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Righting the United States’ legacy of racism in its justice system is still a challenge in society today, said Judge Lori Landry of Louisiana’s 16th Judicial District.
Landry was guest speaker Monday during New Age Patterson Civic Organization’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration at Good Hope Baptist Church. Landry serves in 16th Judicial District Court, which covers St. Mary, St. Martin and Iberia parishes.
She’s a 1981 graduate of New Iberia Senior High School and a 1989 graduate of Southern University Law School. In November 2002, Landry was elected as Division H judge for the 16th district, becoming the first African-American woman to serve in that capacity.
Landry spoke on the celebration’s theme, “Justice, Oh Justice, Where Are You?”
That question is an “age-old question” people have asked since the beginning of time, long before King asked it during the Civil Rights Movement, she said.
People should start openly talking about the history of racism in the United States and the effects of that history on today’s society.
“The plight of the African-American has been systemic and on purpose,” Landry said of the nation’s history.
The Jim Crow era of racially discriminatory laws implemented by white people undermined what the Civil War was supposed to have accomplished, she said.
“We ain’t through yet with Jim or Crow,” she said.
Once the country acknowledges its systemically racist past, then leaders can start undoing some of the things in the justice system that were “designed to keep black people down and subservient,” Landry said.
However, black people should also be honest about where they have failed themselves, including not setting a good example for their children and causing them to feel entitled, she said.
“We know better, and we just simply haven’t done better,” she said.
People should start in their own households, churches, places of employment and communities to set a better example for others.
Some of the defendants who enter Landry’s courtroom are facing a lifetime in prison, so the only thing she has to offer them is hope in God, Landry said.
Many defendants who plead guilty to a list of felony crimes don’t have any family members show up in court while they’re going through tough times, she said.
Research shows that jurors are prone to convict defendants who stand trial. And lots of juries lack black people because they don’t register to vote or try to get out of jury duty, Landry said.
“Decisions are made by people who show up,” she said.
Still, African-Americans aren’t responsible for the fact that their race has a greatly disproportionate number of people in the criminal justice system.
“That starts way back to targeting … It starts with abject poverty. People living in poverty are going to have crime,” Landry said.
Individuals who are consistently unemployed “have nothing to do but get in trouble,” she said.
As a state, we’re sometimes divided. Events often pit one against the other: Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative, men against women, north Louisiana vs. south Louisiana and even, occasionally, east St. Mary vs. west St. Mary.
But sometimes we come together in amazing ways. Sunday, the occasion was the Saints game, and it united us in our determination to tar and feather an officiating crew.
As you surely know, the Saints were driving late in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s National Football Conference championship game, tied 20-20 with Los Angeles.
The team whose fans once wore bags on their heads was the brink of its second Super Bowl in a decade.
Quarterback Drew Brees unleashed a pass to Tommylee Lewis deep in Rams territory. Rams defensive back Nickell Robey-Coleman, back to the ball, slammed his helmet into Lewis’ helmet before the ball arrived. The pass fell incomplete.
No pass interference. No targeting. No nothing.
If the penalty — either of them — had been called, New Orleans could have let the clock run down to a second or two before kicking a winning field goal. As it was, Will Lutz’ field goal to make it 23-20 left plenty of time to get into position for a 48-yard field goal by the Rams' Greg Zuerlein, sending the game into overtime.
And there, after a Rams interceptiom, Zuerlein struck again, this time from 57 yards, to end the Saints’ season.
My Facebook friends were, like yours I suspect, quick to react.
A frequent poster on the Acadiana, Cajun & Creole page posted a video in which Saints coach Sean Payton said the NFL’s New York office admitted that the officials blew the Robey-Coleman call. That’s a confession without consequences.
“Helmet to helmet pass interference not called,” posted one man who once worked on Attorney General Jeff Landry’s congressional campaign. “Unreal!”
“I haven’t watched much football this year,” one Lafayette man wrote. “Didn’t realize they’d changed the rules to allow defenders to tackle receivers before the ball gets there.”
The networks would love that, by the way. They’d have more time fill with commercials.
A noted Louisiana musician thinks Jimmy Buffett cursed the Saints with his pregame vocal performance: #NeverAgain.”
A former co-worker posted a YouTube mashup of a pro wrestling match with Rams and Saints helmets superimposed on the wrestlers. The referee picks up the “Saint” and drops him head-first to the mat.
