Judge Elzey Perilloux Permanently Barred From Law

The Criminal Case

The conduct the convictions rest on took place between May and December 2017, while he was a sitting judge. The three complainants were friends of his teenage daughters, fourteen, fifteen and seventeen years old. Most of the alleged incidents happened at his home, and one was alleged to have occurred on a family trip to Florida in July 2017. The appellate opinion describes him as having been, to these girls, like a second father. They are not named or identified here.

Louisiana State Police investigated. He stepped down voluntarily on May 16, 2018, and an ad hoc judge was appointed to cover his division. On June 25, 2018, a St. John the Baptist Parish grand jury returned a four-count true bill and he surrendered. The Louisiana Attorney General’s office prosecuted rather than the local district attorney because he was a sitting judge of that district at the time.

The four counts were three felonies and a misdemeanor. Two of the felony counts concerned one girl and the third concerned another, each charged as indecent behavior with a juvenile under La. R.S. 14:81. The misdemeanor count concerned the third girl and was charged as sexual battery under La. R.S. 14:43.1.1. Indecent behavior with a juvenile requires an act committed with the intention of arousing or gratifying sexual desires, and the statute says lack of knowledge of the child’s age is no defense. Misdemeanor sexual battery requires an intentional touching without consent. The split between the felony and misdemeanor counts follows from the statute: indecent behavior with a juvenile reaches a child under the age of seventeen where the age difference is greater than two years, so the oldest of the three girls fell outside it. He later disputed even that, contending the misdemeanor count involved an eighteen year old rather than a seventeen year old.

Trial began September 8, 2020. On September 12 the jury found him guilty as charged on all three felony counts, and the court found him guilty on the misdemeanor the same day. On October 19, 2020, he was sentenced to four years and six months at hard labor on each felony count, to run consecutively, plus six months in parish prison, also consecutive. His motion to reconsider was denied January 29, 2021.

A separate investigation by a Florida sheriff’s office was open when he was indicted, arising from the July trip. At trial he sought to put before the jury a determination that there was no probable cause there, and the trial court excluded it.

What the Appeal Decided

State v. Perilloux, No. 21-KA-448, decided December 20, 2023, and reported at 378 So. 3d 280, affirmed every conviction and every sentence, Judge Schlegel writing for a panel with Judges Wicker and Windhorst. The court found no errors patent. The Supreme Court of Louisiana denied review on September 4, 2024.

He raised nine assignments of error. The sufficiency challenge failed on all four counts. Expert testimony on grooming was admitted without a Daubert hearing, which the court held was not required and not an abuse of discretion. His complaint about other-crimes evidence was barred by the law of the case, because the court had already ruled on it in pretrial writs. The exclusions he complained of, the Florida no-probable-cause determination, a polygraph, and an allegation about one complainant’s father, were all upheld. On the sentence, the court pointed to his abuse of a position of trust and found the terms not excessive.

His prosecutorial misconduct claims, his objection to testimony from the complainants’ parents, his claims about the courtroom’s pandemic precautions and his confrontation rights, and his challenge to the consecutive terms were all unpreserved, because no contemporaneous objection was made. Under La. C.Cr.P. art. 841 that precludes review. The court reached most of them in the alternative and rejected them anyway, but the consecutive sentences, the single feature that turned four and a half years into fourteen, were reviewable only for constitutional excessiveness. The trial judge was also recused at one stage, and a second motion for new trial heard by a different judge was found untimely.

In August 2023 a district judge set a three hundred thousand dollar bond pending appeal, conditioned on a protective order, mandatory classes and twice-monthly check-ins with law enforcement. The Attorney General’s office objected, the Fifth Circuit granted an emergency stay, and he stayed in custody. Three years later he appeared at his disciplinary hearing by video from a correctional facility.

Eight Years, and Two Separate Tracks

He was still a sitting judge when the indictment came down. Four days later, on June 29, 2018, the Supreme Court of Louisiana disqualified him from exercising any judicial function pending proceedings before the Judiciary Commission. Article V, section 25(C) of the Louisiana Constitution allows that disqualification without loss of salary, and so he drew a judge’s pay for more than two years while barred from doing a judge’s work, until he resigned after the convictions.

He resigned after the convictions, and under Louisiana precedent the resignation mooted the judicial discipline proceeding. There is no Commission finding in this case and there never will be. The Court interimly suspended his law license that November.

The attorney discipline case took another six years to finish, and most of that was his own doing. Disciplinary Counsel filed formal charges in November 2020. In December 2020, at his request, the proceedings were stayed pending the criminal case. The Fifth Circuit affirmed in December 2023, the Court denied review in September 2024, and the stay was lifted in February 2025 once the convictions were final.

Two tracks ran from the same conduct. The one aimed at his judgeship ended in nothing when he walked away from the job. The one aimed at his license was the only one that could still reach him, and it is the one that produced a permanent result.

