SHERIFF GOT DIRT ON JUDGE IN 1999

Information Was Forwarded To FBI

Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee said Tuesday that while Judge Ronald
Bodenheimer was working as a confidential informant for his office in
several cases in late 1999, the narcotics division had begun collecting
"troubling" information about the judge and was forwarding it to the FBI.

Declining to give details, Lee said narcotics agents gathered information
about Bodenheimer "which was troubling to me" as early as September 1999, a
month before the judge led deputies to a late-night Metairie drug bust at
which Bodenheimer showed up at the scene but was not arrested.

Lee's comments are the first indication that federal investigators received
reports about Bodenheimer nearly six months after his March 1999 election
to the 24th Judicial District Court and may have started zeroing in on the
judge in an investigation that has evolved into a wider probe of corruption
at the Gretna courthouse.

Lee, who has been reluctant to comment on the investigation, said he was
speaking out to explain narcotics agents' actions during the Oct. 28, 1999,
drug raid that led to the arrest of Joe Danny Perez and five others. Lee
said Bodenheimer did not receive special treatment that night and was not
made a confidential informant after the fact. He said the FBI "knew all
along what we were doing," and that when Bodenheimer showed up at the raid,
deputies were told to arrest him if he was carrying any drugs.

"The supervisor told (agents): 'Here's how we're going to handle this. If
there are drugs in Judge Bodenheimer's car, he should be arrested,' " Lee
said. "We searched his car, there were no drugs, and he was released."

Bodenheimer was arrested by federal authorities in June and indicted in
July for allegedly conspiring to plant the painkiller OxyContin in the
truck of a man who had complained of drug activity and zoning violations at
the judge's Venetian Isles marina. The judge, who is suspended with pay,
has pleaded innocent, and a trial has been set for September.

Perez pleaded guilty in federal court last month to a drug charge stemming
from the October 1999 raid and has agreed to detail for federal
investigators how a "close friend in the law enforcement community" aided
him in his drug-smuggling operations. Neither Perez nor federal officials
have said if he is referring to Bodenheimer. Through his attorney,
Bodenheimer has denied any drug involvement with Perez or anyone else.

Flanked by the highest-ranking officers in his narcotics division Tuesday,
Lee said the information about Bodenheimer that his narcotics agents
gathered in September 1999 was then shared with the FBI's Integrity Unit,
which he said expressed interest in investigating the judge.

Lee said that was the first of several reports his office sent the FBI, and
that he and Jefferson District Attorney Paul Connick Jr. met following the
1999 raid on Perez's business and chose to let federal officials
investigate instead of starting a formal investigation themselves. Lee said
he was concerned about letting a large number of his agents know the judge
was under investigation and about possible leaks, as have occurred with the
federal probe since Bodenheimer's arrest.

"Everything we got was sent to the FBI," Lee said.

Connick was not available for comment Tuesday. But Assistant District
Attorney Steve Wimberly confirmed that both offices agreed to let the FBI
investigate Bodenheimer.

"We were in total agreement that it needed to go to the FBI," Wimberly said.

FBI spokesman Sheila Thorne deferred comments to the U.S. attorney's
office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann said "it would not be appropriate"
to comment because of the pending Bodenheimer trial.

Lee declined to say how many cases Bodenheimer served in as a confidential
informant, but he said the judge was an informant before the drug raid in
October 1999, when Bodenheimer told Capt. Kenneth Soutullo of the Jefferson
Sheriff's Office that Perez would be receiving a large shipment of
marijuana, according to a narcotics report. The report indicates that a
confidential informant had tipped officials of Perez's drug trafficking in
July 1998, but Lee would not say Tuesday whether that informant was
Bodenheimer.

Lee said narcotics agents assigned to the Perez case did not know that
Bodenheimer was a confidential informant. When the judge drove up to
Perez's business at 3000 Lime St. the night of the raid, they called a
supervisor and asked for guidance. Following instructions, they stopped
Bodenheimer's Ford Explorer, read him his Miranda rights and searched the
vehicle, then released him.

Bodenheimer's role in the raid became public only last month, when
prosecutors told Perez's defense attorneys about it. But on Tuesday, Lee
and other officials rejected questions about whether naming Bodenheimer as
an informant was a way to protect the judge.

"The key ingredient here is that the judge was not named an informant after
the fact. That was not the case," Deputy Chief Newell Norman said.
Bodenheimer eventually approached Lee about the 1999 raid two years later,
the sheriff said. Lee said Bodenheimer asked him to "confirm or deny
information he has learned about himself," but the sheriff declined to give
details.

"It's all in one of the reports we sent to the FBI," Lee said.