“Has to be accountability for missed call,” wrote one public official. “We shall see. NFL. Track record not so good.”
A former north Louisiana editor said she stopped watching the game because it was too tense.
Another former co-worker posted a letter purportedly from crooner Harry Connick Jr. “Until changes are made,” the letter said, “specifically, booth review of outcome-altering no-calls, you can count me out.”
“Since the bad call happened at the Superdome,” one lady replied to an attorney’s post, “can we sue?”
That comment was interesting because it brought up the subject of lawsuits.
During the 2016 season, San Francisco quarter Colin Kaepernick dropped to a knee during the national anthem to protest police treatment, including fatal shootings, of black men. That act of protest divided the country between those who agree with Kaepernick and those who feel he and the players who followed his example disrespected the flag.
Social media posters were not shy about expressing their feelings. Neither were NFL owners. Kaepernick has yet to find a team that will take him.
A St. Mary man even sued the Saints for his season ticket fees in December 2017, saying the protests by New Orleans player ruined his enjoyment of the game.
Other fans seemed to agree. Attendance at NFL games was down about 400,000 from 2015 to 17.2 million in 2018. NFL ratings were down 8-10 percent in each of the two years after the protests began, NBC reported.
It’s hard to tell how much of the decline resulted from the protests and how much came from the splintering of the audience due to expanded cable offerings and online streaming services.
But for three hours Sunday, Louisiana was anything but splintered. Our attention was fixed on a patch of artificial turf under a noisy dome in New Orleans.
Louisiana people were together.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.
BATON ROUGE — Louisiana is edging closer to the March 1 start date for a new law restoring voting rights to thousands of convicted felons, but with little seemingly settled about how to roll out the change.
Questions range from when newly eligible voters will be able to register for their restored rights to how they’ll be notified they even have that option. State officials say they’re working on the details, though they say the law wasn’t clearly drafted, making their task trickier.
“We’re working to get this done as soon as possible, but we have to get this done correctly, and it does make our job harder with a poorly written law,” said Tyler Brey, spokesman for Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, who oversees elections and opposed the voting rights change.
Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voice of the Experienced — an ex-offenders advocacy group known as VOTE — said state officials seem to be making this more complicated than it needs to be. He said more information should be available online to notify felons of the coming change and give them details of what they’ll need to do to see their voting rights reinstated. He questioned the paperwork being developed.
“We want them to succeed,” Reilly said of state officials. “I just don’t have much faith that it’s going to be accurate and correct.”
Even settling on the number of people who can get their rights restored after the law was passed proved controversial. Tens of thousands of felons are expected to be eligible for voting rights reinstatement, even though debate often centered on descriptions of a few thousand.
Louisiana lawmakers agreed to the voting rights measure last year. Rep. Patricia Smith, the Baton Rouge Democrat who sponsored the legislation, fought for years to win backing for the law change. In her latest successful effort, it took multiple votes to get it out of the House. Supporters gave impassioned speeches about rehabilitation, redemption, and forgiveness.
Louisiana’s 1974 constitution allows suspension of voting rights for people who are “under an order of imprisonment” for a felony. A law passed two years later specified that people on probation or parole for a felony are included in that definition, leaving some unable to ever vote again after incarceration.
The law change under Smith’s bill will allow someone on probation or parole for a felony to register to vote if the person “has not been incarcerated pursuant to the order within the last five years” — though not someone convicted of felony election offenses.
Generally, lawmakers talked about people on parole and probation who have been out of prison for five years. But officials say the law also is expected to apply to thousands more people on probation whose voting rights were suspended but who never went to prison because they were put on community supervision instead.
“We believe that this law covers more people than was originally stated,” Brey said.
Natalie LaBorde, the corrections department’s deputy assistant secretary, told NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune the law is “just not super clear,” but she confirmed revised estimates are that as many as 36,000 people could be eligible to regain their voting ability.
Smith disagrees the law was poorly written, saying it was always clear it would apply to probationers with suspended prison sentences. She said she just didn’t know how many people that might be.
“If the policy is right, what difference does it make about the numbers?” said Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who signed the voting rights change into law.
Brey said the Department of Corrections will determine who is eligible for restored voting rights under the law, and Smith agreed.
