Louisiana Voice

Only two days left in our semi-annual fundraiser. I sincerely appreciate the support LouisianaVoice has enjoyed for the past 11 years and I look forward to continuing to keep watch over our public officials, especially Louisiana State Police and our courts.

It’s difficult for one person to initiate change – but I feel it’s unforgivable to simply look the other way – and I certainly don’t expect readers to agree with everything I write (some don’t seem to agree with any of it, but that’s okay, too). It’s anyone’s and everyone’s right to disagree and I would never deprive anyone of free expression as the governor of Florida seems so determined to do in that state – unless the comments are racist or obscene.

Ron DeSantis, in fact, is one of the reasons for this blog’s existence, but like anything else these days, it costs money for travel, to pay for documents, and in some cases to file suit to obtain documents.

Please help us in these final two days by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to contribute by credit card or you may mail a check to: Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Loiuisiana 70727.

Those contributing $100 or more will get a signed copy of my newest book, It’s All TheIRS, the story of how the IRS, America’s only legalized terrorist organization, gets its come-uppance.

And, as they used to say in those old Bartles & James wine commercials: Thank you for your support.

Counting today, there are only three days remaining for me to badger you about LouisianaVoice‘s semi-annual fundraising drive which ends on Saturday.

I don’t know how fully cognizant readers are about how the events in the 26th Judicial District affect them, but trust me, it does. The manner in which potential jurors are eliminated from consideration is an affront to the very concept of justice in which this country is supposed to take such pride.

It does not matter what the charges are against an individual, our constitution guarantees a fair and unbiased trial of the facts but the suppression of potential jurors defies that very constutional guarantee.

And it is quite likely occurring in other judicial districts across the state and across the country, so yes, it certainly does affect you.

Moreover, the question of whether Ramos, the decision striking down split jury verdicts, should be retroactive, is simply absurd. How could it be fair for a person convicted by a split verdict (a 10-2 guilty verdict) on Monday to have his conviction thrown out but a person convicted by an identical vote a week before the Ramos decision should not get the same consideration? If split verdicts for felonies is unconstitutional this week, it should be equally wrong last week. That is the question that now sits before the Louisiana Supreme Court. (Louisiana, by the way, is one of only two states that still honored the split verdict, Oregon being the other one.)

That’s what LouisianaVoice does: it finds injustice, whether it be in the courts or the bureauracy, and we report it. That takes money for travel, documents, and legal costs to help convince recalcitrant bureaucrats to cooperate with public records requests.

To contributed by credit card, click on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post. If you prefer, you may send a check to: Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727. Those contributing $100 or more will get a signed copy of my novel It’s All TheIRS, the story of a foolhardy man who decides to fight the IRS – with surprising results.

As always, thanks for hanging with us for the past 11 years.

Even as the media bemoans the harsh reality that efforts to reinstitute Jim Crow in places like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and elsewhere are succeeding, the harsher reality is the unofficial exclusion of blacks never left the nation’s court systems as it pertains to jury selection.

In fact, the courts have taken the concept up a notch or two by quietly excluding anyone, black, brown, yellow or poor white, who just didn’t fit into the establishment’s perception of how justice should be administered.

The revelation by LouisianaVoice this week of the manner in which the 26^th Judicial District, comprised of the parishes of Bossier and Webster, has for years manipulated the jury selection process in favor of the prosecution may encompass more than just a single judicial district in Louisiana.

A 107-page REPORT by the Equal Justice Initiative titled Race and the Jury: Illegal Discrimination in Jury Selection addresses the issue only in terms of race, but LouisianaVoice has found what appears to be a trend of eliminating undesirable potential jury members before they were ever even aware their names had been drawn.

Briefly, that report says people of color are excluded from juries “at every step of the jury selection process:

• When the court system creates lists of potential jurors;
• When potential jurors are notified to come to court;
• When judges decide which potential jurors are qualified to serve, and finally,
• When prosecutors use peremptory strikes to remove potential jurors.

The practice does not appear to be limited to racial issues as the elderly were “waived” from jury duty without ever asking to be excused by someone simply altering or forging their jury questionnaires.

Attorneys normally have a predetermined number of peremptory challenges, whereby a potential juror may be STRUCK, or dismissed, without cause. There is no limit to challenges for cause, however.

But it is with the peremptory challenges that prosecutors have the advantage. By weeding through the venire in advance, potential jurors can be eliminated before the defense even knows who is on the list and that is what appears to have been going on in the 26^th JDC, and most likely elsewhere, for many years now and likely involves the cooperation of officials from the judiciary, prosecutors and offices of the clerks of court.

And the way it’s done doesn’t appear to be according to Hoyle, according to a report by a Texas handwriting expert.

Peggy Walla of LPR Investigations of Columbus, Texas, has 41 years’ experience in handwriting identification skills, including 12 years in forensic document examination with LPR. She has testified in numerous cases involving documents and signatures, revealing alterations or deletions.

She was retained by Gary Holder, father of Chris Holder who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2014 by a split-jury verdict. (See previous LouisianaVoice stories HERE and HERE.)

Walla examined hundreds of documents, including questionnaires sent to each potential juror over a seven-year period and determined that the answers given to at least 39 of those were written by “possibly 3-4 authors.”

