Life and conflict in a tiny little town

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Death, Taxes and the right to Vote
November 6, 2013
Few specifics on LSU ticket hike
November 6, 2013

The place where I grew up was and is a very different place from where I now work and live. 

In Jackson Heights, NY, in the borough of Queens, the number of people who regularly shopped at the three supermarkets in that neighborhood alone exceeded the number of people living in Houma. The apartment building where I spent my childhood and teens was home to 96 families and the building across the street to 96 more. That’s probably around 400 or 500 people if you count kids that were all within spitting distance of me.


Here in Terrebonne and Lafourche as well as St. Mary things are quite different. If I go shopping locally I am doubtless going to run into people I know, or who know me. So I try to dress appropriately.

It is one of the charming things about living in a place like this, that our networks are so tight. We are all neighbors and we all – kind of – care about each other and look out for each other.

This is especially true, I have learned, because in our communities you never know whether the guy down the street you thumbed your nose at will be the one who saves another part of your anatomy when the big hurricane passes.


This can cause problems when people in our institutions – schools, the courts and other places that have major effects on the lives of people – are involved with difficult decisions.

It’s one of the reasons why district attorneys often punt certain cases to other jurisdictions or even to the Attorney General when necessary, because there may be conflicts of interest involving staff or the person who is in the big seat. 

You don’t want a prosecutor making a decision to bring a case against someone who maybe has done his or her hair for the past 20 years. Even if the prosecutor can be fair, it doesn’t look so good.


In St. Charles Parish, which isn’t so far away, officials have a lot of decisions to make regarding some football coaches who allegedly accessed – clearly without permission – a computer site where sensitive records regarding a competing team are stored.

The Lafourche District Attorney, Cam Morvant, is handling that one since the victim school, South Lafourche, is in his jurisdiction.

But school officials in St. Charles have some difficult decisions to make as well.


If we remember that high school football is about building young minds as well as bodies, that it involves instilling values going to character, if we remember that it is not always about winning or losing but often how the game is played, then we have to respect that the line which is drawn sometimes has to be clear, bright and tough.

Morvant is still in the process of assessing that case. Like all Louisiana district attorneys, he has great discretion. He is the jury that gets to review things before they ever get close to a jury, and it is a responsibility he takes very seriously.

A lot of times people presume that back door politics is involved when justice takes a left or right turn. More often than not it is the discretion that a prosecutor is clearly allowed being exercised.


So with the coaches nothing is set in stone yet. The people in Destrehan, by and large, appear willing to forget this ever occurred. It is not likely that Morvant will let that happen, even if his decision on how to handle it involves some type of diversion.

The criminal justice system, like all of us, must have the capacity to forgive, to show mercy and to find a better way when that is possible.

But we also, when looking at how we wish to see a bad act handled, whether by the justice system or a school board, must look further than our own like or dislike of a person.


Letting mercy and justice rule is not the same as letting emotions rule.

Nobody should rush to judgment on what will occur with the Destrehan coaches. But nobody should rush away from it either.