authorities suddenly began “to tell me different stories and start(ed) deflecting when we question(ed) them on things” and opened and closed her case three times. “I now know why victims do not come forward. It takes so much power and strength to report something like this and you aren’t allowed to heal and push the memory away as quick (sic) as you would like.”

She said she and her husband met with sheriff’s office investigators but got no answers.

“I also have emails dating back to July 2018 between Hillar Moore and myself—where I’d share things with him about the sheriff’s office,” the woman said, “and from July 2018 until January 2019 he would tell me he’d get with them and they’d get back to me. He never got back to me!! It was almost comical. I went from patient to angry that someone didn’t want to protect the women in our community. He completely stopped responding to me once I told him I learned who Floyd falcon was. Never heard from him again!

“When I finally met with the assistant DA in May 2019, she claimed they were protecting me. I have no idea what they were protecting me from nor do I believe her. Considering they wanted all my medical records from the board and were upset my mental health records were not obtained, I doubt they were protecting me from anything.”

She also was critical of George Papale, legal counsel for the Louisiana Physical Therapy Board, which had received complaints of sexual abuse by Veeters from at least half-a-dozen women. The board finally got around to continuing a prior nine-month suspension handed down on Oct. 5, 2018, suspending Veeters indefinitely on September 13 of this year, seven months after his arrest.

The consent decree signed by Veeters and his attorney, Floyd Falcon, noted that “This is not the first disciplinary action” taken against Veeters “for related professional misconduct and sexual misconduct of a physical therapy patient.”

The board did not recommend disciplinary action on a similar complaint in 2012 and in January 2014, placed Veeters “on notice,” but took no formal disciplinary action against him.

The board’s reluctance did not deter Papale from firing off a 24-page letter of complaint to State Sen. John Alario in which he asked for an investigation “on behalf of the citizens of Louisiana” of actions taken by the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee during and following a May 15, 2019 hearing relative to the board, which Papale termed “unlawful and unprofessional.”

Papale, who no longer represents the board, complained that committee chair Karen Carter Peterson and Sen. Jean-Paul rebuked the board “with callous disregard for the truth” by repeatedly mischaracterizing the adjudication of a complaint by saying “a person who is under nine counts of sexual assault charges is under probation with the board” and “this guy got a nine-month slap on the wrist.”

His letter also accused the committee of threatening and attacking board members, its employees and contractors and of saying the board was failing the citizens of Louisiana “without investigation into the validity of the complaints, nor a basic understanding of administrative laws, processes, or procedure.”

To read the full text of that 24-page letter, go HERE.

Consent agreement of OCTOBER 5, 2018

Latest CONSENT AGREEMENT

 

 

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Do contributions from Lindsey Graham’s PAC and Trump’s communications with senators constitute jury tampering?

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Senate on November 5, 2019| 5 Comments »

Google the definition of jury tampering and you get several hits, all of which say the same thing. I have chosen to include the following definition from the web page of USLegal:

  • A person commits the crime of jury tampering if, with intent to influence a juror’s vote, opinion, decision or other action in the case, he attempts directly or indirectly to communicate with a juror other than as part of the proceedings in the trial of the case. Jury tampering may be committed by conducting conversations about the case outside the court, offering bribes, making threats or asking acquaintances to communicate with a juror. (emphasis mine)
  • A juror includes any person who is a member of any jury, including a grand jury, impaneled by any court or by any public servant authorized by law to impanel a jury. The term juror also includes any person who has been summoned or whose name has been drawn to attend as a prospective juror. (emphasis mine)

Certainly, I am not an attorney nor am I a legal scholar by any stretch of the imagination.

But if the House does ultimately approve articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump—which now seems inevitable—then the question of jury tampering could conceivably arise, which could explain why Mitch McConnell advised Trump to back off his tactic of CRITICIZING SENATORS who may soon be sitting in judgment of him.

As a disclaimer, let me say up front this is not a partisan essay but a legitimate question about a legal conundrum that may need to be addressed down the road if the laws concerning jury tampering are to be enforced across the board at all levels of jurisprudence.

The potential problem revolves around the fact that (a) the House, which will have to vote to impeach, will act in the same role as a grand jury does when it indicts an individual and (b) the Senate will serve as the jury in the trial that would follow.

