EVEN BIG EASY CAN BE SHAKEN

Arrest Of New Orleans Judge Not Your Average Scandal

New Orleans

Summer falls here like a fat man's hand, but the arrest of a hardline judge
on charges he planted drugs on an FBI informant has roused even the baked,
scandal-drowsy citizens of Louisiana.

Despite the history of public malfeasance in this up-is-down landscape,
where ethical boundaries seem as shifting as the state's coastline ---
where "Vote For the Crook, It's Important" was a winning campaign slogan
this episode threatens to redraw the line between the usual
monkeyshines and unacceptable crookedness.

"This area has the reputation of embracing corruption and thinking of our
politicians in terms of pirates and colorful rogues," said Rafael
Goyeneche, head of the watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission. "I'm hoping
people will see this as the beginning of a different era down here, where
this stuff isn't winked at anymore."

The central figure: Ronald "Ronnie" Bodenheimer, a respected district judge
who once handed out the stiffest prison sentence in suburban Jefferson
Parish history --- 881 years.

Bodenheimer stands accused of conspiring to plant the prescription narcotic
OxyContin in the vehicle of a man who had complained about drug trafficking
and zoning violations at the marina the judge owns on a remote New Orleans
bayou.

Last month's arrest of the judge appears to be an almost accidental
consequence of a larger federal investigation into possible corruption at
the Jefferson Parish courthouse, in Gretna, including the judiciary's
relationship with the bail bonding industry. A week after Bodenheimer was
charged, federal agents raided a bail bond king's office situated virtually
on the doorstep of the courthouse where the judge served.

Among others who've surfaced in the wide-ranging investigation: four
convicted felons with whom the judge associated, a New Orleans restaurant
tycoon and six sheriff's deputies.

The revelations have shocked Louisianans in a way other public scandals ---
notably the extortion conviction of former governor and "Vote For the
Crook" sloganeer Edwin Edwards --- have not.

"This one threw everybody for a loop," said Jeff Crouere, host of a radio
political talk show on which Bodenheimer appeared several times. "This guy
was elected as a career prosecutor with sterling credentials. If he's found
to have committed wrongdoing, it makes people question the whole political
system.

"He was considered one of the good guys."

Plea bargain rejected

Bodenheimer, 49, is under house arrest while a grand jury hears evidence.
He turned down a plea bargain of a 30-month jail sentence in exchange for
his cooperation. Says his lawyer, Davidson Ehle: "He's not guilty and we're
going to trial to prove his innocence." The U.S. attorney's office has a
Friday deadline to return an indictment, Ehle said.

In the meantime, the story has unfolded with the murky atmospherics of a
set-in-Louisiana crime novel by James Lee Burke --- one filled with
high-level shenanigans, low-life hangers-on and the cultural intersection
of New Orleans, its suburbs and the green-brown bayous that surround them.

The case file provides hard-boiled dialogue from Bodenheimer's phone
conversations, taped by the FBI since at least last October.

Here's a transcript of Bodenheimer talking in February about the guy who'd
long complained about unlawful activity at the judge's marina:

"The only reason I haven't done something before this is because he's been
like a [expletive] splinter. . . . I been fighting guys with swords and
he's got a splinter. Well, the splinter just pissed me off."

Friend: (Laughing)

Bodenheimer: "So [expletive] the swords, I'm going after the splinter."

Friend: "Hey, I hear you."

Bodenheimer: "The sad part about it, he ain't got a shot. He ain't got a
chance. . . . He ain't gonna know what's hit him."

Real-life 'Columbo'

Bodenheimer had two reputations: a shining public one in the western
suburbs where he worked, and a sleazy private one in the eastern bayous
where he hung out.

Raised in a rough-and-tumble New Orleans neighborhood, Bodenheimer seemed
destined to be a prosecutor for life. Of his nearly two decades in the
Orleans and Jefferson Parish district attorney offices, he is remembered
for his shambling ferocity in nailing bad guys --- he competed openly for
the most death penalty convictions --- and the unerring dishevelment of his
wardrobe.

He was a kind of real-life "Columbo," shuffling down hallways with coffee
in a Styrofoam cup, his tie askew, his unironed pants and shirts mismatched
with the bargain-bin sports coats he'd pluck blindly from his office
closet. He spoke a vintage New Orleans street patois --- sort of a
Brooklynese cut with a y'all drawl.

In the courtroom, he was an almost unbeatable combination of bulldog
interrogator and down-home presence.

"His trial skills were incredible, and he had the jury in the palm of his
hands," recalled Quentin Kelly, a California deputy district attorney who
worked with Bodenheimer in Jefferson Parish. "People on the jury just liked
and trusted him."

Then, out of the blue, the Republican Bodenheimer was tapped by a local
powerbroker --- the previous district attorney --- to run for a vacated
judgeship in the conservative parish.

"The former DA called him up that morning and said, 'You have to file an
entry fee. You're running for judge,' " said Kelly.

Bodenheimer's victory in 1999 over a longtime state legislator was a
monumental upset, which he pulled off by framing the campaign as career
crimebuster vs. career politician.

Behind the bench, Bodenheimer held to his hardline roots. Among his
rulings: the nearly nine-century sentence he dropped on a 10-time armed robber.

Yet defense lawyers considered him fair. The Crime Commission, which rates
judicial efficiency, last year ranked Bodenheimer 10th out of 16 Jefferson
Parish judges and never heard a complaint.

