Seven people including Lafayette District Court Judge Jules Edwards will be inducted July 12 into the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame.
Edwards
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Seven people, including West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Mike Cazes and former judge and U.S. Attorney L.J. Hymel, will be inducted July 12 into the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame.
Ceremonies will be held at the Angola prison museum and in Baton Rouge.
The induction events begin with a 1:30 p.m. reception for the honorees and the public at the Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum at the gates to the prison. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will follow at 2 p.m. to reveal the exhibit cases that illustrate the lives and accomplishments of the inductees.
A banquet and formal induction program will be held at 5 p.m. at Boudreax's in Baton Rouge.
The museum foundation also will honor Nadine Tanner, the museum's first director, and present the Louisiana Re-Entry Service Award to Elain Ellerbe and, posthumously, to her husband, Michael Ellerbe, who died last month.
Cazes began working for the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office in 1974 and took office as sheriff in 2004. He is serving his third term.
Hymel, who began practicing law in 1969, has served as a 19th Judicial District judge, director of the criminal division of the state Attorney General's Office and U.S. attorney for the federal Middle District of Louisiana. He now has a private legal practice.
Other inductees are:
- Baton Rouge lawyer Keith Nordyke, who has had a long career as class counsel on prison condition litigation and parole and pardon issues, including serving as the attorney for Louisiana inmates in the 1971 prison reform lawsuit that was responsible for numerous improvements to the Louisiana penal system.
- Lafayette Parish Judge Jules Edwards, a member of the Louisiana Judiciary Commission and a pioneer of the drug court movement.
- Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal, who retired from the State Police in 1984 after serving as a troop commander and head of the agency's narcotics section. He is an expert in forensic photography, GPS tracking and cellphone investigative techniques.
- John DeRosier, a U.S. Marine veteran of Vietnam and district attorney in Calcasieu Parish. He has pushed for stringent sex-offender registration and reporting requirements and helped craft legislation to protect the mentally ill.
- Harry Randow, judge of the 9th Judicial District in Rapides Parish for 16 years. He is president of the Louisiana District Judges Association and chairman of the Louisiana Supreme Court's task force on indigent litigants.