JIM GARRISON'S BOURBON STREET BRAWL

This little book (150 pages including bibliography, notes and index) chronicles the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964).

Jim Garrison was the controversial District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana who became famous (or infamous) when he indicted a New Orleans businessman, Clay Shaw, and claimed that he was a C.I.A. operative who had been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

The events of this book happened in the early 1960s well before the prosecution of Clay Shaw.  Garrison became involved in a fight with local criminal court judges over the use of funds gathered from criminal bond forfeitures which Louisiana law allowed the District Attorney to spend with the permission of the judges.  When Garrison began his own sting operation on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, going around the New Orleans Police Department, the judges began refusing his request for funds from the forfeiture fund.

Garrison's sting operation primarily involved stopping a scam in Bourbon Street bars where a patron would be approached by one or more girls who implied that they would provide sex to the man "if he would buy her a drink."  The customer would then be asked to buy one or more bottles of over priced champaign.  After the customer was drunk, the bottles might only be filled with ginger ale.  When he was really drunk, he would typically be asked to leave and thrown out by a bouncer and sometimes by the New Orleans Police.   Garrison sent his investigators into the bars undercover and many Bourbon Street establishments were forced to close.

When the judges began to deny Garrison funding, he publicly accused the judges of being "racketeers," and implied that the judges were being bribed by the Bourbon Street Bar owners.  Garrison also accused the judges of being at fault for jail overcrowding for taking too many vacations and refusing to hold court.   In response, the Attorney General of Louisiana charged Garrison with Criminal Defamation.  Garrison was tried and convicted after a bench trial.

Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison

After Garrison's conviction was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court, Garrison appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court had recently held in New York Times v. Sullivan that a public figure cannot recover damages for liable unless the statements were "malicious,"  The Court defined malice as "a reckless disregard for the truth."

Savage's thorough research using Justice William O. Douglas' conference notes brings us inside the Justices' conference and reveals the deal making which goes on behind the scenes among justices.  Ultimately, after the case was argued twice, the Court ruled that the Louisiana criminal defamation statute as written was unconstitutional and applied the New York Times v. Sullivan standard to criminal defamation cases.  

The colorful Attorney General of Louisiana, Jack P.F. Gremillion, apparently was never able to comprehend that at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court, what they were talking about was the constitutionality of the statute and not the guilt or innocence of Garrison.  Gremillion, who was a member of the Earl K. Long faction in Louisiana politics, had previously been held in contempt of court by a Federal Judge in New Orleans in a school desegregation case, telling the judge that the U.S. District Court was "a kangaroo court," and "a den of iniquity," and allegedly spitting at the black plaintiffs.  Gremillion's performance before the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Savage, resembled a stump speech more than it did a legal argument before the nation's highest court.

The book, Jim Garrison's Bourbon Street Brawl: The Making of a First Amendment Milestone, was apparently Savage's Master Degree Thesis.  I found it to be an enjoyable and informative read.  Five out of five gavels.