State Supreme Court Justice Jeanette Theriot Knoll collected nearly $ 70,000 in rent from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal while she was a judge on that court.

Knoll had the court, based in Lake Charles, pay her rent over 14 years for an office she owned in Marksville, her home town. The deal ended Dec. 31, 1996, the day before she took office as a Supreme Court justice. The high court doesn't pay rent to its justices.

State law prohibits officials and employees in the executive and legislative branches of government from renting their own property or that of their immediate family to their agencies.

But there is no such specific restriction on Louisiana's judges, and in that vacuum several judges have had their courts rent offices from the judges themselves, their families or their associates.

Over the past five years, six judges in the state's 54 appeal court judgeships, including Knoll, have rented their courts their own property for their use as satellite offices.

Appeal courts also have rented five offices from judges' relatives, four from their campaign contributors, one from former law partners and one from another judge, court records show.

Knoll and several other judges, including Ned Doucet Jr., the chief judge of the 3rd Circuit, said they see nothing wrong with the leases.

Judges on the state's five appeal courts - who are paid $ 97,928 a year - say they need satellite offices near their homes to avoid long daily drives to courthouses in other cities.

Some judges contend they entered the leases only after they couldn't find office space in the small towns where they live. And some of them argue that their leases are cheap and save taxpayers money.

But in response to questions by The Advocate, Doucet said he will stop letting judges collect rent from his court, as Knoll did, "for the very reason you're writing this story. We don't want the public having a perception that we're getting an advantage. "

Appeal court judges in neighboring states do not rent any offices - much less their own - to carry out official duties. In Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas, the state or other governing bodies provide offices for judges.

Not so in Louisiana, where appeal court judges who live away from their courthouses have had almost free rein to set up satellite offices at court expense.

From January 1993 through 1997, the 15 leases with the judges, their relatives or associates cost about $ 370,000, court records show. That does not include payments for utilities, janitorial service, lawn care, pest control, computers, office supplies and furnishings.

Ethics questioned

James Turner, executive director of HALT - Americans for Legal Reform, a non-profit group in Washington, D.C., said letting judges arrange their own leases opens the door to corruption.

"If you have control of public funds, you should not be spending them so that they inure to your own benefit," he said.

"There's a simple way to avoid all that, which is to have somebody else make the arrangements and sign the checks to pay the rent," he said. "Those are the most basic kinds of fiscal controls that government bodies in other states put in place, and Louisiana should not be behind the times like this.”

But Knoll insists there was nothing wrong with her lease. She said office space in public buildings in Marksville was not available in the early 1980s.

"I never requested an increase or demanded certain payments of rent," she said. "For me it was not a money-making thing.”

Knoll collected $ 69,250 in rent from the court over 14 years. She said the rent she charged - starting at $ 350 a month and rising to $ 750 a month - was economical for the 1,332 square-foot office.

Charles Dupuy, a real estate agent and owner of the Dupuy Agency in Marksville, said the town has limited office space, but that offices were available for rent in the early 1980s. A 1,500 square-foot office was available recently for $ 900 a month, Dupuy said.

Once Knoll joined the Supreme Court in New Orleans in January 1997, the 3rd Circuit transferred her office equipment to the control of the Supreme Court. The high court also staffs the Marksville office with a law clerk and secretary, but Knoll no longer collects rent for her use of the office.

That's because, unlike the 3rd Circuit, the Supreme Court pays no rent.

Doucet, the chief judge of the 3rd Circuit since 1995, more than a year before Knoll left for the Supreme Court, said there is one exception to the new ban on judges renting their own property to his court. It is for Judge John Saunders.

Saunders uses a wheelchair, and his office in Ville Platte has wide doorways and other features needed to accommodate him, Doucet said.

Saunders was a state senator until he won election to the appeal court in 1992. He used the same office without billing the state when he was in the Senate, but has collected $ 46,500 in rent from the 3rd Circuit since October 1992.

Other judges and recently retired judges who have rented their courts their own property for their own use are:

Edward Dufresne Jr. of the 5th Circuit in Gretna, whose Esperanza Land Co. has collected $ 500 rent a month since 1995 from the court for an office next to his home on a Luling sugar plantation.

Dufresne said he owns part of Esperanza, but that his four daughters own most of it. The judge, who has served on the appeal court since 1982, said he uses the office about two days a week, saving him the 40-minute drive to the 5th Circuit courthouse.

"I usually use it in the afternoons and at night," he said.

P.J. LaBorde of the 3rd Circuit, who got $ 550 a month to rent an office at his home in Marksville from 1989 until he retired in 1995, according to the court. That netted him $39,600.

