Louisiana Voice

I first began paying close attention to Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees with the Clarence Thomas debacle back in September 1991. Fast forward to March 2017 when I was again drawn to the soap opera of confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s nominatee, Neil Gorsuch.

If you will remember, Mitch McConnell invoked the so-called “Biden Rule” in blocking Barack Obama’s efforts to fill the vacancy created by the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in March 2016 because it was “too near” the 2016 presidential election.

Not quite two years later, in September 2018, there were the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and things started to really get nasty.

Then, less than two months before the 2020 election, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and even though the vacancy created by her death was five months closer to the election date than Scalia’s death had been, McConnell nevertheless saw fit to ram Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett through before she could even be fitted for her robe – perhaps because even the Sleeping Turtle could see that Trump’s reelection campaign was in deep trouble.

And now, we are again treated to the drama of confirmation hearings for yet another similar spectacle, this time Joe Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson to succeed retiring Associate Justice Stephen Breyer.

All of which leads me to three major points:

1. Hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee serve only as a national stage on which pontificating peacocks from both parties are given the opportunity to strut and to appear sage and important while accomplishing nothing more than making complete idiots of themselves. (Did I say both parties? I meant both parties.)
2. If we vetted members of Congress as thoroughly and as savagely as we do Supreme Court justices, probably fewer than 10 percent of its 535 combined membership could qualify for their positions (and I’m being generous at 10 percent). If we vetted members of Congress as thoroughly and as savagely as we do Supreme Court Justices, then maybe – just maybe – two members of Louisiana’s eight combined House and Senate members would qualify (at 25 percent, that could be a tad on the high side).
3. Perhaps we should give serious consideration to a constitutional amendment that would allow Supreme Court justices to confirm the nominations of members of Congress. Seriously, could they do any worse?

Another wrongful death lawsuit has been filed against troubled LaSalle Corrections of Ruston after an inmate at Catahoula Correctional Center in Harrisonburg after an inmate on suicide watch managed to obtain and smoke poisonous insecticide and died eight days later.

Also named as defendants in the wrongful death of Javan Kennerson were Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Catahoula Parish Sheriff Toney Edwards, Catahoula Correctional Center, and a host of employees of the facility.

Kennerson was in the ninth year of a 20-year sentence for an unspecified offense.

The lawsuit, filed in the Western District of U.S. Federal Court, claims that “Since 2015, dozens of incarcerated people have died in LaSalle facilities due to lack of treatment or delay of treatment of their medical conditions.” At least nine of those deaths were attributed to suicide, the petition filed by Jennifer Barthe, Kennerson’s mother, says.

Of the nine suicides cited by the lawsuit, seven were in Texas facilities and the other two in Louisiana (Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield and Richwood Correctional Center in Richwood in Ouachita Parish).

The lawsuit says that auditors observed “numerous instances” in which LaSalle was not in compliance with timely cell checks or observations of mentally ill and suicidal incarcerated people.” These included:

• The Department of Homeland Security Office of Detention and Oversight found that LaSalle’s River Correctional Center failed to conduct observations of an individual who was on suicide watch in May 2021;

• In October 2020, LaSalle’s Winn Correctional Center was found to have inadequate camera monitoring of the facility;

• The Department of Homeland Security Office of Detention and Oversight found that LaSalle’s Irwin County Detention Center failed to personally observe people on suicide watch in 2020;

• The Texas Commission of Jail Standards found that LaSalle’s Fannin County Jail was not meeting state standards on face-to-face observations of suicidal and mentally ill incarcerated people in 2018 and 2019;

• The Texas Commission of Jail Standards found that LaSalle’s Jack Harwell Detention Center was not meeting state minimum standards on face-to-face observations of suicidal and mentally ill incarcerated people in 2018 and 2019;

• The Department of Homeland Security Office of Detention and Oversight found that LaSalle’s Richwood Correctional Center did not conduct timely cell checks of people housed in the special management unit on one (1) occasion in December 2019; six (6) separate occasions in December 2020; and once again in October 2021;

• The Texas Commission of Jail Standards found that LaSalle’s Johnson County Jail was not meeting state standards on face-to-face observations of suicidal and mentally ill incarcerated people in 2018;

• The Texas Commission of Jail Standards found that LaSalle’s Limestone County Jail was not meeting state standards on face-to-face observations of suicidal and mentally ill incarcerated people in 2018; and

• The Texas Commission of Jail Standards found that LaSalle’s Willacy County Jail was not meeting state standards on face-to-face observations of suicidal and mentally ill incarcerated people in 2020.

Auditors also found on several occasions that LaSalle had inadequate training and policies on suicide prevention.

Catahoula Corrections Center is a private prison run by LaSalle Corrections via contract with the Department of Corrections, the latest of which is a renewal dated 2019. “While LaSalle operates this facility, both it and D.O.C. are fully and individually responsible for the health, including mental health, of the people in custody at CCC,” the petition says.

Kevin Reeves showed up, but he may as well not have.

To say that Reeves lacked any propensity for candor would be to belabor the obvious.

