Louisiana Voice

Loren Lampert, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association (LDAA), gets around.

And around.

Lampert began his career as a deputy sheriff in his native Rapides Parish before receiving his law degree from Oklahoma City University in 1996 and being named Assistant District Attorney, where he served for the next 13 years. While working for the Rapides DA, he was named that office’s Chief Felony Narcotics Prosecutor.

He has held a multitude of prosecutorial positions in several parishes in different judicial districts, some of them overlapping, in apparent violation of the state’s dual-officeholding statutes.

His documented odyssey of multi-tasking for various district attorneys had its beginnings as early as 2012 and continued through mid-September 2018.

In 2011, he became Chief of Police for the City of Alexandria and remained in that $150,000-per-year post until he was appointed as part-time Assistant District Attorney for Calcasieu Parish on May 9, 2017, earning $41.96 before being promoted just two months later to full-time at a six-figure salary.

But wait. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Lampert in the unique position of having served as a prosecutor, in more than one judicial district simultaneously—an apparent violation of the state’s dual-officeholding statutes.

His employment becomes rather murky after signing an Oath of Office as Assistant District for the 14^th JDC in May 2017 pursuant to his appointment to that position by DA John DeRosier. KTBS-TV in Shreveport ran a story on Oct. 23, 2017, about the Natchitoches Parish conviction of a man accused of crashing into a Natchitoches police vehicle, injuring three officers.

The last paragraph of that story said, “Assistant District Attorney Loren Lampert prosecuted the case.”

And in a letter to the secretary of state dated Nov. 2, 2017, by 10^th JDC (that would be Natchitoches Parish) District Attorney Billy Joe Harrington, the appointment of Loren M. Lampert as assistant district attorney “effective 8/30/17,” was announced. A copy of Lampert’s oath of office also accompanied that letter.

That’s less than four months after he signed on as a part-time assistant DA for Calcasieu Parish and only six weeks after that part-time position had been super-sized to ADMINISTRATIVE FIRST ASSISTANT DA in DeRosier’s office on July 17, 2017, at a SALARY salary of $105,000, which was increased to $106,068 on Dec. 18, even though he continued living in Alexandria, not Calcasieu, all that time.

Sources claim that Lampert’s appointment by DeRosier was a means of grooming him for bigger and better things.

In June 2018, according to a story in the Natchitoches Times, Lampert was also the prosecutor in ANOTHER CASE involving a man subsequently found guilty three of four charges involving a disturbance at the Natchitoches Parish courthouse.

In other words, he was being paid a six-figure salary as First Assistant DA in Calcasieu while also being paid as a prosecutor in Natchitoches Parish in 2017 and 2018—all the while living in Rapides.

But it gets murkier still.

KALB-TV in Alexandria ran a story on July 3, 2018, announcing that Lampert “has been named the ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR of the LDAA and is on the fast track to transition to the top spot as executive director next summer.”

Lampert submitted his resignation as DeRosier’s Administrative First Assistant DA on Sept. 13, 2018 and his last day with the Calcasieu DA’s office was Sept. 28.

Today, Lampert appears to have finally settled into one position as EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the Louisiana District Attorney’s Association, succeeding long time Executive Director Pete Adams upon the latter’s retirement.

But maybe not. In May of this year, well into his tenure as associate director of LDAA, the omnipresent Lampert was still working as an assistant DA in Calcasieu, serving as prosecutor in the case of Felton Felmon Thompson, charged with first-degree murder.

“We did a general request for resumes and interest in the position,” Adams said in announcing Lampert’s hiring as associate director in July 2018. “Loren was one of many candidates who applied. He was clearly number-one in the selection process. And he was approved by the board,” Adams said.

It must seem like old times to Lampert who, along with DeRosier, previously served as an LDAA board member. DeRosier served as president of the board in 2012-2013. Lampert served as a board member in 2017-2018.

And as LDAA’s new executive director, he will continue working with a 2019-2020 BOARD OF DIRECTORS that included at least one familiar member: Natchitoches Parish DA Harrington.

Here are copies of Lambert’s OATHS OF OFFICE  which show the overlapping times of employment by the four district attorneys.

“I believe love is the answer, but you oughta own a handgun, just in case.” October 2016

“Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.” January 2018 (stolen from Jeff Foxworthy, who stole it from Fritz Edmunds (whoever that is).

“I’d rather drink weed killer than support Obamacare.” October 2016.