She said she examined the documents for evidence of forgery, alterations, additions, or deletions and attempted to identify or eliminate persons as sources of handwriting. She factored in dozens of writing characteristics, including alignment, positioning, capitalization, cross strokes, dots, directions of strokes, patterns of pressure emphasis, size, skill, slant, slope, spacing, initial strokes, connecting and terminal strokes, tremor, hesitation of writing instrument, patching, retouching, letter groupings, unnatural tremor, distorted or natural writing and use of white-out, to name only a few of the variables.

“Writers who do not wish to be identified by their handwriting resort to disguised writing,” she wrote, adding “Originality in disguise is rare.”

“Change of slant is the most frequently used method of creating disguised writing. People who disguise their handwriting do not realize that their writing habits are so ingrained that they cannot alter them sufficiently to avoid detection.”

Accordingly, she had exhibits of page after page of questionnaires, waivers, and other documents which appeared to have been written by no more than two or three persons instead of the hundreds of persons supposedly sent notifications to. That would indicate that someone in the court system had gone through the lists of potential jurors and eliminated those who were not favorable to the prosecution – all without the knowledge or consent of those potential jurors.

As a result, the required 250 venire of petit jurors consistently fell far short of that number, capping out at 141 in one case.

Walla’s examination of documents revealed no fewer than 227 which were altered and/or forged, she said.

Her full report is included in an appeal filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeal which is currently pending. And while it’s still uncertain as to who ordered that the documents be altered or forged, it would appear that more than one person was involved.

Just how many judicial districts in Louisiana are involved in similar activity cannot be known without extensive district by district audits.

TOMORROW: Holder’s appeal is filed by a heavy hitter in the legal community.

Only five days are left in the current semi-annual fundraiser for LouisianaVoice.

We need your support to continue bringing you stories like the ones posted today.

I won’t bore you with the details; you know them by now. So, if you can find a way to help support independent investigative reporting, you can give by credit card by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post.

Or you can send a check by snail mail to Capital News Service, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.

A hundred bucks or more will get you a signed copy of my newest book, a novel entitled It’s All TheIRS, about a guy who foolishly decides to fight the IRS with surprising results.

Thank you, as always.

The argument could be made, I suppose, that because I don’t have a dog in this hunt, I probably should just butt out but I just can’t let the actions of a Florida legislator go without commenting on what a petty, vindictive, miserable s.o.b. State Rep. RANDY FINE has to be.

Yes, I’m keenly aware that he will probably never read this to know to what degree of total disgust and contempt I hold him in, but I’m saying it even if the only person whose feelings it assuages are mine.

Fine, a Republican supporter of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s fight with Disney, has labeled himself as one of Hillary Clinton’s true deplorables by using the Special Olympics as a weapon to reek some sort of sick revenge over a local school board member with whom he apparently has issues.

That’s just about as despicable as one can ever get. It’s probably some sort of new depth to which an elected official can dive in the sewer of political spats.

Fine, who sponsored a bill punishing Disney over the state’s LGBTQ education law, attempted to pull the rug of financial FUNDING out from under the Special Olympics for the city of West Melbourne, because school board member Jennifer Jenkins was invited to a fundraising event and he wasn’t.

Seriously? Someone should bitch-slap this sanctimonious little saggy-jowl twit just for general principle.

At the same time, he also threatened to pull funding for a flood risk reduction project in West Melbourne – all because he (wait for it) doesn’t like Jenkins, whom he referred to as a “whore” in a text to West Melbourne City Council member John Dittmore.

Apparently, his dislike of Jenkins stems from Jenkins’s support for school mask requirements and other Covid safety measures during the pandemic. Well, that’s certainly justification for cutting funding for Special Olympics and flood protection. Nothing there to remind us of the small-mindedness of the type people who support the likes of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

Of course, Dandy Randy tried to spin the confabulation in his favor by the tried-and-true Trumpian method: denial.

He predictably denied that the conversation ever took place and said he never threatened to ask DeSantis to veto funding for anything.

But he did an equally predictably stupid thing: he put his threat in writing in the form of a (ahem) text. (Oh, when will they ever learn about that damn social media?)

The messages to Dittmore were released by West Melbourne city attorney Morris Richardson as part of a public records from (who else?) Jenkins.

“Jenkins just put your project (flood protection) and Special Olympics funding on the veto list,” he wrote in a text to the city councilman. In another text (one is never enough), he told Dittmore that it would be “smart” to cancel the event with an “apology for wading into politics.”

“You guys will have to raise a lot of money given that’s who you want to honor, not the person who got you money in the budget,” he wrote.

But Fine never threatened anyone, don’t you see?

Jenkins somehow managed to take the high road in this messy affair. “I’m not surprised by it,” she said. “It’s typical for someone to attack a woman with sexual innuendos when they are threatened by their strength.”

I suppose this ugly episode does deflect attention from Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, another of those Trumpian Republicans who one wit said never had a high school sweetheart until he was 38.

But unfortunately, it does not conceal the sad truth that Florida is doing a deep dive into authoritarianism, hoping to take the entire country with it in the process.

The only hope is that with both residing in Florida and both seemingly casting solicitous eyes toward the White House, they will be successful only in destroying each other and perhaps leave the door open for a decent Republican (if there is one left out there) to fill the void.

And the Democrats had better start looking for a strong (and younger) candidate of their own.