Keller: ‘Evidence not strong enough’
By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
COVINGTON – Five months after Slidell Pastor John Raymond was convicted of cruelty to juveniles in the trial that drew national attention for taping the mouths of five teenage boys who repeatedly disrupted class at Lakeside Christian Academy, Raymond finally had his chance to take the witness stand on Thursday, Feb. 20, in an attempt to convince Judge John Keller to give him a new trial.
But after a full day of witness testimony and fresh evidence provided by Raymond’s new attorney, Keller denied Raymond’s filing to get a second chance at trial.
Raymond was convicted last September on four counts of cruelty to juveniles, one of those being a second-degree charge, and faces a maximum of 70 years in prison, with sentencing now set for March 13. No appeal of the denial of the new trial is currently planned, although it is being contemplated, said attorney Jane Hogan.
Five motions were filed by Hogan as reasons she believed her client deserved a new trial, but the key motion claiming Raymond was kept from testifying—a constitutional right for any defendant—was shot down by the judge, who stated, “I believe Mr. Raymond was fully aware he had the right to testify.”
Ironically, it was witness testimony from Louisiana Appeals Court Judge Beth Wolfe, who happens to be a cousin to Raymond, which may have provided Keller with the strongest evidence to deny the new hearing motion, since she and Raymond had talked extensively about his right to testify.
“She even said she would pray for you to make the right decision” about testifying, Keller remarked in his detailed explanation of why he denied the new trial.
Keller presented former case precedent which showed that a client must be told by his lawyer that he is legally barred from testifying, something former attorney Joe Long never did.
Raymond said that throughout the two-and-a-half years from the time he was arrested and charged, until the September 2024, trial, that Long had continually told him “You have to testify, even though I usually don’t let my clients get on the stand.”
On the Friday before the Monday wrap-up for the trial, Raymond said Long told him they would spend Sunday prepping for his testimony. But on Friday afternoon, “Joe flipped,” and told Raymond he shouldn’t testify.
Raymond told the court he believes Long had omitted “a wheelbarrow of evidence that had to get out about an orchestrated campaign to ruin me,” something he later detailed on the stand about former employees and one husband of an employee. He said Long had not used much of the evidence, and that’s the reason, “I have to get this information to the jury.”
However, an audio recording Raymond made of a Sunday morning conversation when Long called him, the day before the original trial ended, and angrily told Raymond he was going to “blow the trial” if he testified, was “compelling,” said Keller. And the judge added, “this was a close call,” about giving Raymond the new trial.
The taped conversation came about as Raymond was preparing to preach at his church that morning.
“I always record my sermons, so I had my recorder next to me that morning on the desk when Joe called,” Raymond said. “I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be a good conversation since we had been arguing since Friday about whether I would testify.
“Just as I answered the phone, I felt the Holy Spirit say, ‘record.’ So, I hit the record button,” he explained about how he ended up with the recorded phone call.
In the exchange that morning, Long passionately told Raymond they had the trial won and he would blow the expected innocent verdict if he took the stand, especially since District Attorney Collin Sims and Raymond had bad blood, part of which came when Raymond wrote a five-page letter in 2023 critical of Sims in his election for district attorney. Raymond posted his letter online to thousands, urging locals to vote against Sims, who later won the election in a landslide.
In the phone call, Long told Raymond, “I’m pretty angry at you right now. You can’t see the forest for the trees. Listen to your lawyer—you think you know better than everyone so listen and shut up. Let me win this case—you’ll f—it all up.”
Long had called Raymond after the original arrest in Nov. 2022, offering his services for free. Long had an impressive resume of winning numerous high-profile corporate and civil rights cases over a 30-plus year career.
Long told Raymond, “I fire clients on the spot for micro-managing cases like you have done. This isn’t a negotiation. You will end up going to jail and dying there.”
Raymond said he felt intimidated by Long because he was afraid his lawyer wouldn’t show up for court on the final day of the trial, “and I would have to defend myself. I always wanted to testify and had prepped for it ever since this all started, but after his phone call I appeased him to get him to show up.”
Keller said that if Raymond had come to court that Monday and told the judge what had happened that he would have addressed the situation, and it might have changed things. But ultimately, Keller said that even though Raymond claimed his reasons for not testifying, “you knew that it was your right to do so.”
Other reasons that Raymond’s attorney submitted as points for a new trial were also all discussed by Keller but denied.
–Hogan said the verdict was not fair, considering the evidence presented, but Keller determined that it was.
–A request for Sims to recuse himself was not deemed valid, “since Mr. Raymond wrote the letter to Mr. Sims, not the other way around.”
–Hogan said pre-trial publicity should have led to a change of venue, but Keller said he was actually surprised that only nine of the 12 jurors had heard about the case in advance.
–A motion that Long provided “an ineffective defense” was denied on the grounds that even though Keller did see new evidence that had “some value,” he ruled, “it was not strong enough to warrant a new trial.”