A perjury charge filed against former City Marshal Brian Pope's lawyer has been dismissed, court records show.
A motion to dismiss the charge against Charles Middleton was filed by the Attorney General's Office and signed by a state district judge last week, court records show. The record shows that the AG took over the case after the local District Attorney's Office was removed from the case.
Middleton told us last fall that he expected the dismissal. When we asked the AG's office why the case was dismissed, they told KATC that "upon review of the facts and the evidence, the State determined we could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt."
We reached out to Middleton, who provided us with a statement regarding the dismissal. You can read the entire statement by scrolling down, but in it, Middleton states that having a "bogus" charge lingering for six years "was most embarrassing and hurtful to me and my reputation."
"Now that this hellacious life experience has finally ended, I will set out to rebuild my reputation and law practice wrongly and egregiously taken from me and my family," Middleton stated. "Lastly, wrongs must be righted in these type of scenarios and I am taking steps to do so now. It’s sad that my political enemies tried so hard to take me out and it backfired and now like Paul Harvey always said after break….”Now, the rest of the story.”
Last year, court records show, Middleton's attorney, Kirk Piccone, filed a motion to recuse the District Attorney's Office from the case, which was granted in May 2021. Piccone based that argument on the fact that the District Attorney at the time, Keith Stutes, as well as the prosecutor in Middleton's case, Alan Haney, both questioned Middleton during the grand jury hearing in which the alleged perjury took place. That makes them material witnesses - and they can't be the prosecutor and the witness. The court agreed, and assigned the case to the Attorney General's Office.
Middleton was former Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope's attorney at one time, and was indicted in December 2016 on one count of perjury, accused of lying while testifying before a grand jury in August 2016.
Prosecutors accused Middleton of lying about the identity of someone that is referred to only as "Redmond" in legal documents for which he billed the city marshal's office while working for Pope. This all started in 2015, when Pope held a press conference aimed at Sheriff Mark Garber, who then was running for the seat. The Independent, a local weekly newspaper, and its reporter, Christiaan Mader, made public records requests about it and sued Pope after, the paper alleges, he tried to hide public documents. To see the timeline and read the background, click here.
Mader now is founder and executive editor of The Current. To read some of his reporting on this case, click here.
Pope was removed from the City Marshal position after he was indicted several times and convicted in one of those cases. The criminal prosecution against him ended in June 2021 after he entered into a plea deal with the new District Attorney in Lafayette, Don Landry.
Under the terms of the deal, Pope pleaded no contest to one count of malfeasance in office. In exchange, the remainder of the charges against him have been dropped. He'll serve three years of probation, and must repay $84,742.30 in fees he pocketed, which prosecutors alleged he shouldn't have taken. He also has to pay $435.00 in court costs, records show.
The deal executed in June 2021 dropped 16 additional counts of malfeasance in office, and brought to a close a years-long prosecution of Pope, which included multiple indictments, appeals and hearings.
In March 2021, Pope was released from prison after serving part of his one-year sentence that was handed down after a judge convicted him of felony malfeasance charges in 2018. He was free on bail while he appealed that conviction; once he exhausted his appeals he was sent to jail.
The two remaining indictments against him were disposed of via the plea deal; one accused him of pocketing marshal fines that should have been used on the office's operations, and another accused him of using marshal funds to pay for two conference trips, then turning in the receipts for reimbursement from the city and pocketing that money.
Here's the full text of Middleton's statement:
