Louisiana Voice

This a story of your tax dollars at work.

Back in March 2019, the Southern University system-wide grievance committee was hearing an appeal by four professors who had been terminated by the school. Their names are Elaine Lawnau, Christy Moland, Terrilyn Gillis and Marilyn Seibert.

They requested that the hearing be conducted in open session. That is their right. It’s written in Louisiana’s Open Meeting Statutes.

But committee chairperson Maria Dickerson announced that she had met privately with all committee members beforehand and it was agreed that the hearing would be closed to the public.

There were at least four laws broken with that decision:

Meeting “privately” with committee members beforehand was itself a violation of the Open Meetings statutes;

The professors who were filing grievances, not the committee, has the final say under those same statutes as to whether or not the meeting should proceed in open or closed session – and they chose open;

There was never a formal motion to enter into executive session – also a requirement of the law;

There was never an official vote taken by the committee to enter into closed session – again, a require…well, you get the picture.

Because of the flagrant violations, the four professors and I, as a journalist covering the hearing, filed suit against Southern.

The school’s defense attorney, Winston Decuir, Jr. was questioning me during the subsequent trial and he asked, “Mr. Aswell, how many events have you covered at Southern?”

I suppose he was trying to imply that I was there only to serve as some sort of rabble-rouser, neglecting a fine point of law which says that it is irrelevant how many times I have graced Southern or anywhere else with my appearance to cover a meeting.

State District Court Judge Richard “Chip” Moore found Decuir’s lame argument that the university’s grievance committee did not constitute a public body so embarrassingly weak that he LEVIED A FINE of $1,000 per plaintiff ($5,000 total), plus $8,400 in attorney fees to Baton Rouge attorney J. Arthur Smith, III, who was representing the professors and by extension, me. More also ordered Southern to pay $638 in court costs.

I recently (recently being a relative term) made a public records requests for an accounting of how much the school paid Decuir’s firm to represent the school in this dog of a case.

The records I received earlier this week reflect that up and including the trial in 19^th Judicial District Court on the open meetings violations, Southern paid Decuir $12,600.

When Judge Moore handed down his decision in May 2019, Decuir appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeal where he lost again. For his work on the appeal, Southern paid Decuir an additional $5,462.50.

With two strikes against him, Decuir then took the matter up on writs to the Louisiana State Supreme Court, which simply refused to hear the case – but not before Decuir was paid another $3,782.50.

The final accounting provided by Southern shows that from start to finish, Decuir was paid $22,276.85 for the hearing and the ensuing legal work.

Now, any math whizzes reading this will be quick to realize there’s a $20 discrepancy in the accounting. Just so you know, I am attaching a link to the tabulations provided by Southern. Perhaps you can find the extra twenty bucks. I can’t.

But the point of all this to show that Southern was hit for $22,276.85 (or $22,256.85, depending on whether or not you can find the elusive $20) to keep from paying a $14,038 judgment – $9,145 of which was spent on fruitless appeals that any first-year law student could have said was an exercise in throwing good money after bad.

And while I can’t speak to whether or not the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and court costs have been paid, I can state with certainty that the $5,000 judgment in favor of the five plaintiffs has not been paid.

I wonder if there’s a provision to require attorneys to pony up funds for continuing to bleed a client after losing a case more obvious than Donald Trump’s bogus election claims?

I will be at Cavalier House Books in Denham Springs a week from today (on July 17), at 3 p.m., to sign copies of my latest book, Murder on the Teche: A True Story of Money and a Flawed Investigation (Dville Press).

It’s the story of the 2010 murder of New Iberia orthodontist Robert Chastant and how the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office botched the investigation from beginning to end, how the wife, identified by the murderer as having paid him to kill her husband was never investigated as a suspect and in the end, walked away with more than $2 million in insurance and retirement benefits.

It’s the story of how critical evidence was overlooked or ignored in the sheriff office’s “investigation.”

It’s also a story that places the sheriff’s office under a microscope with the murder investigation serving as a prelude to a more intensified federal investigation of abuses of prisoners by sheriff’s deputies. The office of Sheriff Louis Ackal would eventually pay judgments or settlements averaging $10,000 per month for the entirety of his 12-year reign of terror. That comes to about $1.5 million and includes the death of one prisoner who, while in custody in the back seat of a sheriff’s department patrol car, got hold of a gun and shot himself in the chest – while his hands were cuffed behind his back.

Several deputies ended up with lengthy prison sentences as a result of their abuses, including some who participated in the investigation of Dr. Chastant’s murder.

I hope to see as many of you as possible but if you can’t make it, you can still get a signed copy of the book by clicking on either the image of the book cover or Cavalier’s link, both in the column to the right of this post.

I’m gratified to report that sales of the book have been (and continue to be) brisk, so get your order in early.

Additionally, I am also scheduled to appear at the Louisiana State Book Festival in downtown Baton Rouge on Oct. 30 and will be talking about the book.

I hope to see you at one of the events!

“Fox News has caused many millions of Americans – most of them Republicans – to believe things that simply are not true …[M]illions of Americans believe these falsehoods because they have been drilled into their minds, night after night, by Fox News.”

—Former Fox News network executive Preston Padden, writing in a Daily Beast opinion piece.

“By the time of the morning of August the 13^th, it will be the talk of the world.”

—MyPillow EO Mike Lindell, in an interview over the weekend in which he promised that Trump would return to the Oval Office in August following a new inauguration. (Lindell is already the talk of virtually ever psych ward in the US.)

“Brooks represented the interests of his constituency when Brooks challenged the Electoral College vote submittals of states whose election processes were less than reliable in the judgment of Brooks. It makes no difference whether Brooks was right or wrong.”

—Answer filed by attorney for Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) in response to a lawsuit against him for inciting the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol. So, now it seems congressmen can do whatever the hell they want because it just doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong. Beautiful.

A final exam is tomorrow and you haven’t studied for it. You need a high B or low A to even pass and worse, you’re headed to class in your underwear.

It’s a stupid recurring dream that haunts many people long after their college careers are over. I guess it’s testimony to just how traumatic college life can really be.

My personal nightmare is having to read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick over and over in preparation for a test. That is the single most difficult book I’ve ever read. Even the Cliff Notes were too much for me to absorb. I remember precisely one sentence from Moby Dick – the very first one, if my memory hasn’t failed me: “Call me Ishmael.” Everything after that is a complete blank, sort of like some self-imposed amnesia.

But Melville had another classic, one that wasn’t published until 1924, fully 33 years after his death.

Billy Budd is the story about a popular sailor aboard a British ship HMS Bellipotent during the Napoleonic wars. Falsely charged with conspiracy to mutiny by the ship’s master-at-arms John Claggart. When confronted with his charges, the astounded Billy strikes out at Claggart, killing him. A court-martial is convened by the ship’s captain, Edward Fairfax Vere who acts as the convening authority, the prosecutor and defense counsel as well as the sole witness (other than Billy).

No one wants to convict Billy because no one believes the conspiracy to mutiny charge, but the rules say someone has to be punished for Claggart’s death. “Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!” proclaims Vere. And so it is that Billy Budd is hanged but not before saying, “God bless Captain Vere!”

And so it is with the ongoing saga at Louisiana State Police in the aftermath of the May 2019 death of Ronald Greene, an African American barber, at the hands of several State Troopers from LSP Troop F, aka F-Troop in homage to the inept calvary unit of TV-sitcom fame.

Faye Morrison was nowhere near the scene when troopers finally caught Greene in Union Parish after a chase of several miles (it’s still unclear why he fled; he had no drugs or alcohol in his vehicle or in his system, nor was he wanted for any crimes). Yet, she is the LSP equivalent to Billy Budd.

Faye Morrison is an attorney. More specifically, she was (past tense) the chief legal counsel for LSP and as such was necessarily involved in official reactions to Greene’s death and LSP administration’s attempt at smoothing over the incident.

But, to be clear, she did not make the final decisions on what course to pursue. Her role was to lend legal advice. LSP administration’s role was to accept or ignore her advice. As of now, we don’t know what her advice was, specifically, but what is known is that the high command at LSP took no action in the matter for 16 months – and then only after embarrassing details started to leak out.

For example, troopers involved in the chase and subsequent beating and tasing of Greene said he died as the result of his vehicle leaving the road and hitting a tree. We now know that was a lie. The damage to his car was minimal and he was very much alive post-accident. He even can be heard on video telling officers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and “I’m scared.” But officers, apparently pissed at having to pursue him from Ouachita into Union Parish, were in no conciliatory mood.

When it was determined that Greene was indeed dead, his body was not turned over to a coroner in Louisiana where records might have been more accessible to inquiring minds. Instead, he was transported to Arkansas for the autopsy. If not an attempt to conceal details of his death, then why Arkansas?

State Police Lt. John Clary, one of those involved (he actually arrived after the fracas was well underway), at first denied having body camera video. That, too, was a lie. His own body cam was made available to and released by Associated Press in May 2021, precisely two years after Greene’s death. Would that not constitute obstruction of justice on Clary’s part?

And why take 16 months to finally suspend Trooper Christopher Hollingsworth, the only one to be disciplined as of last September? Hollingsworth was subsequently notified that he was being terminated and soon after died as the result of a single-vehicle accident on I-20. His death is believed to have been by suicide.

Only one Trooper, Kory York, HAS BEEN FIRED thus far, more than two years after Greene’s death and well after Derek Chauvin had been arrested, tried and convicted in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis – a death that occurred a full year after Greene’s death. Another trooper involved in the Greene stop, John Clary, has also been fired, but for other reasons other than Greene, LSP officials said.

Then-State Police Superintendent Col. Kevin Reeves was first notified of details surrounding Greene’s death as he participated in a golf tournament. That he was informed of the incident while playing golf was bad enough, but it was months after Greene’s death that he was even told. Why wasn’t he informed sooner?

His response? Their actions were “AWFUL BUT LAWFUL,” according to a Baton Rouge Advocate story by reporters John Simerman and Lea Skene.

As the heat was gradually turned up on the event, Reeves abruptly retired. His Chief of Staff at the time, Col. Mike Noel, was named by Gov. John Bel Edwards to head up the State Gaming Control Board to succeed Ronnie Jones. But learning that he would be grilled over the Greene matter during his Senate confirmation hearing on the last day of the 2021 legislative session, he, too, opted for RETIREMENT.

With the top two men gone, that left Faye Morrison exposed as the only vulnerable Assistant Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections still standing over at LSP.

And just as with the fictional Billy Budd, someone had to take the fall, And, like Billy Budd, she was expendable.

But, as any political observer will tell you, the cover-up is always worse than the crime and at LSP, they’ve begun to circle the wagons, prompting one former State Trooper to tell LouisianaVoice, “I have never in my life been so ashamed to have been affiliated with Louisiana State Police.”

As a postscript to all this, the role of John Belton cannot be overlooked. Belton is the district attorney for the 3^rd Judicial District, which encompasses Lincoln and Union parishes. Greene’s death occurred in Union. A female inmate was also raped several years back in the Union Parish jail. Both occurrences fell within the Belton’s purview for prosecution.

He did nothing in either case. Zero. Now, Belton’s presence is popping up on Facebook as he launches his campaign to become Louisiana’s next attorney general. By all accounts, he is a good and decent man, having served as President of the Louisiana District Attorney’s Association form 2019-2020, and as a board member for the National District Attorney’s Association.

But those honorary positions speak little to his qualifications to become the state’s top attorney and his silence in the two aforementioned cases is deafening.

Voters should keep that in mind in 2023.

“I haven’t even looked at what all she’s done. Travel in this weather it’s been a little rough looking at any news or whatever.”

—Sen Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), explaining why he doesn’t know anything about Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Yes, they really do walk among us.)