Matt Lakin

The Daily Advertiser

Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope wants his perjury and malfeasance convictions thrown out because he doesn't understand how email works and didn't read his legal bills before paying them, his attorneys say.

That's the argument made in a motion for acquittal filed earlier this month in 15th Judicial District Court, where Pope faces sentencing April 3.

Pope's lawyers argue the case against him, which led to a guilty verdict last year on four felonies — perjury and three counts of malfeasance — amounted to prosecutors and the press picking on him for practicing his free-speech rights as a U.S. citizen when he called a news conference in October 2015 to blast a candidate for parish sheriff. That candidate, Mark Garber, ran against Pope's longtime friend Chad Leger and won.

"Never during the press conference did Marshal Pope urge voters to vote for or against any candidate," attorneys Brett Grayson and John McLindon wrote. "It appears that this prosecution and the civil litigation that preceded it both constituted retaliation for Marshal Pope's exercise of his freedom of expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. ... There is no evidence of specific intent (by Pope) to violate a duty (as marshal)."

A Lafayette Parish jury found Pope lied under oath when he denied in a deposition as part of a public-records case that he approved a campaign-related mass email distribution from his official address and that he used public money to pay for personal legal work. That work included attorneys trying to unseal Garber's divorce records, representing Pope's employees when they gave sworn statements to prosecutors investigating the marshal, and filing court papers on Pope's behalf when his refusal to comply with the public-records lawsuit led to a criminal contempt case.

The initial news conference prompted a public-records request from the Independent news outlet, now defunct. Pope denied the request, and the Independent sued. Pope insisted under oath that he called the news conference to discuss illegal immigration, not politics, and that "I didn't email (an announcement of the news conference) through my email."

Pope didn't testify at trial, but jurors watched his videotaped deposition.

Pope's lawyers say he just didn't understand how mass email software, which an employee used to send the announcement under Pope's name and email address, works. Attorneys for the Independent had gone off-topic at that point and turned the deposition into an unfair fishing expedition, Pope's lawyers say.

"The questions being asked ... were not material," Grayson and McLindon wrote.

The Independent ultimately won the public-records case, but Pope refused to turn over all the records requested. A judge held him in contempt.

As for the misused funds, Pope didn't read the legal invoices and thought they were for the public-records case, the attorneys wrote.

Prosecutors hadn't filed a response to the motion as of Monday afternoon.

Pope, elected marshal in December 2014, remains suspended without pay as he appeals his convictions. He still faces 17 unrelated charges of malfeasance over more than $84,000 in fees and garnishments that prosecutors say Pope illegally kept, even after an assistant state attorney general advised that money belonged to the marshal's office and not to him.