All I can tell you folks is the backstabbing involved with NOLA DA Leon Cannizzaro and the NOLA Criminal District Court judges is stunning as John Simerman reports today for the T-P. I’ve been hearing rumors about discord in both the NOLA civil and criminal district courts for well over a year and that does not count the expense funds both courts maintain that are alleged to be slush funds. Worth noting is DA Cannizzaro evidently admitted that he also partook of the forbidden fruit during his time as a criminal district court judge but that is also water long under the bridge. Judge Frank Marullo is shit outta luck though.
This animal has lots of heads and there has been some high quality work done on various subtopics such as the computer crash at Mortgages and Conveyances by folks like Dambala at American Zombie via Humid Beings. For my part I think Slabbed will be a net beneficiary of the strife and discord as Louisiana Attorney General Buddy ‘Tickle my ass with a feather” Caldwell enters the fray. Stay tuned folks.
sop
Unrelated question:
Was Caldwell's son at the AG's office before his father's election? Otherwise, isn't there a nepotism statute that is breached here?
The answer is yes, his son was at the AG office before Caldwell was elected. I hear he got a nice raise after Buddy took over.
sop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxcM3nCsglA
Nola's DA is out there making waves in the midst of an area crime wave for more efficient criminal prosecution including prosecuting the Judges themselves. WOW.
Whereas I can' t remember JP's DA Connick taking a recent stand on any judicial principle or prosecuting political corruption running rampant in JP for the last 5 years.
How about the JP judicial system which wrongly convicted and had incarcerated for 30 years one Henry James. James was convicted by a so called eye witness and only recently released as the DNA did not match that in the rape kit. And Henry James was not the first wrongly convicted person as I believe that there have been many others ( i.e Bridge City store murder) wrongly convicted in the 24th JDC mainly by over zealous prosecutors wanting to appear tough on crime for possible future campaigns for a judgeships.
You would think DA Connick would make a public statement after this most recent James case that even though his staff was not responsible that he has and will continue to put more safeguards in place to protect the innocent citizens from being wrongly accused, convicted and incarcerated.
Don't count on Caldwell, i happen to know that one of his top attorney's uncle was an ad hoc judge in Orleans Parish. They take care of their own. Its very incestuous what goes on in the courts throughout Jefferson and Orleans. I know someone getting hosed in a case over this relationship.
The Civil District Court judges make the Criminal Court judges look like saints. The Orleans Judiciary is the biggest racket in the city and no one…no one….will report it. It's the elephant in the room….the elephant that will stomp your ass if you draw attention to it.
The reason they are so corrupt is they have a bigger pie to get the blackbirds out of. Corruption comes with the ease of getting funds from those birds. Power corrupts & almost absolute power corrupts even more. They can ruin the carrers of people, reputition of good names and feel safe behind those black robes hiding even blacker hearts.
We aqre in the time where good is evil and evil is good, so they will be with us a long time.
The institutional problem is that those who know the most about the judges (lawyers) are crippled in their ability to publicize these issues because the judges can take revenge on the lawyers by ruling against their clients.
http://www.stateintegrity.org/blog
Posted by Robert Wechsler, Director of Research for City Ethics, Inc. · September 20, 2011 12:23 PM
For every corrupt government official, there are numerous individuals who know or have reason to know about the official’s misconduct, but are either complicit or silent. There are colleagues, aides, advisers, friends, supporters, attorneys, accountants, clients, contractors, developers, and others.
Some believe the conduct is common, the way things are done. Others believe it is legal, or arguably legal, and that’s all that matters. Others believe it is unethical, but necessary to get things done. Some believe that the official has done so much good, a little bad doesn’t spoil the soup. Others believe that the official, or whoever else benefits from the misconduct, deserves it.
Many don’t believe any of this, but are afraid. Misconduct, at least by high-ranking officials, is usually accompanied by an atmosphere of intimidation. Intimidation usually leads to silence, but sometimes leads to complicity. There is no better way to silence someone than to make her complicit, to make the misconduct hers as well. This is the worst kind of misconduct there is, but it is usually not illegal.
Complicity, too, is usually not illegal. One form of complicity is temptation. Accepting a gift from a developer is usually an ethics violation. A developer who offers a gift has usually violated no provision. Government lawyers who tell officials they can act in ways that are unethical, or who tell them a legal way to act unethically, know that nothing will happen to them and, due to their advice, nothing will happen to the official, either.
There are also few laws requiring even elected officials, not to mention government employees or citizens, to report possible violations they know about. It takes a great deal of courage to be a whistleblower, especially when it’s not required.
How can an ethics program ignore those who know about misconduct and those who aid and abet it? Because the paradigm for government ethics is individual corruption, the bad apple. There are bad apples, but there are as many, or more, bad organizations characterized by loyalty, arrogance, intimidation, poor leadership, a self-serving culture, a feeling of entitlement, and a weak, incomplete ethics program.
There are few instances of serious ethical misconduct in government that could not have been prevented or brought into the open by one or two government lawyers. If government lawyers had, or felt, a professional responsibility (as government officials and as lawyers) to prevent ethical misconduct in government, it would not exist.
To put this more generally, the lack of moral courage is probably the principal cause of unethical conduct. Moral courage is a rare commodity, endangered by all the things that make an unethical organization unethical. Legal requirements and professional expectations make it much easier for individuals to muster up the necessary moral courage to act on their ethical beliefs.
The next time a government official is caught being corrupt, it’s important to recognize that he didn’t do it all by himself, and that his worst misconduct will likely not be penalized.
Robert Wechsler is Director of Research for City Ethics, Inc., a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides information and advice on local government ethics issues. His local government ethics blog and Model Ethics Code can be found at http://www.cityethics.org.
Lightning K, you nailed it:
"The institutional problem is that those who know the most about the judges (lawyers) are crippled in their ability to publicize these issues because the judges can take revenge on the lawyers by ruling against their clients."
That is exactly right. Those who know are too scared to speak up in fear of ending up disbarred or worse.