Edwin edwards trial

Edwin Edwards on Wednesday holds a U. The FBI returned the money after prosecutors dropped a civil forfeiture lawsuit aimed at keeping the money. Edwards charged the FBI is vindictively pursuing an investigation of him and his son Stephen even though there is no evidence of a crime. Circuit Court of Appeals for Edwin's appeal. Signaling to stop talking about the case, former Louisiana Gov. Former four time governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards, 83, right center, and his new wife, Trina Grimes Scott, 32, walk down Bourbon Street following their small wedding ceremony on Friday, July 29, From left to right, former Govs.

Garret Graves, left, and former Gov. Edwards talk after a debate in their race. Graves won. Edwards was released in and, true to reputation, promptly married his third wife, Trina — she was half a century younger — and moved to Gonzales. In , he fathered a son with Trina, named Eli.

Later, while continuing to proclaim his innocence, Edwards said being sent away was a blessing in disguise. The stain of political corruption typically sinks a politician's reputation, but Edwards enjoyed renewed popularity in the years after his release.

Political clubs, chambers of commerce and other groups invited him to speak. His authorized biography became a bestseller in Louisiana. John Bel Edwards, who is not related, and former Gov. Kathleen Blanco were among the attendees. Edwards' revival even struck Jim Letten, who led the team of federal prosecutors that convicted Edwards in and later, as a U. When Letten ran into Edwards at a New Orleans Saints game in , the former governor reached out his hand, and the prosecutor shook it.

Edwards is the fourth former governor to die within the past two years. Throughout his career, Edwards won fervent support from poor White people and Black people — and grudging respect from his political rivals. But the question for history is whether he employed those formidable skills to benefit the public or his pocketbook. Although he could point to notable achievements over his 16 years in office, when he left the Governor's Mansion for the final time in , Louisiana remained among the least educated, poorest and least healthy states in the country.

Beginning in the s, Edwards opened the state to massive chemical waste dumping to benefit political supporters, and Louisiana continues to live with that legacy. Raised during his early years in an unpainted farmhouse in central Louisiana that had neither electricity nor running water, Edwin Washington Edwards was the latter-day heir of the populist era led by the Long brothers — first Huey P.

In , Edwards got his start in politics when he was elected to the Crowley City Council; he won reelection two more times. In , he defeated an incumbent to win a seat in the state Senate. In , he won a special election to Congress and set his sights on achieving his lifelong goal: being elected governor. One of 17 Democrats who vied to succeed Gov.

John McKeithen, Edwards led the party primary, narrowly defeated then-state Sen. Bennett Johnston in the Democratic runoff both elections were in late and then defeated David Treen, the Republican candidate, in February Edwards was elected governor by forging a coalition of working-class White people — especially Cajuns in his home base — and Black people beginning to flex their electoral muscles.

Over the next four years, he oversaw the passage of a number of highly regarded reforms sought by good-government groups. Edwin Edwards was so detested when he ran for re-election in , because of scandal and a tanking economy, that the favored candidate t…. Edwards easily won reelection in Edwards made a comeback in to win a fourth and final term, routing Duke in the runoff election. In , Edwards announced he would not seek reelection, just after marrying his second wife, Candy Picou, a year-old nurse.

In , a year after Edwards left office, news broke that he was under federal investigation, accused of having accepted payoffs from companies seeking a state license to operate riverboat casinos.

He was convicted on 17 counts in and entered federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, two years later. In his later years, Edwards would say his greatest political achievements were passage of the constitution and getting the Legislature to begin taxing oil production based on the market price rather than a flat fee. When oil prices soared in the s, Edwards had plenty of extra money to spend on new roads, bridges, ports, hospitals and schools.

Like Huey P. Long, Edwards throughout his political career urged the state to take care of the underprivileged. And like Long, he cut deals to steer work to favored businessmen, who provided the money he needed to run his campaigns. And also like Long, he faced repeated accusations that he pocketed some of the money. Whereas Long typically crushed critics with brute political force, Edwards used humor to disarm them.

He invited a reporter once to accompany him for three days, saying he enjoyed the camaraderie of gambling with friends and never gambled more than he could afford to lose. In , just after stepping down as governor, Edwards served a day as an associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. That led him to crow that he was the only person in the U. Congress and as a member of his state's highest court.

Treen, honest and fair but an unwilling deal-maker, was no match when Edwards ran against him in It was during that campaign that he delivered perhaps his most famous line. He was right. The 1,, votes he received marked the first time a Louisiana governor received more than 1 million votes.