It’s unclear if the corrections department also adopts that interpretation.
The secretary of state’s office, Brey said, is working with the corrections agency to develop a form that a felon eligible under the new law can bring to the parish registrar of voters to reinstate those voting rights.
The process will have to be done in person, he said.
So far, the state registrars association says it hasn’t gotten any training on how to implement the law change.
Melinda Deslatte has covered Louisiana politics for The Associated Press since 2000. Follow her at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte
February 3, 1938-January 17, 2019
Funeral services celebrating the life of John Calvin Ortis will be held Tuesday, January 22, 2019, at 11 a.m. at Ibert’s Mortuary in Patterson with Rev. Steve Manville officiating. Following the service he will be laid to rest in Ibert’s Memorial Park Mausoleum.
A gathering of family and friends will be held Monday, January 21, at Ibert’s Mortuary from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. and again Tuesday from 9 a.m. until service time.
Calvin, as he was known by all, was born in Krotz Springs on Thursday, February 3, 1938 and passed away at the age of 80 on Thursday, January 17, 2019, at the Sanctuary of Passages Hospice in New Orleans. He was a former resident of Charenton and Bayou Vista and a current resident of Patterson for the past 21 years. Calvin was a longtime employee of the St. Mary Parish Government Public Works Department, where he retired from as Superintendent of the East St. Mary Parish Area with nearly 50 years of service. Service to others was not only a career and means of supporting his family, but was also a way of life for Calvin. He truly had a love of service to his neighbor and used his skills in any way he could to help others.
His memory will be forever cherished in the hearts of his sons, John Lynn Ortis and his wife Lori, Kevin W. Ortis and his wife Heather, and Travis K. Ortis and his wife Tessa; six grandchildren, Avery, Aubrey, Everett, Courtney, Brett, and Kenny; two great grandchildren; six siblings, Shelby Ortis, Andrew Ortis, Carlos Ortis, Lana Benoit, Pauline Latiolas, and Paulette Lightsey; a special sister-in-law, Charmaine Oubre; as well as numerous nieces, nephews, and in-laws.
He was preceded in death by his first wife, Betty Jane Mendoza Ortis; his second wife, Ruth Besse Ortis; his parents, Paul Ortis and Azema Guidry Ortis; one brother, Paul Ortis Jr.; and two sisters, Noelie “Sugar Do” Ortis Carline and Yvonne Vernon.
Serving as pallbearers will be John Lynn Ortis, Kevin W. Ortis, Shelby Ortis, Darrell “Joe Boots” Carline, Albert “A.P.” Carline, and Avery C. Ortis. Honorary pallbearers will be Eddie Young and Norris Crappell.
Family and friends may view the obituary and express their condolences online by visiting www.iberts.com.
Arrangements have been entrusted to Ibert’s Mortuary, Inc., 1111 Lia Street, Patterson, LA 70392, (985) 395-7873.
CHILDREN'S GALA
Arise Women Ministry sponsoring a King/Princess and Queen/Prince Gala or children ages 4-12 at 4 p.m. Feb. 9, at St. Mary Senior Citizens Center, home of St. Mary AARP, Chennault Street, Morgan City. For info call Ethel, 985-384-9680; Lucretia, 985-498-0693; Linda, 985-518-6233 or Ruby, 985-498-0420.
Staff Report
Brig. Gen. Charles W. Chappuis Jr. was honored at a retirement ceremony at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans honoring his 20 years of leadership in the Louisiana Air National Guard.
During the event Jan. 12, Chappuis received the Disting-uished Service Medal, which recognized his service as state air surgeon from April 2014 to October 2018.
“I know I’m a better man for having spent the last 20 years of my life in the National Guard,” Chappuis said at the ceremony.
Referring to Maj. Gen. Glenn Curtis, adjutant general for the Louisiana National Guard, Chappuis said, “You gave me the opportunity to have what I believe is the most professionally rewarding job — taking care of the men and women who volunteer to serve our country.”
As state air surgeon, Chappuis served as the primary liaison between the individual medical units, the adjutant general, the air surgeon and the Army National Guard chief surgeon on force protection, medical issues, aspects of homeland security and other medical matters.
He ensured that the state maintained a viable, healthy and medically ready force for worldwide deployment and availability.
In 1998, Chappuis received a direct commission in the Louisiana Air National Guard as a major serving as flight surgeon in the 159th Medical Squadron.
