A person charged with sexual assault, who would not normally qualify for pretrial intervention, allegedly was admitted into the program by former Lafayette Assistant District Attorney Gary Haynes as part of a bribery and kickback scheme.
That detail came to light Thursday when a federal indictment of Haynes by a grand jury on Wednesday was made public.
Haynes, 66, of Lafayette, is charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, using his cellphone in furtherance of bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering and obstruction of justice. He faces up to 65 years in prison if convicted of all charges.
"Gary is relieved that he can finally commence the process of clearing his good name," Todd Clemons, a Lake Charles attorney who represents Haynes, said in a written statement Thursday. "He has lived under the cloud, and the enormous stress, of overtly being investigated by our federal government for well over two years."
Clemons says the indictment "tells a false story" created by men "pressured into cooperating with the Department of Justice."
According to the indictment, Haynes and Dusty Guidry, of Youngsville, both of whom worked in the pretrial intervention program in the 15th Judicial District Attorney's Office, conspired to solicit kickbacks and bribes from businessman Leonard Franques, who co-owned and/or operated companies that provided online and in-person services like behavior therapy for defendants in the pretrial program.
Defendants who are eligible for the program normally pay for services and programs and, upon completion, have the charges removed from their record.
Haynes and Guidry, the indictment alleges, required program participants to use the services of Franques' companies in exchange for money and they approved more participants in the pretrial program to increase Franques' proceeds.
Franques, in exchange, allegedly agreed to split some of the proceeds and offer other gifts to Haynes and Guidry, the indictment states.
In a conversation around Oct. 16, 2021, the indictment alleges, Guidry told Haynes that Franques planned to obtain an $81,000 truck to give to Haynes.
Haynes, allegedly in anticipation of the kickbacks and to hide the ill-gotten money, in May 2021 reactivated a company registered in his name, M.D. at Law LLC. A month later, he opened a bank account in that company's name and deposited $15,000, the indictment notes.
Guidry and Franques have pleaded guilty and are scheduled for sentencing Oct. 24.
In November 2021, Haynes allegedly authorized the enrollment into the pretrial program of someone charged with sexual assault. A sexual assault defendant normally would not be eligible for the program.
Previous reports by The Advocate revealed that federal authorities secured two wiretap orders in the case in August 2021. Over a four-month period, they listened in on more than 6,000 calls, roughly 1,500 of which were described as "incriminating." One such call, in which Guidry discussed taking a $12,500 kickback from a vendor providing services to the diversion program, was described in Guidry's March 2023 guilty plea.
According to the Haynes indictment, he and Guidry around Nov. 18, 2021, discussed how to handle the case of a defendant recently charged by the District Attorney's Office with their third count of operating while under the influence. The defendant already was in the pretrial intervention program from a previous OWI arrest.
In that conversation, Guidry said, "there's some meat on the bone" if Haynes could keep the offender in the program, the indictment alleges.
Haynes allegedly told Franques in a Jan. 4, 2022, conversation not to tell District Attorney Don Landry that Franques was paying Guidry for referrals to the pretrial program.
In the same conversation, the indictment states, Franques told Haynes he had paid Guidry $40,000 in the past month. Haynes allegedly responded that Guidry was supposed to split the money with him.
Haynes, Guidry and Franques allegedly met in person around Jan. 12, 2022, to discuss how to increase profits to Franques' companies, the indictment states, and how to hide Haynes' role in directing more pretrial participants to Franques' companies. The options discussed included Franques possibly buying a truck for Haynes or sending checks to M.D. at Law LLC, Haynes' business.
Haynes is charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly on or about Feb. 3, 2022, persuading someone to "alter, destroy, mutilate and conceal a record, document or other object with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding," the indictment states.
Details of what was altered or destroyed were not revealed in the indictment.
Haynes is scheduled for an appearance and arraignment at 10 a.m. Oct. 3 in federal court in Lafayette.
Under former District Attorney Mike Harson, the office was rocked by another bribery scheme from 2008-12 that sent two people to federal prison, including Haynes' then-wife Barna Haynes, who was Harson's secretary.