That means that every member of Congress—435 House members and 100 senators—would be serving at some point as either a member of the grand jury (House) or the petit jury (Senate).

So, when Trump goes tweets any criticism of any representative or senator over the issue of impeachment, is he committing the crime of jury tampering? When he says Republicans need to “GET TOUGHER AND FIGHT” on impeachment, could that be considered an attempt to influence a juror’s vote?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) is one of Trump’s more vocal supporters who championed the impeachment of Bill Clinton but now rails against a similar move to impeach a president from his own party.

And Graham’s sometimes steadfast defense of Trump and his strident criticism of the impeachment hearings creates a glaring jury tampering problem in its own right.

You see, Graham heads up a political action committee (PAC) called FUND FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE. In fact, on the PAC’s web page is a quote from Graham: “I helped establish Fund for America’s Future several years ago to support conservative candidates for federal and state office. We will work hard to grow the Republican Party and chip away at the Democrats’ control of Washington.”

And as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “Ay, there’s the rub” (often misquoted as “Therein lies the rub”).

Of 21 Republican senators up for reelection next year, 15 have accepted $110,000 between them from Fund for America’s Future this year alone—all since the subject of impeachment was first broached inside the Beltway. These senators, with the amounts they received, include:

  • Dan Sullivan, Alaska: $10,000;
  • Tom Cotton, Arkansas: $5,000;
  • Cory Gardner, Colorado: $5,000;
  • David Perdue, Georgia: $10,000;
  • Joni Ernst, Iowa: $10,000;
  • Mitch McConnell: $10,000;
  • Susan Collins, Maine: $5,000;
  • Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mississippi: $5,000;
  • Steve Daines, Montana: $10,000;
  • Ben Sasse, Nebraska: $5,000;
  • Thom Tillis, North Carolina: $5,000;
  • Jim Inhofe, Ohio: $5,000;
  • Lamar Alexander, Tennessee: $10,000;
  • John Cornyn, Texas: $10,000;
  • Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia: $5,000.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy had no contributions from Graham’s PAC, though he did receive $11,200 from Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas Republican power brokers. Several other senators also received contributions from the father and daughter from Nevada.

Additionally, several senators received contributions from Citizens United Political Victory Fund. That’s the PAC that convinced the SUPREME COURT to remove limits on corporations spending on political campaigns, a decision that led to the creation of super PACs.

Interestingly Citizens United Political Victory Fund provided compensation of an undetermined amount to Kellyanne Conway, who never passes up an opportunity appear on Fox News to defend Trump and to attack the impeachment hearings. No explanation was provided as to the purpose of that payment to her. That compensation, of course, further clouds the issue of jury tampering.

Cotton ($5,000), Daines ($10,000), and Graham ($5,000) also received funding from Citizens United Political Victory Fund while 10 received contributions from Citizens for Prosperity in America PAC, an organization that contributes 100 percent to Republican causes and candidates. Those included:

  • Sullivan: $15,000;
  • Gardner: $5,000;
  • Perdue: $10,000;
  • Ernst: $10,000;
  • McConnell: $5,000;
  • Daines: $5,000;
  • Tillis: $10,000;
  • Inhofe: $5,000;
  • Graham: $5,000;
  • Cornyn: $11,600.

Money is never given to any politician without the expectation of something in return. And inasmuch as these senators received these contributions this year with the full knowledge that they would likely be sitting as a jury in judgment of fellow Republican Trump, the question of (wait for it) quid pro quo comes into play and that would appear to constitute jury tampering.

In 1929, the Louisiana legislature voted to impeach Gov. Huey Long but he pulled a brilliant move that guaranteed victory. He convinced 15 senators to sign a pledge, the so-called “ROUND ROBIN” not to vote to convict. They were later rewarded with state jobs and other favors with some even alleged to have been paid in cash or given lavish gifts. That certainly was jury tampering by every definition of the term.

As far as we know, Trump has yet to attempt to get 34 senators to sign such a pledge.

As far as we know.

