A Louisiana judge is reportedly facing consequences for hampering important investigations into serious offenses, including child porn, child abuse, domestic violence, and others.
The state’s Judiciary Commission recommended that St. John the Baptist Parish Judge Vercell Fiffie be suspended for six months without pay because he “repeatedly refused to sign search warrants,” which slowed down critical investigations into criminal activity, according to NOLA.com.
Fiffie was elected to the bench in 2021, and complaints started rolling into the Judiciary Commission a few months later, from both fellow judges and law enforcement officials who said he was unreceptive to feedback.
The Judiciary Commission found he engaged in willful misconduct, demonstrated fundamental misunderstanding of the law, failed to act in a timely manner and more. They recommended that three months of Fiffie’s suspension be deferred, meaning he’d only serve three months of the unpaid suspension. But they also said he should serve two years of probation and reimburse more than $9,000 in costs for the commission’s investigation and hearings.
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Fiffie rejected 27% of warrants presented to him in 2021 — orders of magnitude higher than the other two judges on the bench with him in Edgard. Those judges rejected just .24% and 2.4% of warrants that year, according to Judiciary Commission filings.
Several other judges have filed complaints against Fiffie for recalling bench warrants they had issued. The commission indicated that the judge did not accept responsibility for his actions during the investigation.
Fiffie reportedly refused to sign search warrants on several occasions, telling officers seeking the warrants to first obtain the suspect’s consent before conducting a search. However, if a suspect consents to a search, no warrant is typically needed in the first place. The purpose of obtaining the warrant is to prevent the suspect from destroying critical evidence.
There were several instances in which Fiffie’s refusal to sign search warrants hampered investigations, according to NOLA.com.
For example, in 2022, authorities asked Fiffie to sign five warrants in a case involving carnal knowledge of a juvenile and child porn.
Fiffie first asked them to get consent before searching the adult’s phone and email. Authorities pushed back, fearing that asking for consent would jeopardize the investigation, according to commission filings.
Fiffie eventually signed one warrant, but rejected the remaining four. Another judge eventually approved them. During the delay, the juvenile victim in the case stopped cooperating, while the alleged suspect left town on military assignment, according to court documents.
In another case, parents worried that their nonverbal 1-year-old was being abused at day care after emergency room physicians noted a fractured femur. As law enforcement tried to investigate, Fiffie agreed to issue a warrant for emergency room records, but not records from an orthopedic specialist who treated the broken bone. He said “the charges appear unsupported by the facts,” according to court records. That matter is still under investigation.
Fiffie’s delay in signing an arrest warrant in another case led to an entire neighborhood being locked down and evacuated. Police were on the scene of a domestic violence incident with an armed suspect who had been accused of aggravated assault, and sought a warrant to enter the building and arrest the suspect.
But Fiffie told them to first contact the property owner.
Instead, police contacted Lewis, who was on vacation and off duty but reached out to Fiffie. The neighborhood was put on lockdown until Fiffie agreed to sign the warrant two hours later, according to court filings.
Fiffie also rejected a warrant from law enforcement after a juvenile suspect brought a gun to school and threatened to shoot it up, according to commission filings.
Police said Fiffie debated over whether the student was a threat and instructed them to change their charge to “menacing,” a misdemeanor.
The commission can recommend disciplinary action against judges to the state Supreme Court, which makes the final decision on whether to follow through on the punishment.
During the hearing, St. John Parish Sheriff Mike Tregre characterized Fiffie’s practices as “abnormal.”
“It’s not something I’ve seen before in St. John at all, ever,” he said.
Making sure officers go through proper due process before executing a search warrant is an admirable objective. Law enforcement must have some restraints on their activity when it involves these matters.
However, if the commission’s findings are accurate, Fiffie took this way too far. His actions could have led to perpetrators getting away with their crimes and committing future offenses. Perhaps if the state Supreme Court doesn’t take action, voters will address the matter at the ballot box.
