A former Marrero resident faces five years to 20 years in prison, for his conviction on Wednesday (June 22) of a second offense of failing to register as a sex offender.
A Jefferson Parish jury deliberated just over 15 minutes in finding Gerald Dominick guilty as charged. The jury delivered the verdict about 5:40 p.m., Wednesday.
Judge June Darensburg of the 24th Judicial District Court is scheduled to sentence Dominick on July 25.
Dominick, 60, was required by law to register as a sex offender for life because of a conviction of forcible rape in Jefferson Parish in 1984. He had been charged with aggravated rape of a 13-year-old girl in February 1984. Subsequent to a negotiated plea agreement, he admitted to committing a forcible rape that same year and received a 17-year prison sentence.
Then, between 2005 and 2011, he failed to maintain his registration. He pleaded guilty to failure to register in 2011 and received a two-year prison sentence. He returned to Jefferson Parish in January 2013, but he never registered as a sex offender.
The Sheriff’s Office arrested him in 2015, leading to his being charged with the second offense of failing to register and to this week’s trial.
Dominick pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his attorney argued that because of his history of psychiatric disorders, Dominick did not know right from wrong when he failed to register.
Assistant District Attorneys Josh Vanderhooft and Douglas Rushton prosecuted the case.
The newly redesigned mobile site offers access to internally generated news items. Mobile users also can share these items through social media platforms.
The Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office has rolled out a newly built website for mobile devices, allowing for the first time users of iPhone and Androids to view all the office’s online content.
Before this week, mobile users were unable to view news releases generated by the District Attorney’s Office, which are published at www.jpda.us. These releases also are linked to the office’s Facebook site, facebook.com/jpdaoffice, and its Twitter feed, @JeffParishDA.
Mobile device users also are now able to share the internally generated news items through social media platforms, and they can email the items. About half of web traffic generally originates with mobile devices, according to industry sources.
District Attorney Paul D. Connick, Jr., had his website rebuilt in recent years, to give Jefferson Parish and other residents access to information about the various services his office provides to the public. The office also provides to the public and to news media outlets reports on criminal cases in the 24th Judicial District Court.
The DA’s Office plans continued improvements to its website, for both desktop and mobile users.
A New Orleans man pleaded guilty to his part in an auto theft racketeering case on Monday (June 20), bringing to four the number of people to have confessed to involvement in the ring authorities say accounted for almost one third of vehicle thefts in Jefferson Parish in recent years.
Ronnel A. Kyles, 29, pleaded guilty to racketeering, conspiracy to commit theft and one count of theft in exchange for a 10-year prison sentence. He was among the 13 men charged by a grand jury on May 5 in connection with the ring tied to approximately 32 percent of vehicle thefts in the parish in 2014 and 2015, amounting to at least $2.5 million in economic loss, according to the indictment.
Vehicles, primarily pickup trucks, allegedly were stolen for several reasons. In some cases, enterprise members allegedly transferred vehicle identification numbers to wrecked, inoperable or salvaged trucks with little or no value that were legally purchased to vehicles that were stolen.
In other instances, enterprise members allegedly stole vehicles for parts. The stolen vehicles were sold for scrap based on the weight or simply abandoned, according to the indictment.
Kyles’ role included designating vehicles to be stolen, transporting other enterprise members to steal them and stealing the vehicles. He specifically pleaded guilty to being one of three members who stolen a 2006 Ford F250 pickup between April 16, 2015 and April 17, 2015. The charge was theft involving a vehicle valued at between $5,000 and $25,000.
Judge Adrian Adams of the 24th Judicial District Court sentenced Kyles to 10 years for each of the three counts and ran them concurrently, for a total of 10 years.
Kyles then pleaded guilty to being a second offender under the state’s habitual offender law, because of a previous auto theft conviction in Jefferson Parish. In the previous conviction, he pleaded guilty to theft of a motor vehicle and attempted theft in December 2014 and received three years of probation, court records show. Those crimes involved his stealing a pickup truck, and attempting to steal a vehicle’s rims in May 2014, records show.
On Monday, Judge Adams sentenced Kyles to 10 years as a second-offender, on the second count of his guilty plea, conspiracy to commit auto theft. The judge ran that sentence concurrently, for a total of 10 years.