Before he bought that property in 1989, he rented it himself and sublet the office to his court. That arrangement lasted 21/2 years and cost the court another $ 16,500.

LaBorde said there was nothing improper about the lease.

Edmond Guidry Jr. of the 3rd Circuit, who collected $ 41,900 in rent for an office he owned and used in St. Martinville from 1977 through 1994, when he retired.

Guidry, now a member of the state Board of Ethics, said the lease was "absolutely" proper.

"It was the cheapest available space in St. Martinville at the time," Guidry said.

Burton Foret of the 3rd Circuit, whose Foret Brothers Investments collected $ 27,500 from the court for renting an office in a building he owned with his brother in Ville Platte from 1988 until he retired in 1992.

He moved his judge's office there from a small office at the local Post Office. No other office space was for rent in Ville Platte, he said.

"I didn't have to make a survey. I knew there was none available," he said.

Other appeal court judges around the state engage in slightly different leases that also would not be allowed for other governmental employees or elected officials - they rent offices from relatives.

Skirting an ethics opinion

Judge Felicia Toney Williams of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal in Shreveport tried to have her court rent a small building in Tallulah from her husband in 1993 for her to use as a satellite office. But the state Committee on Judicial Ethics told her that would be improper.

Then, in May 1996, her husband gave the building to his daughter, the judge's stepdaughter. On that same day, Williams, who lives in Tallulah, signed a lease for her court to rent that building for her, court records show.

The judge requested an ethics review of her first attempt to lease the office, but skipped that step before signing the 1996 lease. Her stepdaughter, Rhonda Jackson, and son-in-law have since collected $15,950 in rent.

Williams said she thought the ethics committee's original objection to renting from her husband was not based on the family relationship.

"I really thought at the time the major concern was that he was an attorney," she said. Her stepdaughter is not a lawyer.

The court's chief judge, Charles Marvin - who had pushed for the initial ethics opinion - said he did not know Williams' lease is with her stepdaughter until he learned of it from The Advocate.

Williams said she opened the satellite office because it takes almost three hours to drive from Tallulah to Shreveport.

She also promised attorneys in northeast Louisiana that she would open an office there to be accessible to them, she said.

She said she had tried to live with her children in Shreveport while her husband continued living and working in Tallulah. But that arrangement was "hectic, it was too much of a load," she said, so she moved back to Tallulah in 1996.

At the time, the office rental market was tight in Tallulah, she said. The location of her stepdaughter's office was ideal and the rent, $ 550 a month, was competitive, she said.

Kirk Morley Sr., a real estate broker in Tallulah, said he doesn't know what property was available in 1996. But he said recently that it would cost about $ 400 a month to lease an office of that size in the courthouse area.

"We don't have a lot of demand for office space," he said.

Family ties

In Baton Rouge, a former judge of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal entered a satellite office lease under which his court paid $ 132,000 to a company owned by his brother and sister.

The judge, Louis Watkins Jr., was elected to the court in 1979 and remained on the court until his death in August 1997. The court continued the lease through June this year, for another $ 11,000, so the judge appointed to hold the seat temporarily could use the office.

In 1987, Watkins started leasing the office in Houma from Lafayette Street Corp., according to 1st Circuit officials. In 1992, the judge signed a renewal with his brother, Kenneth Watkins, a Houma attorney who is an owner and officer of that company.

Kenneth Watkins refused to comment.

Another judge who had his court rent a satellite office from his relatives is Thomas Kliebert, the former chief judge of the state 5th Circuit Court of Appeal in Gretna.

His court paid a company owned by his children, K-One Inc., $ 82,000 for an office in Gramercy from 1982 until he retired from the court in 1995.

Kliebert's office in a two-story building was upstairs from the office of his son, a practicing attorney, and the judge shared his second-floor office suite with his daughter-in-law, Mary Kliebert, an accountant.

"It was the only thing that was available," he said.

Plus, "It was cheaper to rent this office than it was to pay my mileage" to and from court, he said.

Another judge who rented from a relative, Glenn Gremillion of the 3rd Circuit, said he felt uneasy about it.

So last year, Gremillion had his court rent an office building in Ferriday from a man who contributed more than $ 2,000 to Gremillion's election fund. The judge insisted the contribution played no role in the decision to the lease the building.

Gremillion's first lease was with his father-in-law, James Cook, for an office in Ferriday. The least lasted almost two years and was for $ 750 a month.

"I didn't like having to rent from a member of my family," Gremillion said.