By Nick Birdsong
NYT Institute

Lynell Desdunes Sr. does his job from behind a desk filled with law books. As the law clerk in section A of the Orleans Parish Criminal Court, under Judge Charles L. Elloie, he handles fines and fees and helps ex-offenders on probation complete their community service. Every day, Desdunes sees dozens of defendants have their day in court.

He understands exactly what they are going through. Desdunes (pronounced DEZ-dunes) served eight years in prison.

In 1976, he bought a 1966 Cadillac from a local used car lot for $600. Turns out, the car was stolen. Desdunes spent his 18th birthday behind bars after being convicted of possession of a stolen automobile. That’s where he met the love of his life, the law.

“I always tell people,” Desdunes said. “I got bit by the legal bug when I was 18 and I’ve been sick ever since.”

His daily grind, doing research, dealing with probationers and writing judgments for the court is often interrupted by the intermittent in and out of visitors.

A young woman walked in.

Dressed in a purple blouse with matching shoes and a pair of creased jeans, she opened her mouth, revealing two gold teeth. She said she’d worked in his office two years ago. She knew Christina, one of his two daughters, and she hoped to get her record expunged. In Louisiana, any crime that isn’t prosecuted can be removed from a person’s record after a successful probation, which includes fines and fees.

Desdunes quickly made the transition from compassionate to complete professional, telling her the fee was $325.

“Thank you for your time,” she said as she headed out the door. She didn’t have the money.

Since his release from prison in 1994, Desdunes has given much of his time to ensuring that kids never get a record in the first place. He works on the Pupil Project, sponsored by Elloie, a child of the housing projects. The program allows elementary, middle and high school aged kids to visit section “A” and see where bad decisions could lead them one day.

“We’ve taken kids to Angola (state prison) and showed them how the legal system works,” Desdunes said. “No other court is doing that.”

A program like Pupil Project could have helped two of the sons of Bernadette Tyler. She was in Desdunes’ office May 19 so he could sign off on her four community service hours for the day.

She is a working mother of eight. But there she was just known as No. 37. One of her sons is already in the ground and another is facing 10 years in prison for possession of two pieces of rock cocaine. She’s done time herself.

Barely holding back tears, Tyler told how the police have served her community. She said in her neighborhood, children run at the mere sight of a police car. She struggled to keep her composure, as she told Desdunes that no killer had been found for her son who was murdered in cold blood, in broad daylight.

“I was incarcerated at the time my child was buried,” she said. “And the State of Louisiana didn’t even let me out for the funeral.”

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Growing up down the street from the Lafitte Housing Projects in New Orleans, Desdunes probably would have been one of what he calls the “big pants boys,” kids that like to hang out and get involved in whatever they can. As a teenager, he began to experiment with marijuana, which led to other drugs. By age 14, he was caught up in a cycle of petty crime.

“Once you go to jail two or three times, you get kind of desensitized,” said Desdunes looking back on his years as a juvenile delinquent. “Sometimes, the only thing that deters a child from committing crimes is the fear of going to jail.”

Jail is where he initially began to read law books. When he was inside for possession of the stolen car, a New Orleans-based jailhouse lawyer would scour the prisons passing out legal reading material to inmates, looking for appeals cases. Inside them, Desdunes found a way out.

In his initial trial the prosecution had listed the price of the car at $6,000. That was the price the owner of the car paid for it in nine years before, when it was brand new. Desdunes had paid $600. He filed a handwritten motion for a new trial, succeeded, and was found not guilty on the grounds the district attorney had never introduced the used value of the car.

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Friday is always the busiest day in section A. It’s drug court day. The courtroom was filled nearly to capacity with college-aged black men, all of whom were to appear before Elloie.

But there wasn’t a suit in sight.

Dressed mostly in tall white cotton t-shirts, baggy Marithe Francois Girbaud jeans and classic Reebok sneakers, the men were casual to a T. One of the court’s officers had to warn one man not to speak openly about his trial.

One by one, the men walked up and updated Elloie on their progress in the free world. Then they patiently waited to be given another court date or were sent to jail.

Elloie praised some of the men and chastised others, as if they were his own children.

“Instead of those long shirts, get you a shorter shirt,” said Elloie shouting down from his seat to one young man wearing a multicolored Rocawear shirt. “And when you get that shirt, get you some nice pants and tuck that shirt in your pants.”

It’s that fatherly approach to administering justice, tempered with compassion that has led the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans to criticize Elloie for being too lenient on defendants.