The others who’ve pleaded guilty in connection with the alleged auto theft ring are Jason Mercadel, 38, of New Orleans, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison; Jimmie “Black” James, 28, of New Orleans, who is scheduled to be sentenced in September; and, Brandon Lane, 29, of Marrero, who received a 10-year sentence.
Lane was charged last year, separately from the 13 men named in the May 5 indictment.
The others named in the indictment are Parrish Norris, 41; Oliver D. Green, 46; Patrick N. Robinson III, 28; Patrick N. Robinson Jr. 49; Cardell E. Torrence, 39; Kevin A. Martin, 29; Brandon P. Evans, 30; Keith A. Nero, 29; Shon R. Claiborne, 27; and Ronald J. Johnson, 29.
A Metairie woman pleaded guilty Monday morning (June 20) to participating in the death of Jaren Lockhart, the French Quarter exotic dancer who was fatally stabbed in a Kenner home four years ago before her body was dismembered and her body parts were discarded along the Mississippi Gulf Coast by the two killers.
One year and one day after her ex-boyfriend Terry Speaks was convicted for his role in the same crime, Margaret Sanchez, 32, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. She was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Lockhart, 22, the mother of a 3-year-old child, died on June 6, 2012, after agreeing to leave her French Quarter job in the early morning hours with Sanchez and Speaks. The trio went to the home that Sanchez and Speaks shared in the 2000 block of Connecticut Avenue, near Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, where Speaks and Sanchez killed Lockhart.
“After consulting with Ms. Lockhart’s family, it was decided that the negotiated plea agreement was in the best interests of all parties involved,” Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul D. Connick, Jr. said. “Out of respect for Ms. Lockhart and her family, I will not comment further on the case or the evidence.”
Members of Lockhart’s family, along with numerous law enforcement officers from Kenner and Mississippi who were involved in the investigation, were present in the courtroom when Sanchez pleaded guilty.
“Words cannot express the pain her family and friends have endured since the murder,” Donna Kulick, guardian of Ms. Lockhart’s daughter, said in impact testimony.
She said the girl still cries over the loss of her mother, and that their family is “forever broken.”
“This will have a huge impact on her for the rest of her life,” Kulick testified.
In accepting the plea agreement, Judge Stephen Grefer of the 24th Judicial District Court, who presided over both criminal cases, sentenced Sanchez to 40 years for manslaughter, 40 years for obstruction of justice and 20 years for the charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The three sentences are the maximum for the respective charges. Judge Grefer ran the sentences concurrently.
Sanchez was scheduled to stand trial beginning July 11 on charges of second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Speaks, 43, was convicted as charged on June 19, 2015, of second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He is serving two life sentences at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The first of those life sentences was handed down for the second degree murder.
After initially sentencing Speaks to 40 years in prison for obstruction of justice, Judge Grefer ruled on Jan. 22 that Speaks is a quadruple felony offender under Louisiana’s habitual offender law. Judge Grefer then handed down the second life sentence.
Sanchez has been held in the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna since May 2014, when the Kenner Police Department arrested her in connection with Lockhart’s death. She and Speaks were indicted by a Jefferson Parish grand jury on Aug. 14, 2014. She was unable to post a $1.5 million bond.
Sanchez’s last court appearance was Dec. 7, when Judge Grefer denied requests to dismiss the indictment and, alternatively, to move the trial out of the Jefferson Parish area. Her attorneys asserted the extraordinary pretrial publicity the case received by local news media made it difficult to seat a fair and impartial jury. However, her July 11 trial date was set that day, court records show.
Assistant District Attorneys Doug Freese and Tommy Block prosecuted both cases.
A Gretna man who claimed he falsely confessed to sexually abusing a teenaged girl in part because of the “high-grade marijuana” he smoked before meeting with a police detective was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday (June 16).
Omar Duplessis, 31, was convicted as charged of forcible rape, for abusing the girl at least three times beginning when she was 13 and ending the on day before Thanksgiving in 2014, when she was 16.
In addition to receiving the maximum punishment for forcible rape, Duplessis also will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life after his release from prison, 24th Judicial District Judge Henry Sullivan ordered.
