Ex-U.S. Atty. fights disbarment for online posting scandal
22nd October 2018 · 0 Comments
Former Asst. U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone, a key federal prosecutor whose participation in an online posting scandal prompted a federal judge to overturn the convictions of five former NOPD officers who were found guilty of killing two unarmed Black people and wounding four others on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans just days after Hurricane Katrina, is seeking to avoid disbarment for his actions.
Perricone’s admission of guilt about posting comments on Nola.com about several active U.S. Department of Justice cases led to his dismissal as well as that of Asst. U.S. Attorney Jan Mann and U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, the longest-serving U.S. Attorney in the nation at the time.
The lengthy convictions of five former NOPD officers charged in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old James Brissette, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, Ronald Madison, and the wounding of four others were overturned as a result of the scandal.
The presiding federal judge found that the officers’ convictions had been tainted by what he called “grotesque prosecutorial misconduct.”
The announcement that the convictions had been overturned prompted some justice advocates, civil rights groups and grassroots organizations to suggest that the online posting had been purposely done to undermine the convictions and give the officers a chance to avoid lengthy prison sentences.
Perricone, who posted some of his comments from his office computer, faced the Louisiana Supreme Court Tuesday in an effort to determine how the former law enforcement officer, FBI agent and federal prosecutor should be reprimanded.
A hearing committee last week recommended that Perricone, who has admitted to violating several state ethics rules, have his law license suspended for two years, with one year of that deferred. The Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, however, rejected that punishment as too lenient for Perricone, who has already agreed to never practice law again in federal courts in Louisiana.
The board instead recommended disbarment, saying that the disgraced federal prosecutor intentionally violated an ethical rule barring prosecutors from making “extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”
Attorney Kirk Granier defended Perricone Tuesday, saying that his client suffered from what he called “complex post-traumatic stress disorder” brought on from everything from seeing dead bodies to being shot at and getting into fisticuffs as an NOPD officer or FBI agent.
“He has been suffering traumatic events since his 20s,” Granier said Tuesday.
The New Orleans Advocate reported that La. Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson appears to be skeptical of that claim which was supported by a diagnosis from 2016.
“We’re not dealing with a criminal standard,” Johnson said. “Are we saying this post-traumatic stress prevented him from doing the right thing? How do we treat the concealment?”
“He didn’t kill himself,” Granier countered. “He didn’t turn to drug abuse. He didn’t turn to alcohol abuse. He turned to online (commenting). It was an easy fit.”
Granier sought to downplay the role the online posting scandal played in U.S. District Judge Kurt Englehardt’s decision to overturn the five NOPD officers’ convictions in the Danziger Bridge shooting case and blamed the media for overblowing the role Perricone’s online posts played in the breakdown of the Danziger convictions.
All five officers would later reach plea deals with the federal court that would significantly reduce their sentences.
The Louisiana Supreme Court has yet to rule on the punishment Perricone will face for his role in the online posting scandal.
This article originally published in the October 22, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
