Louisiana Voice

That story about St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith and critic Bobby Couvillion just keeps getting better.

It was a couple of weeks back (May 29, to be precise) that Smith, the high sheriff of St. Tammany Parish, decided he’d had a belly full of Couvillion’s habit of pointing out the parish’s chief law enforcement officer doesn’t seem to get much accomplished in the way of crime solving.

In our initial story, we said Smith spotted Couvillion and his wife as they sat at the bar of Keity Yount’s Steakhouse in Madisonville and ran up from behind and put Couvillion in a choke hold.

It turns out that was not entirely accurate. We’ve now learned that Smith didn’t actually see Couvillion until he was pointed out by former school board member and buddy GREGORY JULES SAURAGE  who then encouraged Smith to attack, according to investigators with the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office.

Word is that officials with the AG’s office say that after Saurage pointed out Couvillion, he pounded his fists together to suggest to Smith it was an opportunity for a take-down.

Not so, says Saurage, who says he never pounded his fists together or encouraged the attack and in fact, pulled the two apart and drove the sheriff home.

A sheriff and a former school board member wallowing around on the floor of a restaurant. That’s pure entertainment as can only be found in Louisiana politics, folks. An official who is supposed to represent the best of us and a citizen duking it out after the sheriff has tossed down a generous quantity of alcohol—allegedly encouraged by another former public official who, theoretically, at least, should lead our school kids by example.

Bear in mind, this is the same sheriff who has come up with not a single suspect in the murder of Nanette Krentel nine years ago.

Bear in mind also, this is the same thin-skinned sheriff who had a federal official arrested for the unforgivable sin of criticizing the sheriff for his lack of progress in the Krentel matter. That arrest, by the way, was made on the basis of a law that had been repealed some 40 years earlier. In other words, without probable cause.

So, bottom line, Sheriff Smith has made more arrests for the non-crime of First Amendment-protested free speech than for the murder of an individual nearly a decade ago.

And now the web of intrigue is ever-widening with the arrest of Saurage.

A killer continues to go free in St. Tammany but don’t you dare criticize Sheriff Randy Smith.

Judge John Reeves is for sale but don’t worry, he’s cheap.

Reeves is a judge in the 7^th JDC which encompasses the parishes of Concordia and Catahoula and for a paltry $100, he’ll supposedly sign any document you stick in his face without bothering to actually read it.

Well, at least that’s what he did in one case when he signed a court order that (1) had not even been filed and (2) had not been assigned to his division, a document which gave the generous donor control of the bulk of his late mother’s estate.

That little transaction ended up costing Reeves a 20-DAY SUSPENSION and $3,100 to foot the cost of the Louisiana Judicial Commission’s investigation.

Wait. What? A 20-day suspension when some poor slob unfortunate enough to try to sale an ounce of weed to an undercover cop could end up behind bars for life? That’s justice? No, that’s the very definition of injustice, tilting the playing field, letting them that’s got the gold make the rules.

Bottom line: Judge John Reeves is for sale—but he’s been marked down by K-Mart. He’s a Blue-Light Special, a bargain-basement judge. But damnit, a bribe by any other name is still a bribe (I think Shakespeare wrote that in Romeo and Juliet).

In any case, judging from the decision handed down by the Louisiana Supreme Court, punishment is meted out by the degree of crime. In other words, the severity of the punishment is solely dependent upon the severity of the crime—if you are someone of social standing and not unfortunate enough to be some unemployed father trying to pilfer food for the family ‘cause that’s another story, fella.

But there’s more to this little saga than has been widely reported. Reeves claims he read the document brought to him by said bagman while a witness, who works for another judge in the 7^th JDC, says, Uh-uh, he most certainly did not. He thumbed right to the final page and affixed his signature to the order without reading its contents, the witness attested in a sworn affidavit.

Reeves also claimed he told the donor he would contribute the C-note to his church, but never seemed to get around to doing so. So, now we have him using the church as a crutch to justify a payoff. Justice for sale. Nice.

“I have an unbelievable record, and this is not like me,” he told commission members at his hearing, insisting that his pocketing the money was out of character for him.

Yeah, well there’s this:

• Reeves in 2024 allegedly authorized court commissions for two court staff members as sheriff’s deputies so they could carry concealed weapons in the courthouse only to have the badges rescinded when a defense lawyer sought to recuse Reeves, alleging an appearance of bias toward law enforcement.
• In 2021 when he ordered a deputy to pick up a child caught in a heated custody dispute and deliver the boy to his terminally ill grandfather who attended high school and played football with Reeves. He ordered four hours of visitation on his own motion, only telling attorneys after the fact (hey, easier to ask forgiveness than permission, right?). Reeves recused himself from that case when the boy’s mother complained.
• Reeves was also charged with issuing an illegal verbal order over the phone in, again in 2024, for a law enforcement search of a home.
• Finally, he’s accused of signing arrest and search warrants for a “longtime personal friend” and his property before stepping off the case.

He declined comment through an assistant, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate, because, he said, judicial canons prohibited it.

So now he invokes judicial canons. Good to know he still has something of a passing familiarity with those canons. Too bad he hasn’t been exactly a paragon of virtue when it comes to their application.

But sadly, misfits in the judiciary are all too common and most of us are blithely unaware of the damage they’re doing to our system of justice.

Fuggetabout blowhard Diaper Don Trump’s UFC cage match on the White House South Lawn on June 14. That’s just an ego-driven promotion to celebrate President Inepstein’s 80^th birthday and at best, its only child’s play.