One Exhibit, One Witness

Under Rule XIX, section 19(E), a criminal conviction is conclusive evidence of guilt, and the only question left is whether the crime warrants discipline and how much. Disciplinary Counsel introduced a single exhibit, four pages of court minutes recording the verdicts, and nothing else. Perilloux was the only witness. At the formal hearing on December 15, 2025, he appeared by video from the correctional facility where he is incarcerated, stipulated that he was convicted on all four counts and that the convictions are final, and gave no testimony at all about the underlying facts. Counsel asked him nothing about them on cross.

What he did instead was give a statement asserting his absolute innocence and blaming the people who had handled his case: the Attorney General and the assistant who tried it, the trial judge, and the jury foreperson. He called the prosecution a wholly manufactured and completely false case against him.

No evidence was presented about the specific conduct behind the convictions or the magnitude of its effect on the three girls, so the board reasoned from the statutory definitions and the fact of three victims, at least two of them juveniles, and concluded that the potential existed for very significant injury. The Court went further on the same record, finding flatly that his actions were intentional and caused significant harm.

Why the Second Factor Was Satisfied

The first permanent disbarment factor was straightforward. The Court said the misconduct was undoubtedly egregious, that sexual misconduct involving juvenile victims resulting in a felony conviction is a listed ground, and moved on.

In his answer he admitted the convictions while adamantly maintaining his innocence, recast the touching in minimizing terms, and disputed the age of the third victim, arguing that count involved an adult rather than a seventeen year old. Before the board he conceded that permanent disbarment would be an appropriate sanction given the nature of his convictions, and in the same argument objected to the findings that he had acted intentionally and had harmed vulnerable juveniles.

Both of those positions cannot be true. Indecent behavior with a juvenile under La. R.S. 14:81 requires the intention of arousing or gratifying sexual desires, and the statute says expressly that lack of knowledge of the child’s age is not a defense. Misdemeanor sexual battery under La. R.S. 14:43.1.1 requires intentional touching without consent. A man who accepts the convictions has accepted the intent.

The Court’s finding: he had repeatedly minimized the conduct, describing his improper touching of the teenage victims as mere innocuous physical contact. He had expressed no remorse for his actions and no concern for his victims whatsoever, and any regret he had alluded to ran only to what the criminal case had cost him and his family. The board had noted the same thing from the criminal minutes, where the trial judge observed that he had not come to grips with the magnitude of what he had put the victims through.

The aggravating factors list the rest: a prior disciplinary record, a dishonest or selfish motive, a pattern of misconduct, multiple offenses, refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of the conduct, the vulnerability of the victims, substantial experience in the practice of law, and illegal conduct. The prior record is a 2004 public reprimand for notarizing a document outside the signatory’s presence, which the board treated as remote. In mitigation it found a cooperative attitude, the penalties already imposed in the criminal case, and that remoteness.

The Same Court, Twice in This Series

Case File No. 67 covers Judge Vercell Fiffie, who was interimly disqualified from the Fortieth Judicial District Court in October 2026 on a finding of probable cause and a substantial threat of serious harm. Fiffie took office on January 1, 2021, months after Perilloux resigned in the wake of his conviction.

Two files, one rural Louisiana district court, eight years apart, and the same mechanism in both: the Supreme Court of Louisiana removing a judge from the bench before anything was proven, under Article V, section 25(C). It worked quickly both times. What it could not do, in Perilloux’s case, was produce any judicial discipline finding at all once he quit.

How It Would Work in Texas

RESIGNATION WOULD NOT HAVE ENDED IT

In Louisiana the resignation mooted the Judiciary Commission case. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct does not work that way. Case File No. 34 is the proof: a Hays County judge who resigned in May 2021 was publicly admonished more than four years later, in August 2025, for conduct during a four month tenure. A Texas judge who leaves the bench does not take the file with him. For the process end to end, see our explainer, Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained.

THE LICENSE WOULD GO AUTOMATICALLY

Texas does not require a disciplinary hearing to disbar a convicted lawyer. Part VIII of the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure is titled Compulsory Discipline. Under Rule 8.01, once an attorney is convicted of an Intentional Crime, or placed on probation for one with or without an adjudication of guilt, the Chief Disciplinary Counsel must initiate a disciplinary action. Rule 8.02 makes the conviction conclusive evidence. Rule 8.05 then provides that the attorney shall be disbarred once the conviction is final, unless the Board of Disciplinary Appeals suspends the license instead under Rule 8.06.

An Intentional Crime is defined as any Serious Crime requiring proof of knowledge or intent as an essential element, or any crime involving misapplication of property held as a fiduciary, and a Serious Crime includes any felony involving moral turpitude. A felony sex offense against a child that requires proof of intent sits squarely inside that definition. Completing the sentence does not save the license either; Rule 8.01 says the end of incarceration, probation or parole does not bar the action.

BUT TEXAS HAS NO PERMANENT DISBARMENT

Texas disbarment is not forever. Under Part XI, Rule 11.01, a disbarred person may petition the district court of the county of residence for reinstatement five years after the final judgment of disbarment, and a person disbarred by reason of an Intentional Crime or Serious Crime conviction becomes eligible five years after completing the sentence, including any probation and parole.