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Number of ICE detainees in Louisiana increases threefold in six months: it’s a cash-cow enterprise driven by pure greed

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Ethics, Politicians, Prison on November 1, 2019| 13 Comments »

Last May, The New Orleans Advocate published a STORY that put the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees in Louisiana at 2,800.

Today, just six months later, that number has trebled to 9,000.

That dramatic increase could be tied to the sudden disappearance of thousands of detainees in Brownsville, Texas, who were rumored to have been quietly transferred to Louisiana which now ranks second only to Texas in the number of ICE detainees.

A big part of the reason for the surge is pure economics.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections pays local sheriffs and private prisons $24.39 to house its prisoners while ICE’s rate is more than double that, at $65 a day.

And the profits don’t stop with the daily rates paid by ICE. Exorbitant rates charged by private telephone companies, private- or sheriff department-run commissaries that gouge prisoners for snacks and soft drinks, and private companies that provide ankle monitors are cashing in on both DOC prisoners and ICE detainees.

In short, local facilities, whether operated by private companies like LASALLE CORRECTIONS, headquartered in Ruston (even its EMPLOYEES give it overall poor reviews), GEO, or local sheriffs—and the aforementioned affiliated suppliers—have discovered a cash cow.

One privately-run local prison no longer even takes DOC prisoners, choosing instead to go for the bigger payout.

And of course, the private companies that run prisons, operate telephone services, sell concessions and provide the ankle monitors haven’t forgotten to grease the skids via generous campaign contributions to the elected officials who continue to approve the arrangements and everyone comes away happy.

Almost everyone, that is.

Forgotten in the ringing of the cash registers for those entities has been the general welfare of the detainees.

With 1,600 detainees in Jena, 1,000 each in Richwood, Basile, and Jonesboro, 1,400 in Winnfield, 1,100 in Pine Prairie, 835 in Ferriday, 755 in Jena, and 250 in Plain Dealing, overcrowding is a real issue. And little has been done to address that problem.

At Richwood, for example, 98 detainees are housed in a single room and there are only four toilets with no privacy. Beds are stacked three high along the walls of the room with bunk beds placed down the middle of the room. Detainees are awakened at 4 a.m. for breakfast and are given only 40 minutes per day outside. One observer said the men “get so hopeless and desperate, they just start screaming.”

Hardened criminals at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola receive better treatment.

Recently, the warden at Richwood was replaced after a detainee committed SUICIDE.

Other atrocities attributed to LaSalle were cited in an ONLINE STORY by Vice.com. These included moldy food, poor training of guards, physical abuse of migrants, and lack of medical care.

A demonstration is planned tomorrow (Saturday) at Richwood for whatever good it might do. If a detainee is identified by the media, he is at risk for reprisals, according to the observer who spoke on condition of confidentiality for that very reason.

Nell Hahn, a retired Lafayette attorney with the Louisiana Advocates for Immigrant and Detention (LA-AID), spoke to a group of detainee advocates at the Ruston Presbyterian Church last Saturday.

She said billions of dollars are being wasted on imprisoning those “whose only offense is that they have no legal documentation. They have committed no crimes,” she said.

The detainees are housed in such remote places as Jonesboro, Jena, Ferriday, Winnfield, Pine Prairie, and Oberlin in part because keeping them in such remote places makes it difficult for them to obtain legal representation from attorneys like Lara Nochomovitz of Cleveland, Ohio, who, nevertheless represents clients at Richwood, Plain Dealing and Jonesboro.

The Southern Poverty Law Center purchased a house in Jena in order to serve as a place for attorneys to stay while working on cases—and for immigrants’ families to stay free of charge.

Still, immigration judges who hear Louisiana cases have unusually high rates of denials of petitions for asylum from detainees.

It’s one thing to protect our borders and no one would argue that. But to keep detainees, including children, in inhuman conditions with inadequate toiletries, bedding, food and exercise, caged like rats, is not what this country is supposed to be about.

And lest the argument crops up that the illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, let’s be clear: They have not taken a single job. Those jobs were “taken” by the employers who run the roofing companies, construction companies and the chicken processing plants, and who give the jobs to the illegals.

As long as they give the low-paying jobs to illegals, the problem will persist.

Like the futile war on drugs, as long as there is a demand, there will be a supply.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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