Well it would appear that former New Orleans Mayor Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin has been convicted on charges of some typically unsavory behavior. You see, apparently he accepted bribes, free trips and other gratuities from contractors in exchange for helping them secure millions of dollars in city work while he was in office, including right after Hurricane Katrina. Oh no, tell me it isn’t so. Another corrupt, big city Democrat mayor. And he’s black to boot. So this is obviously nothing more than some racist smear, right? Well maybe not, since the federal jury found Ray guilty of 20 of the 21 counts against him.
Before the verdict, old Ray said to those gathered outside the New Orleans courtroom: "I've been at peace with this for a long time. I'm good." Well I certainly feel better. The Democrat, who left office in 2010 after eight years, was indicted in January 2013 on charges that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and truckloads, literally, of free granite for his family business in exchange for promoting the interests of local businessman Frank Fradella. He also was charged with accepting thousands of dollars in in payoffs from another businessman, Rodney Williams, for his help in securing city contracts.
The charges against Ray included one overarching conspiracy count along with six counts of bribery, nine counts of wire fraud, one count of money laundering conspiracy and four counts of filing false tax returns. He was acquitted of one of the bribery counts. Each charge carries a sentence from 3 to 20 years, but how long he might serve was unclear and will depend on a pre-sentence investigation and various sentencing guidelines. No sentencing date was set. Prosecutors say he took hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes including money, free travel and granite for Stone Age LLC, a family granite business.
They allege the corruption spanned the time before and after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. The charges resulted from a City Hall corruption investigation that had resulted in several convictions or guilty pleas by former Nagin associates by the time trial started on Jan. 27. Fradella and Williams, both awaiting sentencing for their roles in separate bribery schemes alleged in the case, each testified that they bribed Nagin. Ray's former technology chief, Greg Meffert, who also is awaiting sentencing after a plea deal, told jurors he helped another businessman, Mark St. Pierre, bribe Nagin with lavish vacation trips.
Maybe old Ray should see if he can’t get in contact with Eric Holder or, better yet, Barry "Almighty himself. I mean using the current set standards established by the current administration, I’m pretty sure that they could come with something that would point to this whole thing as being all about nothing but race. Poor old Ray, just another victim of what is a racist judicial system. I can hear them all now saying that if Ray was a white guy all this would just be swept under the nearest rug. But because he’s black, well, enough said. Obviously Ray, here, was another one of those folks who thought the rules simply didn’t apply to him.
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