by Samantha Sunne, Dannah Sauer and Lee Zurik, WVUE-TV
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If you break the law in many small towns in Louisiana, the mayor could be your judge. The arrangement is ripe for conflict of interest.
Amid questions about how he ran his court, the mayor of the tiny village of Fenton, Louisiana, recently decided he would no longer serve as the town judge.
He had been recorded saying police officers must write more tickets and now found himself defending his impartiality. Some court records included notations by officers and village employees saying not to “fix” certain tickets; other notations said tickets were dropped after someone, often a law enforcement officer, had intervened.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that having a mayor serve as judge is unfair to defendants if a town brings in a substantial part of its revenue through the court and if the mayor is responsible for the town’s finances. The court in Fenton brought in 92.5% of the town’s revenue in one recent year, but the mayor still sat on the bench.
