https://thecurrentla.com/2025/haynes-guilty-on-all-counts-in-federal-bribery-trial/

Gary Haynes, an assistant district attorney, was convicted in federal court Thursday on all counts connected to a bribery scheme he orchestrated while running the 15th Judicial District’s pretrial diversion program.

Haynes was indicted in September by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and obstruction of justice. The jury deliberated for less than two hours.

Testimony and evidence, including recordings of wiretaps, established that Haynes, 67, conspired with Dusty Guidry, a contract employee of the DA’s office, along with program vendor Leonard Franques and others to solicit bribes, kickbacks and gifts, while working as a state prosecutor. Guidry and Haynes conspired to direct those arrested for crimes, some of whom did not qualify (the program is intended for nonviolent first offenders as an offramp to prosecution), into the pretrial diversion program so they could take courses offered by Franques. The men agreed to split the money defendants paid, mostly to take a variety of cognitive behavioral therapy courses.

Guidry and Franques pleaded guilty; only Guidry took the stand for the prosecution but Franques played a prominent role throughout due to audio and video recordings played for the jury.

Todd Clemons, Haynes’ attorney, tried to drive home the fact that Haynes never got any money from the scheme and claimed his client was taken for a ride by Guidry to the tune of $219,000, money Clemons said was an investment in Franques’ “legitimate” companies. In January and February of 2022 Haynes received two $10,000 checks from one of Franques’ companies but said on recordings played for the jury that he was afraid to cash or deposit them. Haynes had been tipped off by a local lawyer that he was under federal investigation, he said in the recordings, and had come to believe there was more to Dusty Guidry’s December 2021 felony drug arrest than met the eye. He was right.

In his closing, Clemons sought to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of District Attorney Don Landry, Guidry and the vendors. Landry pushed hard for an expansion of the diversion program to bring money into the office. Clemons pounded Landry’s decision to hire Guidry and another vendor, Joe Prejean. Prejean pleaded guilty but was not called to testify.

“Mr. Landry put two foxes in the henhouse,” Clemons told jurors in closing arguments. Testimony in the trial, including Landry’s own, revealed that the district attorney became aware of complaints about both Guidry and Prejean soliciting kickbacks — from vendors and at times tens of thousands directly from those arrested for crimes — and failed to take steps to stop them.

The program was expensive and often not accessible to those who could not afford it. Arrestees who had a lot of money were directed to Franques’ more expensive cognitive behavioral therapy courses.

Landry admitted that he asked Haynes to look into complaints about Prejean but never followed up with his assistant prosecutor. And Landry said in court he never talked directly to Prejean. “I expected Gary Haynes to [handle] that,” Landry testified.

Landry acknowledged that Prejean was brought on as a vendor because he is a popular figure in the Black community who assisted him in engaging Black voters. “I like to get all the votes I can in the community,” Landry said.

After Guidry’s arrest on felony drug charges in December 2021, Landry only pretended to distance himself from Guidry. It was unknown until the trial that the arrest was orchestrated by the feds as part of the investigation, dubbed “Operation Cajun Hustle.”

Landry told employees that Guidry was still available if they needed him after his arrest and was still a “part of [the] office and a consultant,” according to a hand-written note by one of the employees in the pretrial diversion program. “We can call him with any questions,” the employee wrote.

And by March, Guidry was back in full action. Like nothing ever happened.

“He found out the foxes were foxes and left them in the henhouse,” Clemons told jurors.

As the jury saw it, there was yet another fox Landry hired — Gary Haynes. Landry was repeatedly warned, even by some of his supporters, to distance himself from Haynes as the two campaigned together in 2019 and 2020 because of Haynes’ connection to an earlier bribery scandal. But Haynes worked tirelessly to get Landry elected in 2020, and Landry repaid him by immediately hiring him and putting him in charge of a program ripe for corruption. Landry failed to put safeguards in place or failed to exercise any oversight.

Throughout the investigation and criminal case against Haynes, Landry kept him on leave from the office without pay and kept his office reserved for him for months.

Landry testified that he plans to run for re-election next year. He will have at least one opponent, he acknowledged in court testimony. That opponent is District Judge Kristian Earles, who spent several days in the courtroom observing the case. Earles tendered his resignation from the bench, effective Nov. 30.

Haynes’ conviction comes more than two years after federal authorities raided the DA’s Downtown offices, and only after his co-conspirators struck plea deals and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. The trial started Sept. 8.

That raid came a decade after another bribery scandal rocked the district attorney’s office, costing DA Mike Harson his re-election bid in 2014. That scandal sent Barna Haynes, who is married to Gary Haynes, to federal prison for 18 months. Gary Haynes was investigated at the time but not charged. Landry was an ADA under Harson and acutely aware of the expungement kickback investigation and the multiple 2015 convictions that arose from the scandal.

In recordings from the current trial, Haynes implicated Harson in the bribery scheme that ensnared his wife.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Nickel brought the government’s case to a close with a visual presentation that organized the evidence and illustrated how each piece supported the individual criminal charges. He also replayed wiretap recordings and separate video and audio recordings made with Franques’ consent. The presentation included several references to calls in which Haynes, whom Guidry calls “Big G,” repeatedly told his co-conspirators to stay off the phone and delete their text messages. “We don’t talk about this sh*t on the phone,” Haynes said.

Franques and his wife Michelle agreed to cooperate in early December 2021 after the FBI searched their home and office. Leonard was not called to testify, and Michelle invoked her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.

One of the main witnesses for the prosecution was Guidry, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Walker, who delivered Thursday’s rebuttal, told the jury they did not need to believe Guidry’s testimony to convict Haynes.

The prosecutor said he agreed with the defense attorney that Guidry, who, like the others who pleaded guilty has yet to be sentenced, is a criminal. Guidry admitted to bribes outside of the $800,000 to which he pled, saying he accepted kickbacks when he worked for 19th Judicial District Attorney Hillar Moore. Guidry was a full-time employee in the 19th JDC when Landry hired him as a consultant. Guidry worked for Moore for more than two decades.

“If Dusty Guidry was the lynchpin of this case, y’all wouldn’t be sitting here,” Walker said.

Instead, Walker urged them to rely on the evidence they saw and heard, much of which was presented while FBI special agent Doug Herman, who led the investigation, was on the stand. The recordings proved that Haynes knew he was buying into a fraudulent scheme, opened a bank account to deposit the money and took steps to conceal his actions, agreeing on a number of occasions to accept a truck from Franques. He wanted the “rocky ridge” package, which brought the value up to about $80,000 (he never got the truck).

“Safer to do a truck rather than cash,” Haynes said, while acknowledging the illegality of the transaction.

He even tried to figure out what to tell his accountant about the funds he would be depositing, suggesting he would tell the accountant he had loaned a friend money and the friend was paying it back with interest.

“We convicted him with those recordings,” Walker said.

Haynes faces up to six decades in prison and as much as $1.5 million in fines. He is scheduled for sentencing Dec. 17.

Leaving the courtroom, Haynes delivered a polite “no thanks” when asked if had anything to say.