"Chocolate Ray" has been indicted

Ray Nagin, the ex-Mayor of New Orleans, has been indicted!

Background information on him

His racism

I call him "Chocolate Ray" because he called New Orleans a "chocolate city". Watch the video, uploaded April 25, 2011, and see for yourself.

When Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans, which was built on below-sea-level ground, the buses that could have evacuated the city's residents out of danger were idle because Mayor Ray Nagan was having a party in his home when he should have been showing his leadership.

An in-depth investigation into Ray Nagin's "missing-in-action" style.


If these buses had been used to evacuate New Orleans residents out of the city, they would have avoided being killed and injured.  These buses are partially underwater because they weren't used.

 

January 2013

These are the first three paragraphs of a January 18, 2013 U.S.A. Today story

NEW ORLEANS – Ray Nagin, former New Orleans mayor and the public face of the battered city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has been indicted by a grand jury on 21 federal corruption charges.

The indictment, released Friday, alleges Nagin awarded lucrative city contracts to contractors in exchange for more than $200,000 in kickbacks and first-class trips to Hawaii, Jamaica and Las Vegas.

Nagin, 56, served two four-year terms as mayor, from 2002 to 2010, and currently lives in Frisco, Tex., outside Dallas. If convicted on all charges, he faces more than 15 years in prison. Nagin becomes the first mayor in the city's 295-year history to be indicted under federal corruption charges.

In the original version of this page, there was a link to a video of his "chocolate city" speech, but on May 18, 2017, I added the original video on the right, to make it easier to see his racism for themselves.

"This city will be chocolate at the end of the day."
- Ray Nagin, Mayor of the City of New Orleans

Ray Nagin failed to do his job as a mayor during a city-wide crisis.

This March 20, 2006 page of the Lawrence Journal-World website includes this photo of New Orleans, flooded, with unused buses.  The city has decided to sell them on EBay.

February 2014

Ray Nagin is now a convicted criminal.

These are the first two paragraphs of a February 12, 2014 Washington Post story.

Former New Orleans mayor C. Ray Nagin — who became the face of a desperate, drowning city during Hurricane Katrina — was convicted Wednesday on charges of accepting bribes from city contractors while in office.

Nagin, a Democrat, was found guilty by a federal jury on 20 of 21 criminal counts, including bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud. He was acquitted on one count of bribery.

September 2014

Ray Nagin is now an inmate of a Federal Prison in Texarkana, Texas.  Link to a story on the CNS News website dated September 8, 2014.

April 2015

These are the first three paragraphs of an April 15, 2015 Reuters story.

Attorneys for former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who is serving a 10-year sentence in federal prison for corruption, are seeking to have his 2014 conviction overturned because of what they say were flawed instructions given to the jury, court papers show.

Nagin, 58, was convicted on 20 counts including bribery, conspiracy and money laundering, all tied to payments he received for granting city contracts during the recovery effort in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

He was thrust into the national spotlight in 2005 when the storm's waters overwhelmed levees and flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, killing 1,500 people and causing some $80 billion in damage.

October 2016

These are the first three paragraphs of an October 5, 2016 Nola story.  All three of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's final hope for an early exit from federal prison was all but quashed after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up his appeal of his 2014 public corruption conviction.

At the start of its fall session Monday (Oct. 3), the high court denied Nagin's petition, letting stand the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal decision in January that called his arguments "meritless."

"His criminal case was effectively over when the 5th Circuit denied his appeal, but this means it's really, really over," Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino said.

Nagin, 60, is two years into a 10-year prison sentence after a jury convicted him on 20 counts of bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud and filing false tax returns. He is the first mayor of New Orleans charged, tried and convicted of public corruption.

April 2020

This is an April 28, 2020 WDSU story.  They are the NBC affiliate in New Orleans.  Their story includes a video of the on-air report.

NEW ORLEANS —

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been released from jail due to COVID-19 concerns.

His lawyer confirms that the 63-year old was released yesterday and from a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, and is now in Texas with his family.

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In recent weeks - due to the COVID-19 pandemic - the federal government has been strategically releasing non-violent inmates who have completed more than half their prison sentences.

Nagin was convicted in 2014 on 20 bribery, money laundering and tax evasion charges.

The Bureau of Prisons released this statement regarding Nagin's release:

"Ray Nagin transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Texarkana to the supervision of the Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) Dallas Residential Reentry Management (RRM) Office. His projected date of release from the custody of the BOP is 03-16-2023."

He started serving his 10 year prison sentence in September of 2014 and was scheduled to be released in 2023.