Judge Sullivan, who handed down the guilty verdict on May 27 because Duplessis waived a trial by jury, rejected Duplessis’ request for a new trial on Thursday. In handing down the maximum 40-year sentence, Judge Sullivan cited Duplessis’ “deliberate cruelty” in raping on “multiple occasions,” and of using force during the rapes to prevent the victim from resisting.
The victim told her mother about the rapes, but the mother did nothing, according to trial testimony, when the mother said in court that she didn’t believe her daughter’s accusations. The victim then disclosed the abuse to her uncle, who contacted the Gretna Police Department and led to Duplessis’ arrest.
Duplessis, one of nine witnesses who testified during the two-day trial, initially denied the accusation. In a second recorded statement, he told the detective that he was in his bed intoxicated when the girl attempted to have sex with him.
In the third and final recorded statement, he admitted to raping the girl “at least four times, maybe five, maybe, like once every – I don’t know.”
During the trial, however, he said he was at his job as a longshoreman on New Orleans’ riverfront when he learned of the rape accusation. He testified he didn’t immediately go to the Gretna police headquarters, but then “smoked a blunt of high-grade marijuana” before meeting with the detective to help him relax. He asserted that in part led to a false confession.
The girl’s mother, whose name is being withheld to protect the victim’s identity, pleaded guilty on Feb. 25 to failure to report the commission of certain felonies, meaning the rape. She received two years of active probation, because she did not disclose to authorities that Duplessis sexually abused her daughter. She testified for Duplessis during his trial.
Assistant District Attorneys Rhonda Goode-Douglas and Marko Marjanović prosecuted the case.
A Harvey teenager pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Friday (June 10), for his involvement in a homicide two years ago in which a 24-year old man was shot to death.
Raynell Whittaker, 19, will receive a 30-year prison sentence for the June 27, 2014 death of Demone Robinson, according to the plea agreement presented in court on Friday.
Robinson was shot multiple times and died in the 1000 block of Inca Drive, which is off Manhattan Boulevard in Harvey. According to court documents, Robinson was targeted as part of a plan to rob him. Whittaker and a co-defendant who is the accused shooter had been scheduled to stand trial next week on a charge of second-degree murder.
As part of the negotiated plea which requires Whittaker’s cooperation, prosecutors reduced the murder charge to manslaughter, which carries a maximum punishment of 40 years in prison. Whittaker also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess Xanax, for which he will receive a 2 ½-year sentence that will run concurrently with the manslaughter sentence.
Judge Lee Faulkner of the 24th Judicial District Court, who accepted Whittaker’s guilty pleas, scheduled the sentencing for July 18.
Everis Hilton, 18, of New Orleans, and Markeisha T. Lewis, 25, of Harvey, also are charged with second-degree murder in connection with Robinson’s death.
Second-degree murder carries a punishment of mandatory life in prison upon conviction. However, under a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Miller vs. Alabama, individuals who commit homicides before they reach age 18 cannot automatically be sentenced to life imprisonment without the benefit of parole.
At the time of Robinson’s death, Whittaker was 17 and Hilton was 16, but both were charged as adults.
At the time a Jefferson Parish grand jury handed up charges in Robinson’s homicide, Whittaker and Everis already were in state prison in connection with their guilty pleas to armed robbery in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.
That crime happened sixteen days before Robinson was killed. Whittaker and Everis admitted they robbed a man of his cell phone in the 600 block of Third Street, in New Orleans’ Irish Channel. They currently are serving 10-year prison sentences for that crime.
In accepting the plea, Faulkner agreed to run Whittaker’s 30-year sentence currently with the 10-year sentence in the armed robbery case.
Assistant District Attorneys Lindsay Truhe and Michael Smith are prosecuting the cases.
Tommy Mouton, 62, a former Bridge City resident, failed to register as a sex offender last year, after he was released from state prison for his first conviction of failing to register as a sex offender.
Judge Donnie Rowan of the 24th Judicial District Court, who has presided over Mouton’s criminal cases and ruled in 2013 that he was likely to re-offend against children, handed down the maximum sentence after denying a defense request for a new trial. Failure to register second offense carries a sentencing range of five to 20 years in prison.
“It is the court’s opinion that if he was released and out on his own, someone else would be assaulted,” Judge Rowan said in explaining his handing down the maximum sentence.