Richard Brown, MCC research director, said judges like Elloie “would say people deserve a break or the DAs present a lousy case.”

Elloie certainly believed Desdunes deserved a break. Though law clerks were traditionally at least third-year law school students, Elloie hired Desdunes in 1996, after hearing of his work on behalf of other prisoners.

“I initially got some flack” for hiring Desdunes, Elloie said. “But not from judges or people in the courts, from ignorant people like the crime commission.”

In the late ‘90s, the state created new job requirements for law clerks, allowing them to become certified by passing an approved test. In 1999, Desdunes drove to Houston to take the National Association of Legal Assistants 15-hour exam. He passed 11 of 12 subjects, without studying.

Back in the office, Desdunes was operating business as usual, his way. A man, fresh out of jail the day before with twists in his hair, handed Desdunes a Camel cigarette and told him his situation. The court had requested he pay his fees the same day he came home.

“I been in jail the whole time,” said the man, as he tied a camouflage bandanna around his wrist. “They told me I had to pay today or have another warrant out.”

Desdunes gave the man advice on how he can stay free.

“Everybody has money problems man. Many people will say, ‘Well I didn’t have the money so I didn’t come back,’ ” said Desdunes, showing the man a calendar. “Nobody is going to jail because they are broke. They are going to jail because they don’t come back.”

Papers in hand, the man exited to continue his life on the outside.

“The system is being supported by the poorest people in the community,” Desdunes said. “If you are not compassionate, that’s not a fair system. Crime pays, just not for the criminal.”

He leaned his portly frame over the fragile wooden desk, raising the cigarette to his dark lips, inhaling the smoke and exhaling the rest of his story.

Desdunes dropped out of high school during his senior year and earned his GED at night school. He eventually wound up running a mechanic shop with his best friend, repairing old cars for a used car company, Regency Motors.

He said he began using cocaine to keep up with the culture of ghetto life at the time. Desdunes was quite frank in stating what he spent his money on in those days: “To buy drugs,” he said. But when he cashed the checks from Regency, he ran afoul of a law that defines forgery as creating a false document and uttering as the act of passing it on to someone as if it were authentic.

“I deposited 20 checks from them with no problem,” Desdunes said. But “every check I cashed at a corner grocery store I was catching charges for forgery and uttering. Regency Motors was paying us with bad checks.” He said he didn’t know they were bad.

That was February 1987. He can still remember it all, down to item numbers of police reports, the arresting officer’s name and the name on the checks that landed him in prison. It was the biggest forgery case in Orleans Parish history.

Desdunes defended himself in a highly publicized three-day trial that included 50 witnesses, 40 handwriting samples and 37 police reports. He lost.

At 29, he was sentenced to 25 years.

Instead of letting the time do him, Desdunes sharpened his legal mind and built his reputation in the law community.

“While other cats were in the gym trying to be the next Mike Tyson or the basketball court trying to be the prison Michael Jordan,” Desdunes said. “I was in the law library.”

He became the editor in chief of Straight Low, the inmate-run magazine at Dixon Correctional Institution in Jackson, La. Desdunes said he stopped counting how many inmates he helped to free through the appeals process.

But his notoriety and know-how couldn’t help him. His appeals to revisit his sentences failed.

“I never got approved on one petition or appeal that I wrote for myself,” Desdunes said. “I was making gold for everyone else and lemon juice for myself.”

Eventually, a friend spoke on Desdunes’ behalf to the judge that originally sentenced him. The court decided that his sentence was excessive and that he’d served enough time.

On April 14, 1994, he was resentenced to five years and was released the next day.

“I never felt as though I was not going to get out,” said Desdunes looking back on his days as an inmate. “I never felt I was going to do 25 years.”

But Desdunes didn’t come out unscathed. He still has a scar on his right arm, from the 10 stitches he got when he attempted to break up a fight. And the 47-year-old will never be able to make up for lost time.

“My daughter was 7 when I went in, she was 15 when I got out,” he said.

He worked as a paralegal for a while before a mutual friend introduced him to Elloie, who had his own private practice at the time.

When Elloie was elected judge in 1996, he hired Desdunes as his law clerk, the same day, with no hesitation.

“People see me at my job working in the criminal justice system,” Desdunes said. “They don’t even know I was a criminal my whole young life.”

He’s working on the right side of the law now. Despite his nearly 30 years of studying law, he’ll never get a law degree, doesn’t want one.

“I have a problem with having someone’s fate in my hand,” he said. “What if I lose? That person’s going up the river. I have more fun developing change in the law.”