http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-setting-times-stories-to-music-20140913-story.html#page=1
His own words help bring down New Orleans prosecutor
Sal Perricone always had something to prove. Growing up poor and Italian in a city dominated by Creoles and Anglos, Perricone found respect on the streets after high school by becoming a cop. He pulled graveyard shifts to put himself through college and eventually took night classes to earn a law degree while serving as a New Orleans police detective.
The law degree helped him jump to the FBI, where he was a special agent for five years. In 1991 he landed at the U.S. attorney's office in New Orleans, crusading against fraud in a city as known for political corruption as it is for jazz. Over two decades, he went after the Mafia, cops, judges and even a former governor. He became one of New Orleans' most feared prosecutors.
The people he put behind bars — the thugs, the high-power politicians — were intent on seeing Perricone fall. His enemies left a fake bomb and other death threats on his front porch. They never touched him. Instead, it was his own arrogance and a burning secret resentment toward the world of privilege and power that brought him down.
His prosecutorial misconduct was exposed by a pretentious writing style, particularly his fondness for obscure words found usually only on SAT exams or in the work of Victorian poet Robert Browning.
The “online 21st century carnival” Perricone created, in the words of one federal judge, swept away nearly the entire leadership of one of the nation's largest U.S. attorney's offices and imperiled some of the state's biggest criminal prosecutions.
#soundtrack: “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” by the Smiths. A friend coincidentally sent me the link to this video of a live performance in 1986. Beefcake Morrissey!