Mouton received a 10-year prison sentence in 1990 in Jefferson Parish for his convictions of sexual battery, aggravated oral sexual battery and indecent behavior with a juvenile. That case involved a girl he molested over a 21-month period beginning in 1986, when the girl was 6 years old.
While serving that sentence, state corrections officers found in his cell his journal, in which he detailed child abuse and had drawings of young girls being sexually tortured. That led to his conviction in Claiborne Parish of possession of child pornography.
He was sent back to prison in 2010, after he was convicted the first time of failing to register as a sex offender. While in prison, he was evaluated by a Sex Offender Assessment Panel, or SOAP, which seeks to determine whether certain inmates pose a danger to society.
In that process, Mouton stipulated he was, in fact, a child sexual predator. Judge Rowan, who presided over the SOAP hearing, found that Mouton was a danger to society during a December 2013 hearing. Mouton was ordered to register as a sex offender and have his whereabouts tracked via GPS for the rest of his life when released from prison.
Before his release from prison on Feb. 12, 2015, Mouton told the state Department of Corrections that he intended to reside in the 200 block of 8th Street in Bridge City, according to trial testimony.
He failed to report to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office within three days of his release, leading deputies to obtain a warrant for his arrest.
Mouton was at large for 15 days following his release from prison, until a fugitive task force that included the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, the New Orleans Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Service, found him in the 1800 block of Gravier Street in downtown New Orleans. He had condoms and a bottle of lubricant in his pockets, authorities have said.
Judge Rowan noted on Friday that Mouton made no attempt to at least alert Jefferson Parish authorities that he had difficulties in trying to register last year. “They literally had to do a manhunt to find you,” the judge said. “That’s my problem with that. You sought no help.”
His attorney asserted Mouton, a U.S. Army veteran, was moneyless and homeless, and that he was in downtown New Orleans to get treatment at the U.S. Veterans Administration hospital.
Assistant District Attorneys Matt Clauss and Andrew DeCoste prosecuted the case.
Lauren Trout (center), restorative justice facilitator for the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office and Jefferson Parish Public School System, discusses the program for an audience gathered in New Orleans for “Rethink Discipline.” At the left is Kimbrielle Boult, a student, and at right is Lynette Adams of the Louisiana Supreme Court. (JPDA photo)
Although concrete data is not yet available, the restorative justice approach to resolving disputes among participants in the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office Pre-Trial Juvenile Diversion program is seeing successes, a program facilitator says.
During its first year of use in Juvenile Diversion, about 260 people have voluntarily used the restorative justice process as a means of resolving conflicts and undoing the harm the youths’ behavior caused, said Lauren Trout, a restorative practices facilitator working for the District Attorney’s Office and the Jefferson Parish Public School System.
“The outcomes and responses have been largely positive,” Trout told about 50 educators, school administrators, students and representatives of community groups from as far as Jackson, Miss., who are gathering in New Orleans this week for a regional conference called “Rethink Discipline.” Trout was among the speakers on Tuesday (June 7).
The participants convened to discuss and share ideas on finding alternatives to suspending or expelling students who cause disciplinary problems in public schools. Restorative justice, one of this week’s topics, is a method school officials began using nationwide during the past decade, as a means of trying to keep youths in school and out of criminal justice systems.
Trout is helping bring restorative practices to Jefferson Parish’s 81 public schools. Through restorative practices, the youths who cause the problem must confront their behaviors by sitting face-to-face with the people they’ve harmed in what’s called “talking circles.”
And in the schools setting, the often-used means of meting discipline, through expulsions, suspensions and even arrests, doesn’t solve the underlying problems. “We know suspending and expelling young people doesn’t resolve the conflict,” Trout said, as the offending youths eventually return to the classrooms.
The Jefferson Parish DA’s Office and public school system began working together during the 2014-2015 academic year through a cooperative endeavor to bring restorative practices to the schools. Jefferson’s program, along with those in Caddo and Orleans parishes, is funded the program with U.S. Education Department School Climate Transformation Grants.
Jefferson Parish Juvenile Court judges began looking at restorative justice in 2011, through its Families in Need of Services program. Over time, District Attorney Paul D. Connick Jr., authorized his office to implement the program through the Pre-Trial Juvenile Diversion Program, using grant money from the Baptist Community Ministries Foundation.
