Ex-Mayor of New Orleans Guilty on Corruption Charges

[kpete]

Last edited Wed Feb 12, 2014, 08:50 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: Fox

Ex-Mayor of New Orleans Guilty on Corruption Charges
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSONFEB. 12, 2014


NEW ORLEANS — Former Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans was found guilty on Wednesday of accepting payoffs for city contracts, becoming the first mayor in the city’s history to be charged and convicted of corruption.

The jury, deliberated for about six and a half hours in total before finding Mr. Nagin, 57, the Democratic mayor for two terms and the face of the city’s leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, guilty in 20 of the 21 counts against him.

Tania Tetlow, a Tulane University law professor and a former federal prosecutor, said Mr. Nagin could be facing 20 years or more under federal sentencing guidelines. Mr. Nagin will remain free on bond, but will be in home detention, the judge said. Sentencing will be at a later date.

The verdict came after a seven-day trial, during which more than 30 witnesses testified, including some businessmen who had pleaded guilty to bribing Mr. Nagin in return for contracting work with the city. The most compelling days of the trial, and the ones that filled a courtroom that was half-empty most of the time, were those when Mr. Nagin himself took the stand, sparring with the prosecutor and dismissing the charges against him as misleading and misinformed.

With multiple witnesses and an extensive paper trial, federal prosecutors described a sequence of transactions between the mayor and various business interests, all following a similar pattern. The owner of a company would be trying to get city work, and would at some point make contact with Mr. Nagin. Mr. Nagin would ask for a favor, often in the form of payments to the granite countertop business Mr. Nagin ran with his two sons.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us/nagin-corruption-verdict.html

[niyad]

1. so they finally got that slimy, incompetent, corrupt pos for something?? about time.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Good!

[warrant46]

3. The most compelling days the ones that filled a courtroom that was half-empty most of the time

Voting Matters-- This is how scum rises to the top of the pond

[shenmue]

4. Off to the Stripes Hotel

[KamaAina]

5. LA may be known for corruption, but no NOLA mayor has gone down in generations.

At least going back to WWII. That is quite remarkable in the "Gret Stet" that gave us the phrase "Vote for the crook. It's important." when Edwin Edwards ran against David Dukkke.

[intheflow]

11. And yet in all that time no one was charged or convicted.

Until Nagan, only one of three black mayors in the city's history. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

[KamaAina]

12. I'm not sure this needs to get racial

Edwin Edwards, for instance, is white, and was charged and convicted.

Actually, NOLA has had four black mayors: Ernest "Dutch" Morial, Sidney Barthelemy, Dutch's son Marc Morial, and Nagin.

[intheflow]

16. Thanks for the corrections.

I only remembered the two Moriels and Nagin.

Also, I was basing much of my comment on the first paragraph of the link in the OP: "Former Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans was found guilty on Wednesday of accepting payoffs for city contracts, becoming the first mayor in the city’s history to be charged and convicted of corruption." I hadn't known about Edwards.

[KamaAina]

17. Edwards was governor of La.

in fact, he served several non-consecutive terms, winning election over Dukkke long after it had been established that he was corrupt.

[Burf-_-]

6. NO WAY !!!! NO WAY !!!

corruption...... really.... from elected officials? When did that ever happen ?


But seriously folks, how often after the fact now are we hearing the details of these stories come to light ?

Who truly defends truth and freedom.... what are they? Humanity is a but a mustard seed in the greater turd of entropy...If we are the universe experiencing itself.... then the universe is ultimately a piss poor fucked place. Hope does not exist, so Just nuke everything already and save some more lies from being told about how things are going to be better... I must officially re-adopt my position of Nihilism. Fuck it ALL entirely. with a smile

[Bennyboy]

7. This will certainly clean up LA/NOLA politics!

:rolls eyes like slot machines:

[Sunlei]

8. This goes way back to the deal his admin worked on with one of those redlight camera companies?

Another city official was convicted of a lot of crimes but not by the Feds. Here's good detail in this wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Nagin

[Lost_Count]

9. With leadership like that....

... it's no wonder that everything in Katrina went to shit.

[CreekDog]

13. did he build the levees?

and knock them down?

I don't like him, but he didn't cause Katrina or the levee failures and had been mayor for about 3 years when Katrina hit. And lots of places he wasn't mayor were similarly damaged in the storm.

If you were mayor, you're saying you could have strengthened all the levees to withstand Katrina and had the work done before 3 years.

Bonus points if you can tell me who built the levees --and no, you can't blame Obama.

[former9thward]

19. The Army Corps of Engineers designed and built them.

In 1927 after a major flood the Corps was authorized by Congress to build levees. But they also said that local authorities had to agree to do the maintenance before the projects were built. Never happened. The after another big flood in 1965 Congress appropriated some more money for flood projects. It was supposed to take 13 years or 1978. Forty years later when Katrina hit the project was only 60% done in some areas and 90% in others. The completion date had been moved to 2015 by that time. The project was started 30 years before Obama was born and will not be done -- if ever --- until he is in retirement.

[Lost_Count]

20. Are you under the impression that the sole problem...

... during Katrina was the levees?

Populace and resource control, emergency and aid organizational planning prior to the event, coordination with multiple agencies at the state and federal level.

The list goes on and on. Do you think that none of that was his responsibility as the leader of the largest population center in the immediate path of the storm?

Bonus points if you can see that the failure of one thing, such as the levees, does not excuse the mismanagement of everything else that went wrong before, during and after the storm.

[The Green Manalishi]

21. The only way to get in trouble in some places is to be both incompetent AND corrupt

A lot of times voters will up up with corruption, if stuff gets done and things work. Also they seem to be somewhat forgiving, sometimes, of honest and earnest people who try their best, even if their best isn't very good.

But then you get the winners who seem to be both sleazy as hell *AND* can't get a damn thing done.

[Recursion]

22. Robert E. Lee built the first version of them...

Unfortunately by 2005 the entire levy maintenance process was basically a textbook case of how large organizations can and do screw things up...

[alp227]

10. kpete, your link goes to a different news story.

Better link,

Ray Nagin, former New Orleans mayor, convicted of federal corruption charges (New Orleans Times-Picayune)

[OKNancy]

14. link

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us/nagin-corruption-verdict.html

[UTUSN]

15. Shrub is snorting (something) with another notch of his revenge belt. n/t

[840high]

18. Good.