As a flight surgeon, Chappuis logged more than 550 hours in F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, C-17s, C-141s, C-130s and KC-10s. Chappuis logged over 135 combat and combat support flight hours in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
Chappuis deployed numerous times for overseas contingency operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
He served as clinical director of critical care air transport teams based at Ramstein Air Base in 2003 and 2011.
He served as senior surgeon at the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Balad, Iraq, in 2004 and as commander of the 447th Expeditionary Medical Squadron, Baghdad, Iraq, in 2008.
The general also participated in numerous disaster operations in Louisiana over the course of his career including Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, floods, ice storms and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.
The Rayne native is the son of Lita Chappuis and the late Charles “Moon” Chappuis.
Chappuis graduated from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans in 1979.
Chappuis resides in Lafayette with his wife, Cynthia.
They have three children, Billy, Courtney and Catherine.
Chappuis is a professor of clinical surgery at LSU School of Medicine and chief of surgery and associate medical director at University Hospital in Lafayette.
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Patterson Coach Ryan Taylor and Franklin Coach Alexis Rack knew one thing after watching tape of each other’s teams: it was going to be a barn-burner.
The teams didn’t disappoint the fans that filed into Patterson’s gym Friday night as Patterson topped Franklin 53-44 in overtime.
“Once I got a good at their tape, I knew it would be this type of game,” Taylor said. “I knew it would be close and physical, and that’s before adding the longtime rivalry.”
Rack looked at the tape and remembered the battles the teams had while members of the same district.
“We both know the history and what games like this do for teams before district play starts,” Rack said. “That’s why we kept the game as part of our non-district schedules.”
Patterson (11-7) led 9-8 after the first quarter, and Franklin (12-9) took an 18-17 lead into halftime.
The second half continued the same script with the game tied at 30 after the third quarter.
In the fourth quarter, Franklin took its biggest lead at 36-30 with 5:58 remaining. The Hornets’ J’Michael Gray hit a 3-pointer and converted a 3-point play, adding a free-throw after being fouled on a made basket.
Patterson answered with a jumper by Kai Schexnayder with 5:35 remaining for a 36-32 Franklin lead. Elijah Williams added a free-throw to cut Franklin’s lead to 36-33 at the 4:24 mark.
Franklin continued to push, adding a big offensive rebound and put-back layup for a 38-33 lead with 3:36 left in the game.
That’s when Schexnayder hit a 3-pointer pull Patterson within 38-36 with 2:51 to play.
Williams hit two free-throws to tie the game at 38 with 2 minutes remaining, but Franklin’s Brayden Ward got a steal and a layup at the 1:36 mark to give the Hornets’ a 40-38 edge.
Patterson was called for a backcourt violation, and after a Franklin timeout, Patterson’s Tyrone Tillman got a layup after a Williams steal and assist to tie the game at 40 with 55 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
Patterson fouled Gray with 37 seconds to play, and he missed both free-throws.
Patterson called timeout with 29 seconds to play, but Schexnayder missed a 3-point attempt, and Tillman missed a tip-in. Franklin’s desperation 3-point attempt at the final buzzer was no good.
In the overtime period, Patterson grabbed the lead at 42-40 on a Tillman tip-in at the 3-minute mark.
Franklin didn’t convert on its possession, and Williams got an offensive rebound and put-back to extend the lead to 44-40 with 2:06 left in overtime.
The Hornets got 1-of-2 free-throws from Kylan Peters with 1:33 left to cut the ‘Jacks’ lead to 44-41.
Franklin started intentional fouling, and Patterson made enough free-throws down the stretch to hold off Franklin.
Schexnayder led Patterson in scoring with 18 points, while Williams and Tillman had 12 and 10 points, respectively. Dajon Richard chipped in eight points and Louis Jones had five points to round out the scorers.
Gray led Franklin with 15 points, while Travis Zeno also reached double figures with 11.
Patterson will return to action Tuesday when it travels to face Abbeville in District 8-3A play.
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Franklin Banner-Tribune
P.O. Box 566, Franklin, LA 70538
Phone: 337-828-3706
Fax: 337-828-2874
Morgan City Review
1014 Front Street, Morgan City, LA 70380
Phone: 985-384-8370
Fax: 985-384-4255