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Missouri man sues Louisiana DA over $18,000 fee to access records of son’s death • Missouri Independent [1]

['Greg Larose', 'More From Author', '- January']

Date: 2024-01-26

A Missouri man investigating his son’s death filed a lawsuit this week against a Louisiana district attorney who’s demanding more than $18,000 for copies of investigation records related to the case.

Since his son’s death nearly seven years ago, Bob Arthur has pursued justice with little to no help from police or prosecutors.

He has insisted there was foul play ever since his 40-year-old son, Shawn Arthur, was found dead at his Metairie, La., apartment in February 2017. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office concluded Shawn’s death was accidental, the result of drinking too much alcohol. The coroner’s office would later revise the cause as “undetermined,” but investigators refused to budge on treating the fatal incident as a crime.

Their inaction prompted Arthur, a retired insurance investigator who lives near Kansas City, to launch his own probe into what led to his son’s death. With the help of a private detective and a journalist, Arthur started with a fingerprint found on a bottle of liquor found in Shawn’s bathroom. Together they traced the paths of the woman who police said met Shawn at his home the night he died and the man who brought her to the apartment.

Federal prosecutors built a case around Arthur’s findings, which included a tape-recorded jailhouse interview in Georgia that investigative reporter David Lohr with Huffington Post obtained with Dominique Berry. In the recording, Berry admitted she drugged Shawn’s drink that night in his apartment. She denied knowing that he died.

Berry and Randy Schenck had been arrested in Cobb County, Georgia, in September 2017. Police said they used an online dating ad to meet a man who woke up the next morning to report his wallet, phone and car missing.

“That was their whole modus operandi,” Arthur told WDSU-TV in 2020. “…They would lure their victim in, they would drug their victim, unbeknownst to the person. Then they would get the person to drink, and then they would rob them.”

Shawn’s wallet, television and cellphone were taken from his apartment, and security video shows two men leaving complex in a truck resembling Shawn’s, according to a police report.

Lohr and Arthur discovered on their own that Berry and Schenck used a similar scheme elsewhere. Court records say they lured at least 11 men across seven states, incapacitating their victims and then robbing them. Lohr was able to reach some of their alleged victims.

“They’d say the last thing they would remember (Berry) massaging them and they were out,” Lohr said.

Berry and Schenck were indicted in federal court in New Orleans, with details of Shawn’s death prominent in the prosecution’s case. Schenck was found guilty of human trafficking and identity theft in 2019, and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Berry, claiming she was a trafficking victim, testified against Schenck and was given a 45-month sentence later that year.

Despite the federal convictions, Arthur has been unable to convince Jefferson Parish DA Paul Connick to pursue a homicide case against Schenck or Berry or turn the matter over to a grand jury. The father has blasted the work of sheriff’s investigators, who he says fumbled their work from the very start.

“Let the citizens of Jefferson Parish use their common sense and look at the facts and make up their mind if murder charges should or should not be filed,” Arthur told WWL-TV’s David Hammer last February. “I mean, I can live with that.”

When asked about the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Jefferson Parish district attorney provided the following statement:

“The DA’s Office has not been formally served with the lawsuit, but it is aware that one was filed. With that, the office does not comment on pending litigation. The office follows Louisiana’s public records law when responding to the public’s requests for documents that are in its custody. The law additionally allows the office to set reasonable fees for providing these documents.

“The fee schedule, which includes provisions set forth in state law for indigency among Louisiana residents, is published on the District Attorney’s Office website: https://www.jpda.us/public-records/.”

Arthur said his persistence in seeking justice for Shawn’s death has embarrassed the sheriff’s office, which has consistently stood by how the investigation was handled.

After being told the DA’s office would not pursue charges against Berry or Schenck, he requested all documents, emails, messages, phone logs, photos, reports and conversations related to Shawn’s death investigation. The agency responded that it had more than 37,000 pages of records that would cost Arthur $18,535 to receive on paper or $5,560 in a digital format.

“The lack of transparency and excessive, unjustified pricing of public records of a closed case from the DA’s office has made a difficult situation even harder. No family should have to fight this hard for transparency and justice, especially while grieving the loss of a family member,” Arthur said in a statement from the Tulane First Amendment Clinic, which filed a lawsuit on his behalf in Jefferson Parish last week.

The petition asks the court to compel the DA’s office to provide the records free or at a reasonable fee. It also calls for the parish prosecutor to pay for Arthur’s legal expenses and any penalties, and it seeks a ruling on whether the office’s policy violates state public records law.

“These charges are egregious because the Public Records Act is clear that public bodies cannot charge for labor in providing public documents to taxpayers,” Tulane Clinic attorney Melia Cerrato said. “Making public records accessible is a core function of government offices. Low-cost or reasonable fees promote transparency and ensure equal access to information, empowering individuals to hold elected officials accountable.”

This story was originally published by the Louisiana Illuminator, a States Newsroom affiliate.

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