Reeves, superintendent of State Police during the time that Ronald Greene was beaten, kicked and tased to death by five Louisiana state troopers, appeared voluntarily on Tuesday before the House committee investigating Greene’s 2019 death.

But for any real insight as to what transpired on the early morning hours of May 10, 2019, Reeves may as well have stayed home.

That’s both disappointing and reminiscent of the manner in which his predecessor, Mike Edmonson, managed to avoid responsibility for the infamous San Diego road trip by several of his troopers in an Louisiana State Police (LSP) vehicle.

And for anyone who thinks for a moment that a new day has dawned at LSP under its current leadership, I have some nice bayou frontage property in New Mexico to sell you.

Reeves, accompanied by Baton Rouge high-dollar defense attorney Lewis Unglesby, was sufficiently adept at the bureaucratic two-step so as to avoid answering direct questions that might have shed some light on the tragic events that began in Ouachita Parish and ended in adjacent Union.

There was one observer who was particularly interested in the hearings into how Troop F, headquartered in Monroe, has become something of a rogue outfit. Former prominent New Orleans attorney Ashton O’Dwyer was taken down by members of Troop F in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. Ordered to vacate his home (which had escaped wind and flood damage from the cataclysmic storm), he was hauled to Camp Amtrak where he was brutalized by authorities for hours on end.

O’Dwyer said he was appalled at “how easily Reeves lied,” which he said demonstrated the intrinsic arrogance of Reeves in particular and LSP in general. He said Reeves “truly considers himself so much above the law that he believes he can lie with impunity …and that people will believe his lies.”

O’Dwyer, who was fired by his prestigious New Orleans law firm and his law license revoked after he raised so much hell over the manner in which he was treated by authorities (yet another testament to the individual’s right to due process), said he was surprised Reeves testified at all. “I fully expected him to invoke his 5^th Amendment right against self-incrimination.”

O’Dwyer noted with no small amount of irony that the one individual who was indisputably in charge of LSP, along with his entire command staff, “was disengaged” in serious matters such as the death of a motorist while in State Police custody. “The process that Reeves described in such matters allowed the people at the top to simply pass the buck which in the Ronald Greene case, obviously meant absolving themselves of any and all responsibility.”

O’Dwyer said that in a jury trial, be it a criminal case or in a civil litigation, he believes the following testimony by Reeves [would] cause him serious credibility problems:

• The body cam video of Greene’s beating and tasing is “awful but not unlawful” (a statement attributed to Reeves and even defended in Tuesday’s hearing).
• “I don’t believe there was a cover-up by the State Police.”
• “I know of no cover-up in the Ronald Greene matter.”
• “I don’t believe that body cams were turned off with any intent to cover something up.”
• “The only reason that phones were sanitized (erased) was to restore them to factory setting so they could be re-issued to someone else” (which raises the question of why the phones of Lt. Col. Doug Cain and former LSP executive counsel Faye Morrison were likewise sanitized even though the instruments were not re-issued to others).

“Coincidentally, Reeves’s state-issued phone appears to have been sanitized commensurate with [the] filing of the wrongful death civil litigation,” O’Dwyer said.

He said he was surprised to learn that Col. Lamar Davis, the current superintendent of LSP, coincidentally headed up the department’s Technical Section when those phones were sanitized.

“Coincidentally, Reeves’ personal phone, which he routinely used at work and with which he communicated with the governor, was ‘accidentally crushed’ and also unavailable,” the former attorney noted.

That’s a lot of coincidences

O’Dwyer also was skeptical about the initial report that Greene died from injuries suffered in an auto accident. “No accident reconstruction analysis, which is routine in such cases, was ever performed,” he said.

Gov. John Bel Edwards was informed by Reeves some 10 hours after Greene’s death that he had died following a struggle with police. Yet Edwards remained silent on this point when State Police later tried to say Greene died when his vehicle struck a tree.

It’s not the first time that Edwards has appeared to benefit questionable members of law enforcement. Five years ago, he approved the pardon application of former Tensas Parish Sheriff Jeff Britt, who had pleaded guilty in 1999 to felony charges of misspending public funds and mistreating inmates.

Edwards granted the pardon in March 2017 and four months later appointed Britt to the board of the Used Motor Vehicle Commission.

Following his resignation as part of his plea bargain, Britt, along with someone named Ian Williamson of Spanish Fort, Alabama, operated a prison commissary business, providing snacks to sheriffs around north Louisiana for resale to inmates. They also run an outfit called Inmate Financial Services whereby family members of inmates may “conveniently purchase commissary credits for your incarcerated loved ones” so that they may in turn purchase the snacks from their commissary company, Britt’s Distributing, LLC.

Louisiana’s very own junior U.S. Senator has been targeted as one of the Kremlin Eight who soiled their breeches back on July 4, 2018, creating such a foul stench that all eight need to be replaced in the 2022 midterm elections.

John Kennedy was one of the eight members of the POT (the successor to the GOP), who, the day after the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, were in the Kremlin for a photo-op with ranking members of Vladimir Putin’s administration. (POT, by the way, is the acronym for Party of Treason).

