Who "settled" for what

The lawsuit against Blair Boutte for extorting excessive bail and fees from criminal defendants has been settled. We still don't know exactly what the parties agreed to.

U.S. District Judge Wendy Vitter dismissed the lawsuit on Thursday, one day after the parties confirmed their agreement.

The parties, who have 60 days to finalize the settlement, were mum Friday on its details. But the pact appears to end a lawsuit that leveled serious allegations against a well-connected bondsman and political consultant.

It's hard to know if this is actually a positive end or not.  It looks like Boutte has slowly been winning by attrition since the suit was filed.

The lawsuit suffered a blow in June 2018, when U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo dismissed many of the claims, including one alleging a racketeering conspiracy.

The lawsuit was among a batch of 15 cases that Milazzo, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, handed over to Vitter after the U.S. Senate confirmed the nominee of President Donald Trump in June. Judges in other sections also transferred cases to her to balance their caseloads.

So unless we learn something really surprising has been negotiated here, such as, Blair's Bail Bonds is going out of business and starting a daycare or something, we're going to assume the SPLC side has done most of the settling.

Oh also Harry Cantrell is in this story. The mayor's father in law is still ignoring orders to reform the way money bail is set in his courtroom since he and the other judges who benefit from bail fees have been found to have an inherent conflict of interest.

Cantrell is appealing the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on the alleged conflict of interest to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to decide whether to take up the case.

Separately, the lawyers at the MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans and the Civil Rights Corps have filed a motion asking a judge to hold Cantrell in contempt of court.

We have no idea how the US Supreme Court might rule. But Cantrell might end up doing okay politically given the renewed fever for "tough on crime" judges in the more influential corners of the city.   We'll see how that winds up. Maybe Cantrell won't have to settle at all.