[Editor's Note: This story has been altered to update the employment status of Barna Haynes, the longtime office manager of District Attorney Mike Harson.]
Barna Haynes and Robert Williamson, the two people named by Independent sources as the targets of a federal investigation into 15th Judicial District Attorney Mike Harson’s office, share a key connection in the FBI’s probe of how Harson’s office is handling OWI prosecutions.
As The Independent reported March 7, Williamson is a licensed private investigator who works as a consultant for OWI offenders and Barna Haynes, as Harson’s office administrator, schedules meetings between Harson and those who wish to be admitted into the OWI pretrial diversion program or have their charges expunged from their records.
Also reported by The Ind in this week’s “The Not So Secret Cajun Man” is Williamson’s long and bizarre history with federal courts in Louisiana: In 1989, Williamson’s wife, Sonya, claimed she was electrocuted while turning off a light in the family’s hotel room at the Haynes Best Western in Alexandria, where the family had been living for more than a month (the name of the hotel appears to be coincidental, unrelated to Barna Haynes). The Williamsons claimed in a subsequent lawsuit against the hotel that the electrocution stemmed from a water leak in the room’s ceiling and caused Sonya to become quadriplegic ... In the end, the jury sided with the insurance company and ruled that the electrocution was staged, largely based on the couple’s history of fraudulent insurance activity. But the Williamsons’ appeals and the countersuits filed by the insurance company kept the case tied up in federal court for more than a decade.
The Ind has since learned that City Prosecutor Gary Haynes, husband of Barna Haynes, represented the Williamsons in a 2004 appeal related to the electrocution case. The Williamson and Gary Haynes connection also resurfaces in 2005, when Gary Haynes signed on as the attorney for a child custody case involving local businessman Bradley Griffith.
According to court documents, District Judge David Blanchet identifies Williamson as a private investigator who accompanied Griffith to his child’s day care center at the height of the custody dispute. The judge wrote in the ruling:
“Brad ... sabotaged the situation by involving a private investigator, Robert Williamson, who appeared at the day care with him on several occasions and who made inquiries concerning the owners of the day care [to a neighboring business owner] ... This resulted in the child being dismissed from the day care center by the center’s owners.”
Gary Haynes is the listed attorney for the 2005 case, Bradley Griffith vs. Resa Latiolais, according to court documents. “I was not the lead attorney and assisted for a brief time in that case," Gary Haynes said in a brief phone interview with The Independent Monday. “And that’s all I can say. Other than that I can’t really comment on Robert Williamson."
But Gary Haynes' statement about his role in the Griffith case is not entirely accurate, according to Latiolais' attorney, Julie Vaughn Felder. "He was not the lead lawyer, but he showed up at the majority of depositions and hearings," she says. "He filed a motion to withdraw on the eve of the last day of trial." The suit was filed in October 2005, and the first day of trial was in August 2006. Haynes' motion to withdraw was filed Jan. 27, 2008, and the trial ended the next day.
"It was a 12-day trial that took 17 months," Felder says.
The Independent submitted a public records request to Harson's office Friday morning to verify the employment status of Barna Haynes. Harson told The Daily Advertiser Friday afternoon that Barna has been on upaid leave since Monday. He responded three days later to The Ind's public records request via a March 20 fax that says it is "undetermined" when Barna Haynes will return to work. Her annual salary, according to Harson, is $62,545.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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