Renée Gill Pratt

Renée Gill Pratt (born 1954) is an American politician from New Orleans, Louisiana. She was also Director of the Center for Student Retention and Success in Southern University at New Orleans.^[1] On July 25, 2011, she was found guilty of racketeering. For this crime, she served a 4-year sentence.^[2]

Political career

A Democrat, Gill Pratt began her tenure in the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 91 in 1991, when she was elected to succeed Diana Bajoie, who was the victor in a special election for the District 5 seat in the Louisiana State Senate. Gill Pratt served in the House until 2002, when she was succeeded by Rosalind Peychaud.^[3] Gill Pratt served on the New Orleans city council for District B from 2002 to 2006.

District B includes the Central Business District, the Garden District, Central City, the Irish Channel, the Lower Garden District and the Touro neighborhood. District 91 covers the precincts located on the southwest side of District B, roughly corresponding to the Irish Channel and the Touro neighborhood.

Gill Pratt lost her bid for re-election in 2006, against Stacy Head, another Democrat and a New Orleans attorney.

Controversies

In May 2009 Gill Pratt—along with Mose Jefferson, Betty Jefferson, and Angela Coleman (Betty Jefferson's daughter)—was indicted on federal racketeering charges.^[4] Mose Jefferson was also facing a separate trial for bribing Orleans Parish School Board president Ellenese Brooks-Simms.^[5] The racketeering indictment contained a relationship to the bribery case in that part of the alleged racketeering involved Gill Pratt's supposed obtaining of $300,000 for a couple of private schools so that they could buy the software which Mose Jefferson, with Ellenese Brooks-Simms' help, also sold to the public schools; according to the indictment, Mose Jefferson's commission on the sales to the private schools was $30,000, of which Gill Pratt pocketed $3500.^[6] Within a week of the indictment of Gill Pratt, John Pope reported in the Times-Picayune that Gill Pratt was being appointed to a SUNO position which carries no additional pay.^[7] In the same article Pope described Mose Jefferson as "Gill Pratt's longtime companion"—a situation noted as being "as close as it gets" by columnist Stephanie Grace.^[8] Gill Pratt's appointment to SUNO's Executive Cabinet was immediately criticized by, among others, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.^[9] Amid astonishment over the appropriateness and timing of the appointment—in that all Louisiana public universities were facing steep budget cuts and suggestions were circulating that SUNO should be merged with the neighboring University of New Orleans—Gill Pratt, with the urging of SUNO chancellor Victor Ukpolo, went on a leave of absence without pay.^[10]

Gill Pratt had not been seen in public since 22 May 2009 when on June 5 she—along with Mose Jefferson, Betty Jefferson, and Angela Coleman—pleaded "not guilty" before U.S. magistrate Joseph Wilkinson Jr. at the Hale Boggs Federal Building in New Orleans. Gill Pratt's lawyer was Michael Fawer, who also represents Mose Jefferson in a separate bribery case.^[11]

At a hearing before U. S. District Judge Ivan L. R. Lemelle on 17 June 2009, lawyers for Betty Jefferson and Angela Coleman requested a delay from the 3 August 2009 start date for the racketeering trial; at the same hearing, however, lawyers for Gill Pratt and Mose Jefferson requested that the racketeering trial begin as scheduled on August 3.^[12] On 28 July 2009, Lemelle delayed the start of the racketeering trial to 25 January 2010.^[13]

On August 4, Fawer unsuccessfully sought (denied by U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon) to delay Mose Jefferson's bribery trial until after the racketeering trial, because, as summarized by Michael Kunzelman of the Times-Picayune:

Gill Pratt . . . isn't available to testify during the bribery case this month because she is awaiting her own trial next year in a [the] separate but related racketeering conspiracy case.^[14]

On 21 August 2009 Mose Jefferson was convicted on four felony counts in his bribery trial.^[15]

On February 24, 2011, one juror's siding with Gill Pratt resulted in a mistrial.^[16] The Times-Picayune editorialized over the hung jury, citing what the newspaper called "the criminal enterprise run by some members of the Jefferson family."^[17] But, during the retrial, in July 2011, she was found guilty. On September 2, 2014, more than three years after her conviction, Gill Pratt reported to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Florida to begin serving a four-year sentence.^[18]

Education

A lifelong resident of District B, Gill Pratt attended Holy Ghost Elementary School, Xavier University Preparatory School, Dillard University, and the University of New Orleans.