Louisianans stopped chortling at his antics. The hayride was over. So was his ability to stay one step ahead of the federal authorities, who by then had convened more than a dozen grand juries to investigate him.

He faced four strong opponents in He led Edwards in the primary. That night, Edwards conceded the runoff election.

It was his first election defeat. But as governor, Roemer ran into trouble, in part because Edwards worked behind the scenes with state legislators to block his initiatives. In , Edwards sought to avenge the defeat and ran for governor again. Edwards ran first in the primary, followed by Duke, a Republican state legislator from Metairie who delivered a race-based message against political elites.

In a debate two weeks before election day, Edwards delivered a powerful closing statement that marked their sharp differences. It was , and the eyes of America were on Louisiana - and not in a good way. When he was selling Nazi hate literature as late as in his legislative office, I was providing free textbooks for the children of this state. Two bumper stickers captured the ambivalence that Edwards generated.

I suppose the feds sat by the river long enough, so here comes my body, " Edwards said. I have lived 72 years of my life within the system, I'll spend the rest of my life within the system. Whatever consequences flow from this, I'm prepared to face.

Despite his plans to appeal the verdicts, Edwards appeared to take an almost fatalistic view as he and his wife slowly walked the two blocks to Marcantel's home surrounded by television cameras and reporters.

Life is full of ups and downs, my problems are just larger than other people's. The charges Edwards was convicted of carry a maximum prison sentence of up to years, although guideline sentencing practices are likely to greatly reduce the number of years.

If he had been convicted on all counts, Edwards could have faced a maximum sentence of almost years in prison. When he was indicted in November , Edwards said, "I can truthfully say if my sentence is years, I don't intend to serve.

Rush-hour traffic on Main Street in Baton Rouge came to a stop briefly as Edwards and reporters eased across the street. Several cars honked their horns. But as Edwards crossed the busy thoroughfare, one car pulled out of a parking lot and stopped. A woman in the passenger seat leaned out the window and urged him to keep up his fight.

Back at the courthouse, prosecutors breezed across the street in the opposite direction, headed for their temporary offices in a U. The men who had just won the biggest corruption case in Louisiana history smiled broadly, but said they could not comment because of Polozola's gag order. Pressed for a reaction to the verdicts, U. Attorney Eddie Jordan said, grinning, "Look at my face. The ebullience of the prosecutors contrasted with the grim, breathless tension inside the courtroom moments earlier as defendants and lawyers waited for the verdicts to be read.

Polozola called the jury into the courtroom at p. As Polozola sat leafing through the page form, Edwards' son David sat with his eyes closed in the second row, using one hand to clasp the hand of his wife, Laura, and the other hand to cradle the neck of his year-old nephew, Christopher, who had walked into court in soccer shorts.

Edwin Edwards craned his neck from the defense table as the atmosphere intensified. Polozola cut the tension, however, by looking up and announcing that the jury had not completed the form properly. Stephen Edwards let out a heavy sigh when Polozola sent the jurors out of the courtroom, then turned and winked at his wife, Leslie, in the front row.

Less than a minute later, the jury walked back into the room and again turned over the verdict form. Polozola began to slowly read the 91 verdicts on the criminal counts.

He also read the jury's assessment of 68 alleged racketeering acts, which were used to establish the verdicts against the four defendants accused of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, known as RICO: Edwin Edwards, Stephen Edwards, Martin and Brown.

To find the men guilty of RICO, the jury had to determine that they were members of a criminal enterprise.

His personal finances became the focus of a federal investigation at the end of his first term, way back in Ten years later, in , he became the first sitting governor in state history to be criminally indicted, starring in not one but two sensational trials that ended, at least inside of the courtroom, in a dramatic acquittal that humiliated federal prosecutors.

But in the court of public opinion, he would be branded as a crook. In this three-part retrospective, we look back at only one chapter in the life of the indomitable Edwin W. Last year, over the course of several months, I had the opportunity to sit down and interview Mike about his extraordinary, six-decade-long career as a criminal defense attorney, which he chronicles in his book From the Bronx to the Bayou.

But I will confess: This episode about the trials and tribulations of Edwin Edwards is definitely my favorite. For one thing, Ben does a fabulous job of stitching together old audio clips of Edwin Edwards and archived media coverage to add context and flavor, but beyond that, the story itself is fascinating.

But this is also about a group of government prosecutors who were similarly excessive and who seemed driven more by an egotistical desire to win convictions than a patriotic duty to secure justice. In reflecting back on this case some 20 years later and with the benefit of hindsight, we may now be in a better position today to answer a few fundamental questions: Who were the victims here? Who suffered harm because of the actions that were said to have occurred in this case?