In Juvenile Diversion, restorative justice is used in cases involving fights, thefts from persons, property destruction, assaults and batteries. Youths involved with narcotics, inter-family incidents and thefts from the large chain stores aren’t allowed access to restorative justice.
Jefferson Parish’s youths were only able to access restorative justice after they entered the juvenile criminal justice system, Trout said. That’s why the program was extended to the public schools through the collaboration with the DA’s office, she said.
She said she’s seen successes and barriers to implementing the program in the public schools in its first year. “Real change, and systemic change in particular, is really slow,” she said of the barriers. “It takes time to work efficiently across so many systems.”
She sees the collaboration between the school system and criminal justice system as a success, and restorative practices is now in the school system’s disciplinary policies handbook.
While concrete data isn’t available, Trout cited as an example of success a public school, which she did not identify, that had a high rate of arrests among its students. The school then included on its staff a part-time restorative practices facilitator.
“There has definitely been a reduction in out-of-school suspensions,” Trout told the audience.
Educators, school administrators, students and community groups representatives from Louisiana and parts of Mississippi are gathering in New Orleans this week for “Rethink Discipline,” a conference designed to address means of disciplining youths other than suspending them, expelling them or even jailing them. Speakers include Lauren Trout, a restorative practices facilitator working for the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office and the Jefferson Parish Public Schools System. Among those attending on Tuesday was Erin Valls, project grant manager for the Jefferson Parish Public School System. (JPDA Photos)
A Marrero man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty on Monday (June 6), to one count of possession of pornography depicting juveniles under the age of 13.
Sean A. Byers, 26, who lived in Westwego at the time of his arrest, appeared before Judge Lee Faulkner of the 24th Judicial District Court to enter the plea reached pursuant to negotiations.
Byers must serve the sentence without the benefit of probation, parole or suspended sentence. He also must register as a sex offender for 25 years starting with the day he’s released from prison, Judge Faulkner said.
He was arrested Aug. 6, 2015, after the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents served a search warrant of his residence at the time in the 400 block of Celotex Parkway.
Sheriff’s Office Detective Nick Vega had opened the investigation a month earlier, as part of an ongoing undercover search of people engaged in the distribution and possession of child pornography on the internet. Byers shared with the detective three videos depicting prepubescent girls engaged in sexual activities with adult males, according to the arrest affidavit.
During the search of Byers’ home, police found a flash drive containing those three videos in addition to 16 other images and videos depicting child pornography, according to the arrest affidavit. Byers confessed he downloaded the videos and images.
Byers posted a $10,000 commercial bond two months after his arrest, records show. He surrendered to authorities on Monday to begin his sentence.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Smith prosecuted the case.
A former Metairie resident was sentenced on Monday (June 6) to 30 years in prison for the sexual battery of a girl.
Alejandro Bravo, 45, was convicted last month of inappropriately touching the child on at least three occasions, the last of which occurred on March 9, 2013, when she was 7 years old.
The child was visiting her step-grandmother’s home on Severn Avenue, when Bravo touched her as she sat on his lap. The child spoke out, leading her step-grandmother to call her own mother before alerting the victim’s parents, who in turn notified the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, according to testimony during last month’s trial.
The child testified during the trial that Bravo touched her three times, and that she did not understand that his behavior was wrong until police were notified.
“You made my daughter a victim, but my daughter refuses that label,” the girl’s mother said in an impact testimony letter that a prosecutor read aloud in court on Monday.
After the Sheriff’s Office initiated its investigation and obtained an arrest warrant, Bravo vanished. He was arrested two years later in Minnesota and was extradited to Jefferson Parish to face charges, according to testimony. He testified during the trial that the child “obviously” was lying.
Sexual battery involving a juvenile under age 13 carries a sentence of 25 years to 99 years in prison. Judge Lee Faulkner of the 24th Judicial District Court, who denied Bravo’s attorney’s request for a new trial last week, cited Bravo’s being a middle-age man in handing down the sentence without probation, parole or suspended sentence.
Judge Faulkner also ordered that Bravo register as a sex offender for the rest of his life from the day he’s released from prison. The registration must be updated every six months, the judge told Bravo.
Assistant District Attorneys Lindsay Truhe and Michael Smith prosecuted the case.
