by TChris

There never seems to be a shortage of stories about judicial corruption or incompetence in Louisiana (recent TalkLeft posts on the subject are here, here, and here). Here's another:

U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan on Wednesday ordered former [Louisiana] District Judge Ronald Bodenheimer to serve three years and 10 months in prison and pay $50,000 for taking bribes from a bail bondsman, scheming to plant drugs on an FBI informant and plotting to fix a child custody case.

Prosecutors agreed to recommend a 3-1/2 year prison term in exchange for the judge's cooperation in its investigation of courthouse corruption, but Judge Berrigan busted the deal by adding four months to the recommended sentence.

Berrigan ... said Bodenheimer's cooperation wasn't enough and increased his sentence to reflect the seriousness of trying to get someone falsely arrested. She gave Bodenheimer a chance to withdraw his guilty plea, but he turned it down.