[UPDATE: Haynes' co-conspirators are getting probation. Follow news from the U.S. attorney's office about the sentences here.]
Barna Haynes, the longtime secretary to former Lafayette District Attorney Mike Harson, was sentenced to a year and a half in federal prison Friday for her role in the pay-for-plea DWI sentencing scandal, according to The Advocate. The FBI raid that uncovered the scheme rocked the DA’s office and led to the guilty pleas of a former assistant prosecutor and others in the office and, ultimately, to Harson being thrown out of office by voters last fall.
The Independent was not immediately able to obtain information on the sentences of her co-conspirators.
Sentencing for Robert Williamson, a Lafayette private investigator who was the centerpiece of the scheme in which defendants, most of them OWI offenders, paid bribes in exchange for favorable outcomes, is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 25.
While Harson was not implicated in the scheme, federal prosecutors have faulted his “lack of oversight and safeguards” in allowing the chicanery to happen under his watch.