THE SINCLAIR CASE
Chapter Five: The Man In The Middle
Besides Cannon, there were scores of other influential people either connected to the Istrouma or the LSU football systems that put forth tremendous political pressure to keep me in prison for the rest of my life. They were not run of the mill people, rather they were pillars of the Baton Rouge community with enough political clout to deprive me of any available governmental benefit.
One of those people was State Representative Donald Ray Kennard—a witness to the shooting death of J.C. Bodden. Kennard was also a football player. He played on Baton Rouge’s Central High School team but was later a faculty member and coach at Istrouma.
Kennard had always wanted to be part of Istrouma High School. He finally got the opportunity in 1958 when he began to teach and coach at the school while he pursued a college degree. Two years later he joined the LSU women’s basketball coaching staff before entering the United States Air Force. Kennard was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1975 to represent a district in which most of the Istrouma alumni had migrated to.
Similar to Little Dixie, it was another all-white district populated with staunch Republican conservatives.
Kennard and his wife, Ramona, were never comfortable with the prosecutorial misconduct Ralph Roy had employed in my case. The prosecutor told the couple their testimony would not be needed at the trial. Nonetheless, Ramona still showed up at the courthouse on the first day my trial started prepared to testify about seeing Bodden chasing me outside the convenience store only to be dismissed by Ralph Roy.
In 1981, the Kennards told New York Times writer Elin Schoen that they believed I was rehabilitated and should be released from prison. But Donald Ray said the political opposition to my release was so entrenched that he could never publicly express those sentiments.
Later, in 1984, the couple agreed to provide my attorney at the time, Helen “Ginger” Roberts (now a U.S. District Court Judge in New Orleans), with sworn affidavits attesting to what they witnessed the night Bodden was killed. Those affidavits placed me outside the store running with Bodden in pursuit.
Initially, Rep. Kennard was reluctant to sign the affidavit. He agreed to do so only after prominent Alexandria attorney Camille Gravel (with whom Judge Roberts was employed at the time) asked him to do so, telling the lawmaker it was the right thing to do. Kennard acquiesced but only after Roberts agreed to meet him after dark at his home. This influential lawmaker was afraid the Istrouma network would learn of his effort to assist Roberts’ legal attempt to overturn my conviction in federal court.
Rep. Kennard was not only afraid of the Istrouma network but he had an allegiance to the LSU sports network, having joined their broadcasts as a “spotter” in 1958 and remaining with the network for the next 44 years. He could never pit himself against the Billy Cannon-led football opposition in “the Sinclair case.” The lawmaker knew J.C. Bodden had not been gunned down in the cool and calm manner outlined by Ralph Roy but he could never openly speak that truth in the close-knit Baton Rouge football community.
Kennard’s fear was understandable.
It was woven in the DNA of the Istrouma network to not only verbally berate but even physically threaten anyone who dared speak favorably about me.
A prominent LSU professor testified on my behalf before a pardon board hearing in the late 1970s. Then District Attorney Ossie Brown told the professor after the hearing: “I’m going run you out of town; I will get your job for this.”
Rep. Kennard was aware of that kind of political pressure. He told more than one person that each time I had a pardon or parole board hearing, those “crazy” Istrouma people would start flooding his office with phone calls demanding that he oppose my release. He had no choice but to be their political voice.
What Kennard actually said to those people about me, I will never know. He died in 2011. More than 2,000 friends and political associates turned out to pay tribute to his personal life and political career. While his political opposition most assuredly contributed to my 40-year incarceration, I have no ill-will about his political opposition role in “the Sinclair case.” He stood up for the truth in 1984. He was an honest, decent man, but he was also politically astute. He understood his political survival depended upon his doing the bidding of the Istrouma network. He had to do exactly what they said, or else.
It is difficult, I’m sure, for the average person to understand the depth of the political influence rooted in the history of Istrouma High School football that festered like a cancerous sore in “the Sinclair case.”
But it was always there to the very last day of my incarceration.