No explanation has ever been offered by Kennedy as to the purpose of that mysterious trip. On this particular subject, Kennedy has been uncharacteristically quiet.

We do know that Wisconsin’s Sen. Ron Johnson, also one of the elite eight, only days after the trip, downplayed Russian interference in the 2016 election. That didn’t keep him from blaming President Biden for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. “I don’t think Vladimir Putin would have moved on Ukraine were it not for the weakness displayed certainly by the Biden administration but also by the west in general,” he said, conveniently neglecting to mention Donald Trump’s withholding of military aid to Ukraine.

A NEW AD by Really American PAC zeroes in on the Kremlin Eight, referring to Johnson as “Ronovich” Johnson.

“If these senators were truly worried about Russia, why did they all vote to block three separate election security bills?” the ad asks. “Why did they cover for Trump when he withheld crucial military aid to Ukraine? Why have they consistently taken Putin’s side?”

That’s not to say, however, that the others have been overlooked. They include, besides Johnson and Kennedy, Repugnantcan Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama, John Thune of South Dakota, Steve Daines of Montana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, John Hoeven of North Dakota, and Kay Granger of Texas.

Normally, we just roll our eyes and sign heavy when Kennedy starts talking but, in this case, we’d dearly love to hear his reasons for spending the date set aside to celebrate this nation’s birthday in the Kremlin. I bet it has something to do with chickens crossing the road just to show the armadillos it could be done.

Or some other philosophical explanation that only he would comprehend.

Meanwhile, the ad says, “Vladimir Putin has shown that his goal is to destabilize western democracy – from Ukraine to the U.S. We can’t allow his puppets to sink their claws deeper into our government. Vote out Russia’s Republican allies in 2022.”

The investigation into the practices of a physician at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center VAMC) in Pineville appears to have ended with findings of no criminal wrongdoing on the part of Dr. Shivani Negi.

That’s not to say that Dr. Negi escaped unscathed with then-5^th District U.S. Rep. Dr. Ralph Abraham declaring, “The VA system is broken.” Abraham also wrote that the Alexandria facility hired her “knowing that she had inadequate credentials for practicing medicine.”

A former investigator for the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office even said, “We were headed toward an indictment” (of Negi) until Jeff Landry defeated his boss, incumbent Buddy Caldwell, in the 2015 election and closed the investigation. Investigator Arthur Orga left the AG’s office shortly after Landry took over.

Complaints against Negi included allegations that she withheld treatment for patients, administered steroids to a diabetic patient even though he informed her he could not take steroids, that she altered medical records in another state to cover her failure to order a blood culture on a patient, that she screamed at staff, threw charts at fellow workers and was often referred to anger management classes. The most damning, however, was the question raided over her qualifications in light of her failure to reveal to the State of Virginia the fact that her application for a license to practice had been rejected by the State of Florida.

In her application to the Virginia Board of Medicine, there was a section in which she was required to provide details about any prior denial of a medical license. She left that section on her application blank even though Florida had rejected her application on the grounds that she had concealed the fact that she had altered an admission order sheet after the fact to hide the fact that she had neglected to order a blood culture on a patient while employed at Maryland General Hospital.

A committee that investigated the incident reported that her actions and her subsequent “implausible response” reflected “not only bad judgment but also unethical behavior.”

She was never licensed in Louisiana, but her Virginia license was considered adequate for her employment in the VA system

Dr. John Sam, who worked with Dr. Negi for more than a decade at the VA facility in Pineville said that every year he worked with her, someone would report her behavior to the VA Office of Inspector General and she would end up in anger management. “Dr. Negi was rude and spoke in a harsh tone of voice to almost all the staff while I was a patient there,” wrote one former patient in a sworn affidavit.

Another former patient, Dennis Egelston said, “The first time I saw Dr. Negi, she took me off the antibiotics and started me on steroids. I told her I was diabetic and couldn’t be put on steroids. This did not stop her even though I pleaded with her not to. She told me, ‘I am the doctor and you are the patient, and I will do what I want to.’ My blood sugar shot up from 180 to almost 500. This woman has no regard for human life.”

Floyd Hamilton has been a particular thorn in Negi’s side after she put in orders to remove his 84-year-old father from a breathing machine and took him off antibiotics against the wishes of the family.

Floyd Hamilton has been fighting a lonely battle against Negi and the VA 13 years, taking his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which refused to hear his case.

He then went to law enforcement but with similar results.

While it appeared briefly that there might be a criminal indictment, those hopes were dashed with the election of Jeff Landry in 2015.

He fared no better with the office of 14^th JDC District Attorney John DeRosier and his special investigator Hugo Holland.

Holland, in a three-page letter to the junior Hamilton, noted that the doctor’s actions did not rise to the level of homicide or, for that matter, even medical malpractice.

Holland, who hires himself out to a dozen or more district attorneys across the state, specializes in more high-profile, primarily capital, cases involving defendants with few financial resources to mount a formidable defense and showed little interest in pursuing a case against a doctor and a federal agency with the resources to fight back.