If you want real, honest-to-God bare-knuckled, down-and-dirty, take-no-prisoners fights, one need only take a quick run over to St. Tammany Parish for the grudge match between Sheriff Randy Smith and critic Bobby Couvillon.

Now there is an event worth watching.

And best of all, a steak dinner is included in the price of admission.

Smith, who has been unable to find the killer of NANETTE KRENTEL for nine years now, was somehow able to spot nemesis Couvillon from across across the floor at Keith Young’s Steakhouse in Madisonville last Friday and sprang into action as only a cage match fan like el Trump-o could appreciate.

Couvillon was seated at the bar with his wife as they celebrated his 59^th birthday when Smith ran up and grabbed him from behind, placing him in a CHOKEHOLD and pulling him backward off the barstool (they said it was a chokehold; it could’ve been a half-nelson for all we know).

FanDuel immediately began taking bets on the outcome, giving 3-2 odds Couvillon would recover and prevail over Smith who was apparently pretty well into his cups.

A little background is appropriate.

You see, Smith and Couvillon aren’t exactly the best of friends. Couvillion has been one of the high sheriff’s most vocal critics (if you consider a computer keyboard as “vocal”) and Smith had had just about enough.

Here is part of Smith’s official post-smackdown—and post-arrest—STATEMENT:

“[An] unfortunate aspect of public service is the effect such public scrutiny and criticism can have on one’s family. This too, is accepted and endured by the family…to an extent.

For the past ten years I have ignored hundreds of personal attacks directed at me by an individual who hides behind a computer screen. His actions were direct and intentional. As Sheriff, I have ignored the attacks, threats and lies directed at me. As a husband and father, the continued and worsening public harassment of my wife, the false statements against her and the body shaming of her are not only despicable, but unacceptable. Seeing the frustration and pain caused to your wife and family is something much harder to ignore.

Granted, body-shaming of one’s wife ain’t exactly kosher by just about anyone’s definition of fair play.

But perhaps Smith should’ve waited a bit before making his play. After all, he had a pretty impressive bar tab, especially since this all went down about 4:30 on a Friday afternoon when he probably should’ve been out a-sheriffing. Check it out.

$346 is one helluva bar tab. Wonder if he’s a generous tipper?

All of which begs three more questions for the sheriff of St. Tammany Parish:

• Was he driving?
• If so, was he in his patrol vehicle?
• Who paid for the hootch, i.e., did it go on his office expense tab?

Asking for a friend.

By Jamie Surura, special correspondent

The St. Tammany Parish Council voted Thursday night to reappoint Pearl River attorney Charles Branton to the parish Library Board of Control (LBOC).  Branton has served as Chair of the LBOC during the past year, his first on the body.

A second candidate for the vacant position, Col. Jason M. Trew of Covington, was also nominated for the position. 

During the lengthy public comment period, two distinct factions offered observations, accolades and, often, sharp criticisms of Branton.  The group commonly referred to as the Library Accountability Project were in full force praising Branton’s leadership of the LBOC.  The Project was founded by ministers and church followers who tried to defeat the library millage renewal two years ago.  When that failed, they mounted a campaign of replacing LBOC members. 

To be clear, what they wanted was to pull books from the shelves and sequester those books containing sexual content.  Speakers such as Devin McGee, Madisonville, said Branton was able to “rein in a circus of antics.”  He called regular attendees of the LBOC local political activists.  He likened the comments made by the public at regular LBOC meetings when Branton often dismissed them, gaveling down dissent as “temper tantrums.”

Speaker after speaker supporting Branton came from the Republican Parish Executive Committee, and religious right-wing citizens such as the Slidell Ministers Alliance.  

Under Branton’s guidance hundreds of books have been placed on rolling carts behind the desks at local libraries because of perceived sexual content.  Sometimes that content involved art works.  Sometimes it was within a story and mentioned on one or two pages of the book in question.  The anti-library insisted these were part of a eft wing conspiracy to indoctrinate young children into the LGBTQIA “lifestyle.”

One right-wing Christian commenter during the Council meeting Thursday night, Fran Smith, of Slidell, claimed the LBOC is protecting the children of St. Tammany.  She said she had a “brother that read books that were obscene and had pornography in them.  My brother was a pedophile.”  She claimed to be a victim of her brother.

Long time library supporter Kevin Marino, Mandeville, said that the community looks to the Parish Council to continue to hold “the public institutions to a high standard of integrity, fairness and transparency that all St. Tammany citizens deserve.”  Marino noted that the Council had been inundated with emails and calls asking for the Council to make a needed change.

“Mr. Branton has run the library board very one sided,” he said.  “He’s unequally enforced the meeting rules.”  Marino gave examples of Branton allowing some attendees at the LBOC meetings to speak longer than the allotted time while cutting off others quickly.  “He’s offered up policy changes that have needed to be pulled…likely because they have legally questionable sounding and don’t work well.”

Former Covington Mayor Keith Villere spoke in favor of the nomination of Col. Jason Trew.  Villere spoke of Trew’s character and said that Col. Trew’s interest in serving on the LBOC was based on a “desire to make St. Tammany a better place.”

Villere elaborated on Col. Trew’s military service and his dedication to his church and family.  Trew is a retired Colonel and has a PhD.  Villere ended his comments by saying he’s known Jason Trew for a long time and knows him to be a consensus builder and someone who he fully supports for the LBOC.  “I urge you to vote of Jason Trew.  And I just want you to know, I’ve known Charles Branton for a long time, too.”

Following more than an hour of public comments, the Parish Council, as expected, voted 9-4 to place Charles Branton back on the LBOC.  This time for a term of five years.