This thing on Wednesday really came out of the blue, didn’t it?
A grand jury on Wednesday indicted former Louisiana House Speaker Clay Schexnayder for felony theft and malfeasance in office for allegedly stealing a rare artifact that had gone missing from the state capitol.
Schexnayder allegedly stole an ancient cypress board worth more than $25,000 that had been on display in the Louisiana state Capitol building for decades. The felony theft charge can carry a sentence of up to 20 years or a $50,000 fine.
The Times Picayune-Advocate reported in September that Schexnayder had taken the board from the capitol more than a decade ago to display in his legislative office in Gonzales, Louisiana.
Schexnayder did not respond to text and phone messages from The Associated Press seeking comment on his indictment. He previously told The Times Picayune-Advocate that he had received permission to take the board, an account which other state officials rejected.
“You don’t get to keep state property, it doesn’t belong to you,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Murrill’s office said the board “still has not been recovered.”
Schexnayder’s reaction to all this has been a bit peculiar. When WAFB-TV got hold of him about his getting indicted for stealing the board, he said “I left the board and computer stuff there for the state to pick up. I left it there like any representative does. What happened to it – I don’t know.”
Wait, what?
The Advocate first reported in September on the disappearance of the 20-foot by 6-foot piece of cypress, taken from a tree believed to have been nearly 1,300 years old when it was harvested in 1936 from the swamps of Lake Maurepas. The board was gifted to the state in 1955 by Walter Stebbins and placed in a showcase on the ground floor of the State Capitol until about 15 to 20 years ago.
Stebbins’ grandson, Dr. Julius Mullins of Baton Rouge, reached out to state officials to help locate the missing cypress. He got his first break in the case when he saw Schexnayder on television being interviewed at his office, and the cypress board was in the background.
Schexnayder told the newspaper one of his predecessors as speaker, Rep. Chuck Kleckley of Lake Charles, had given him the board in 2013 for his legislative office because Schexnayder represented Ascension Parish, the area where the cypress had grown. Kleckley has said he doesn’t recall that account of how the board ended up in Schexnayder’s possession.
This isn’t a good look, you know. This thing is a 20-foot-long hunk of cypress wood. You would think Kleckley would remember handing it over to Schexnayder. That the tree it came from was harvested out of Schexnayder’s district makes his story plausible – if it was just sitting in storage at the Capitol rather than on display, then OK, maybe it’s not a bad idea to let it go home to the local rep’s office.
But Kleckley’s saying he “doesn’t recall?” Yikes.
It doesn’t sound like the grand jury was very impressed with that story.
Things do go missing in state government. That’s a reason why gifting things to the state is a bad idea and the Stebbins family probably should have held on to that board, or at least simply loaned it, if they actually cared what happened to it.
But this isn’t a snow globe. It’s not some ceremonial gavel. It’s a wall of wood.
And then there’s this…
“I’m willing to work with them to find it, but there has only been one phone call with the Attorney General’s office,” said Schexnayder. “I’m very shocked and would have thought they would have followed up with me or had a sit-down meeting. I told them I was willing to help them find it, but there’s been no follow-up.”
Huh?
When the Attorney General calls you and says hey, we’re looking for a 20-foot-long piece of state property and you had it last, and where is it, that isn’t something you just blow off and then complain they didn’t “follow up” with you when you get indicted.
You follow up with them. You don’t say, “uhhhhh, I’ll hep y’all find dat, call me lata.” This is actually your responsibility if you’re Clay Schexnayder.
And even after he’s been indicted he’s still oblivious?
It isn’t a good look. What it looks like is that Schexnayder hocked this thing on the way out of office and it’s hanging on the wall of somebody’s crib in Ascension Parish – or at least it was before this week. You might have a vision in your head, what with it being November and the temperature having fallen a bit, of a guy giving his chainsaw a workout and making a big fire in his fireplace to ward off the cold with the chunks of firewood a 20-foot hunk of cypress can yield.
Or perhaps bourbon tastings on the patio of an evening, surrounding the roaring blaze in a firepit or a chiminea.
If that artifact has not been reduced to ash and might still be found, we would be utterly fascinated at the identity of its current possessor.
As, it seems, is Liz Murrill.
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