Three consecutive terms of four years and six months, plus a consecutive six months, means the Texas clock would not even start for well over a decade, and the petition would still have to persuade a district court. The practical outcome is close to Louisiana’s. The legal posture is not. A Texas court never has to make the finding the three dissenters balked at, because no Texas court is asked to decide that a person is beyond rehabilitation for the rest of his life.

AND THE PRESERVATION LESSON TRANSFERS WHOLE

The consecutive terms, the single feature that turned four and a half years into fourteen, were reviewable only for constitutional excessiveness because nobody objected. Texas works the same way. Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 33.1(a) makes a timely request, objection or motion, stating grounds with enough specificity to make the trial court aware of the complaint, a prerequisite to presenting the complaint on appeal, and requires a ruling or a refusal to rule that the party then objects to. Prosecutorial argument, a parent’s testimony, courtroom conditions, consecutive sentencing: each of those is lost at the moment nobody says anything, and none of them comes back because the sentence turned out long.

How It Played in the Press

The conviction got far more attention than the disbarment. The 2018 indictment and the September 2020 trial were covered heavily in Louisiana, by WWL-TV, L’Observateur, Fox 8 and the New Orleans papers, and picked up nationally on the detail that the complainants were his daughters’ friends. The August 2023 bond drew coverage because the Attorney General’s office objected and the Fifth Circuit stayed it. The permanent disbarment six years later drew far less, and the account most likely to reach lawyers was the ABA Journal’s, which led on the split.

The ABA Journal reported that three justices dissented and would have imposed regular disbarment, and left it there, which is all anyone could do. The court’s own news release records three separate one-line dissents, from the Chief Justice and two associate justices, each saying only that the justice would impose regular disbarment. None of them wrote. Four justices decided that this man will never be fit to practice law again, three disagreed, and the reasons for the disagreement are not on paper anywhere.

Where Things Stand

He is incarcerated, his convictions were affirmed and review denied, he says he is pursuing post-conviction relief, and his name has been struck from the roll of attorneys with readmission permanently prohibited. The judicial discipline case remains where his resignation left it, which is nowhere.

The Gavel of Shame does not usually cover attorney discipline. This file is here because the attorney case is the only one that ever reached a judgment, and because of what the Court had to find to get there.

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCES

• In re Elzey Jeffrey Perilloux, No. 2026-B-0844, Supreme Court of Louisiana, per curiam imposing permanent disbarment (September 16, 2026), with the court’s news release recording the three dissents. lasc.org (pdf)
• Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, Recommendation to the Louisiana Supreme Court, In re: Elzey Jeffrey Perilloux, No. 20-DB-061, for the board’s findings on injury, the aggravating and mitigating factors and the prior reprimand. ladb.org
• La. Const. art. V, § 25(C), for the supreme court’s power to disqualify a judge from judicial function without loss of salary during the pendency of proceedings. senate.la.gov

CITED IN THE OPINION

• In re Perilloux, 18-1083 (La. 6/29/18), 248 So. 3d 1284 (disqualification from judicial function). courtlistener.com
• In re Perilloux, 04-1141 (La. 6/4/04), 875 So. 2d 66 (the 2004 public reprimand). courtlistener.com
• In re Perilloux, 20-1178 (La. 11/4/20), 303 So. 3d 626 (interim suspension), and the writ denial at 24-0104 (La. 9/4/24), 391 So. 3d 1055. Supreme Court of Louisiana

THE CRIMINAL CASE

• State v. Perilloux, No. 21-KA-448 (La. App. 5 Cir. 12/20/23), 378 So. 3d 280, affirming the convictions and sentences, for the charges, the trial and sentencing dates, the nine assignments of error and the preservation rulings. caselaw.findlaw.com
• L’Observateur, Judge indicted for sexual misconduct with minors; Perilloux denies accusations (June 25, 2018), for the four-count true bill, the Attorney General’s role, his voluntary step-down on May 16, 2018 and the ad hoc appointment. lobservateur.com
• Fox 8, on the September 2020 trial and verdicts. fox8live.com
• Fox News, Former Louisiana judge granted bond three years after conviction, for the August 2023 bond, its conditions, the Attorney General’s objection and the Fifth Circuit’s emergency stay. foxnews.com
• ABA Journal, In split opinion, court permanently disbars judge convicted of indecent behavior with teens. abajournal.com

REFERENCE

• Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure, Part VIII (compulsory discipline) and Part XI (reinstatement). txcourts.gov (pdf)
• Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure, Rule 33.1 (preservation of appellate complaints). txcourts.gov (pdf)
• Deandra Grant Law: Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained. texasdwisite.com

• This post summarizes a published decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, the disciplinary board recommendation beneath it, and news reporting, as of November 2026, and is not legal advice. The three complainants are referred to only by age and by their relationship to the judge’s daughters; they are not named or identified here, and the specific conduct described in the record is deliberately not reproduced. The judge maintains his innocence of the criminal charges and says he is pursuing post-conviction relief; his convictions were affirmed on appeal and review was denied. The comparison of Texas law, including the readings of the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure and Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 33.1, is our own analysis of the text rather than any court’s holding.