“It must suck to be that dumb.” November 6, 2019, of Nancy Pelosi at a Trump rally in Monroe.

—Louisiana Sen. John Neely Kennedy, who obviously is the rejected love child incarnate of Will Rogers and LBJ—but with only half the wit of the former and none of the charisma of the latter.

You can’t pick up a newspaper, go to an online news service, or turn on television news these days without hearing the term quid pro quo, invariably associated with that July phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine.

But back home, there’s another quid pro quo involving a local elected official in Southwest Louisiana.

Quid pro quo is a Latin phrase meaning an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other. More familiar colloquial terms might be “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” or “One hand washes the other.”

quid pro quo

/ˌkwid ˌprō ˈkwō/

noun

a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something.

Calcasieu Parish District Attorney John DeRosier knows what the term mean—he has known since at least 2011.

A Washington Post STORY published last Friday (Nov. 1) goes into great detail in explaining how DeRosier’s office allows—encourages—offenders to literally buy their way out of community service by purchasing gift cards and money orders for the DA’s office which ostensibly were to be used for charitable purposes but which in reality were sometimes used to purchase gifts for staff members, their grandchildren and other relatives.

Of course, even when the gift cards are used for their intended purpose—to purchase toys and gifts for underprivileged children—it doesn’t hurt his reelection chances when the gifts are distributed very publicly from a fire truck that makes its way through neighborhoods, giving DeRosier ample opportunity to shake hands and to be seen handing out the gifts—all purchased not with campaign funds, but from the parish coffers.

Some of the gift cards even went to DeRosier’s friends and political supporters, even journalists.

Even after DeRosier established a non-profit foundation, the District Attorney’s Community Assistance Foundation (DACAF) in 2015, spotty record-keeping makes it impossible to document precisely how the gift cards are distributed and for what purpose.

First elected in 2005 in a special election, DeRosier, a Democrat, has served as Calcasieu Parish’s DA for 14 years and has established himself as a tough on crime DA, opposing a move to end life without parole for juveniles and even testifying against the 2018 successful constitutional amendment to require unanimous jury verdicts to convict in felony cases.

And he was quick to hire Hugo Holland and Lea Hall after they were fired by the Caddo Parish DA for falsifying a federal application to obtain automatic M-16 rifles from a military surplus program. He hired Holland because of his reputation as a strong advocate of the death penalty.

Since DeRosier first took office in 2005, revenue from fines and fees associated with pre-trial diversion programs has skyrocketed from $182,000 that first year to $5.9 million in 2017, a 30-fold increase.

Much of that revenue has come from a program called Local Agency Compensated Enforcement (LACE), a program which has come under criticism in Calcasieu, Orleans and other parishes which resulted in the temporary suspension of the program by State Police at one point.

Under LACE, local district attorneys pay overtime to state troopers and occasionally local police to stop motorists for traffic violations. Motorists are then given the choice of either taking the ticket or promising to make a direct payment to the DA’s office’s pre-trial diversion program, i.e. indirectly to the DA’s charitable foundation.

That negatively impacts local public defender offices which are already underfunded. For every traffic ticket that goes through the courts, the local public defender’s office gets $45 but for tickets issued through LACE, the public defender’s office gets nothing unless the local DA agrees to share, which isn’t often.

And when public defender’s budgets are cut—LACE tickets tripled while the number of conventional traffic tickets in Calcasieu dropped by 42 percent from 2011 to 2012—representation of indigent defenders necessarily suffers. With no money to retain expert witnesses—while prosecutors have virtually unlimited funds to hire their experts—the opportunity to discover exculpatory evidence or refute expert witnesses is non-existent. And while no one knows the precise number, there are documented cases of innocent defendants being convicted and sent to prison, some to death row.

And while the foundation is required to undergo regular audits, DeRosier has refused to make the audit reports available to reporters.

Likewise, the DA’s office is required to undergo an annual public audit of its finances. The audit of DeRosier’s office contains no line-item for gift care revenue or is the gift card program even mentioned in the audits.

But then, Nicholas Langley, the head of LANGLEY, WILLIAMS, the firm that conducts the audits, is a member of the foundation’s BOARD of DIRECTORS. Additionally, Langley once served as DeRosier’s campaign manager and he, his family and his firm have donated at least $23,000 since 2005 to DeRosier’s campaigns and his firm has in turn been paid $32,000 by DeRosier’s campaign for accounting services.

Quid pro quo.