Life on the bayou

It was a different story on the other side of town. In 1994, Bodenheimer
bought a tiny bait 'n' beer marina in an upscale subdivision called
Venetian Isles, on Bayou Sauvage, at the watery eastern tip of New Orleans.
Trouble followed. His business partner was convicted in 1997 of sexually
abusing a minor, who was a relative, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Other employees had legal run-ins: One was convicted of drug possession in
1996, another busted with 60 pounds of pot in 1997. Both got suspended
sentences. Asked by neighbors why he ran with such riffraff, Bodenheimer
replied, according to then-subdivision association president Ken Cowie,
"I'm just trying to rehabilitate them."

Cowie's view: "The people he associates with out here are people he can
control. They think, 'If I do what the judge says, maybe he'll help me.' "

When Bodenheimer began running a wholesale seafood business that marina
neighbors claimed violated zoning ordinances, the homeowners association
complained to city officials. Cowie and another neighbor --- who became the
FBI's confidential witness that Bodenheimer is accused of trying to frame
took pictures of activities at all hours of the day. A dead fish showed
up in one neighbor's mailbox. When officials met with Bodenheimer, the
judge denied any wrongdoing, whether building without proper permits or
violating safety standards.

Then in April 2001, Bodenheimer had a conveyor belt erected to off-load
shrimp. Cowie took pictures to city hall showing the belt was shoddily
constructed and wasn't grounded.

The city refused to issue an operating permit. Several days later, a
15-year-old boy out with friends on the first day of shrimping season
touched the belt and was fatally electrocuted. The parents filed a lawsuit,
but Bodenheimer was not charged and ducked any political fallout.

To some observers, he seemed to be taunting neighbors, as if engaged in
some private culture war.

On one side: the swamp-life refuge he often visited with his father as a
kid --- a working-class island dotted with ramshackle fishing camps just
across the bridge from the marina. Homemade signs with self-deprecating
titles bloom there at the entrances of dirt driveways: "Cajun Estate,"
"Always Under Construction," "All Mashed Together," "It's a Camp, Not a Condo."

On the other side: encroaching developments like Venetian Isles, with their
pink brick homes and exotic street names (San Marco, Old Spanish Trail) and
snooping, permit-obsessed residents.

"I'd say, 'Ronnie, what the hell are you doing, you're pissing people off,'
" said Glenn McGovern, the neighborhood association lawyer who attended a
New Orleans Catholic high school with Bodenheimer. "There'd be no response.
He'd just shrug."

Phone call tips off FBI

The feds raided Bodenheimer's suburban Metairie home on June 5 and arrested
him late that night, along with Curley Chewning, an irregularly employed
mechanic.

While the informant first talked to the FBI in 1999, according to court
records, a phone call intercepted last October between Bodenheimer and a
marina employee tipped off the feds that the judge wanted to retaliate
against the busy-body neighbor.

A short time later, according to FBI transcripts, Bodenheimer and a private
investigator discussed planting crack cocaine in the informant's vehicle.
Over the ensuing months, Bodenheimer and Chewning decided on OxyContin and
discussed various scenarios, FBI documents show.

On April 18, the informant called Chewning and asked to meet him at a
steakhouse. Chewning, according to transcripts, saw this as an opportunity
to execute the frame-up. Though he and Bodenheimer were suspicious of the
informant's motive, they seemed confident they could outmaneuver him.

Chewning: "Something's up. But what? I'm sure I'll find out tomorrow night.
. . . Let's see who sinks the deepest hook."(Laughs)

Bodenheimer: "You know what this is? It's like a knife fight while dancing."

Chewning met the informant the next night at the steakhouse parking lot,
got in his passenger seat, then stayed there briefly while the informant
went inside the restaurant, the FBI says. When Chewning left, FBI agents
say they recovered from the glove box a small plastic baggie inside an
electrical tape container. In it were three OxyContin pills.

More bombshells

Nobody knows where the story's headed next. Locals are still in shock. The
Jefferson Parish district attorney's office is described as "bleak," with
prosecutors privately questioning the value of their jobs in an environment
where a judge is accused of planting evidence.

Defense lawyers have discussed revisiting clients' cases tried in
Bodenheimer's court. There's talk of a movement for judicial appointments,
or at least a screening process, though Margaret Baird, chairwoman of
Citizens Against New Taxes, in Jefferson Parish, echoes a consensus: "A
screening process probably would have passed him. No one would have
suspected he could have been this kind of lowlife."

More bombshells are expected. Recently, the Jefferson Parish president
admitted he met in Bodenheimer's chambers to discuss leniency for his
brother-in-law, convicted in the judge's court on sex charges.

"It'll take time to truly unfold and quite some time before the public has
a full appreciation of what's going on," said the Crime Commission's
Goyeneche, a former Orleans Parish assistant district attorney with
Bodenheimer.

For now, the most frequently asked question in New Orleans is: Why?

Bodenheimer was known while a prosecutor as almost anti-materialistic, but
some observers suspect a crisis brought on by new pressures: He once said
the marina was nearly bankrupt and he still faces a civil lawsuit in the
teen's death.

Others say his rough edges could run deeper than anybody suspected, that he
felt more at ease around bayou wharf rats than with the smoothies at the
courthouse.

"Looking back now, he came across as a guy who wasn't very polished," said
Crouere, the New Orleans radio talk show host. "He looked tough. But people
brushed it off as him being hardened by his years as a prosecutor. But
maybe that's the type of person he was."

There's another theory. If he did do what he's accused of, Bodenheimer
might merely be an exaggerated product of the same system his arrest could
reform.

"It's called 'the New Orleans way,' " said Gregory Bachaud, a Gretna
defense lawyer who moved to Louisiana three years ago from Washington state.

"One of the first people I met here told me, 'The No. 1 rule in New
Orleans: There are no rules.' Bodenheimer was probably a proper jurist when
it came to laws of significance. But there are rules here separate from the
rest of the world, and people here hold on to that tradition dearly.

"Now I see how a lot of people operate," he said. "It's the New Orleans way."