Joe T. Cawthorn

Joseph T. Cawthorn, known as Joe T. Cawthorn (October 1, 1911 – November 11, 1967),^[1] was an attorney, businessman, and a Democratic politician from Mansfield in DeSoto Parish in northwestern Louisiana. He was affiliated with the Long faction of state politics.

Political and legal career

Cawthorn was born in the unincorporated Selma near another rural community, Georgetown, in northeastern Grant Parish. He graduated from Oak Grove High School in Oak Grove in West Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana. In 1932, he received his law degree from the Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge.^[2]

In 1940, Cawthorn was elected to the Louisiana State Senate from a district encompassing both DeSoto and the neighboring and much larger Caddo Parish.^[3] In his one term, during the administration of Governor Sam Houston Jones, Cawthorn chaired the Senate Finance Committee but became a persistent critic of Jones, after Jones split politically with former Governor James A. Noe of Monroe, Cawthorn's political mentor. Cawthorn accused Jones of "waste and inefficiency" in state government.^[4]

In 1944, Cawthorn did not seek re-election to the state Senate but instead ran a strong though unsuccessful race for state attorney general against fellow Democrat Fred S. LeBlanc of Baton Rouge, who carried the backing of Jimmie Davis. Known for his singing career too, Davis was elected that year to the first of his two non-consecutive gubernatorial terms. By then, Cawthorn was allied with Earl Kemp Long,^[5] the former and future governor who ran unsuccessfully in 1944 for lieutenant governor, a post that Long had also held from 1936 to 1939 under then Governor Richard Leche. Cawthorn and other Long-endorsed candidates had led handily in the first primary;^[6] he led by fifty thousand votes in six of the then eight congressional districts.^[7] In the second round of balloting, however, Cawthorn fell short. And J. Emile Verret of Iberia Parish, the Davis choice, defeated Long for lieutenant governor.

In May 1946, Cawthorn was convicted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana for his role as the attorney in an income tax evasion and jury tampering case against businessman William T. Burton, former Governor Noe, and Marcel F. La Branche, a juror. Cawthorn, Burton, and La Branche were found guilty and each sentenced to two years in prison and fined $10,000, but Noe was acquitted. The three lost their appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. As a result of his conviction, Cawthorn was disbarred.^[8]

In October 1964, Cawthorn was appointed to head the Johnson-Humphrey campaign for DeSoto Parish.^[2] However, the parish voted 75.9 percent for the Republican Goldwater-Miller slate. Goldwater was only the second Republican since 1876 to carry the Louisiana electoral vote.^[9] Cawthorn also sat on the steering committee of the Johnson campaign for Louisiana's 4th congressional district,^[2] in which U.S. Representative Joe Waggonner, a Democrat, was unopposed for his second full term in office.

In a suit heard in 1966 seeking to reclaim $160,000 to the estate of her late husband, Blanche Long, the widow of former Governor Earl Long, indicated that on or about August 20, 1960, Cawthorn delivered $6,000 in cash in Marksville in Avoyelles Parish to Long. Some two weeks later, Long died after victory in a campaign against fellow Democrat Harold B. McSween for Louisiana's 8th congressional district seat, since disbanded.^[10]

Cawthorn was later reinstated to the practice of law. He owned the Melody Ranch at Mansfield and operated Mammoth Finance Company in Shreveport. He was also a petroleum investor.^[2]

Sudden death in 1967

Shortly before his death, Cawthorn was the defense attorney in Bossier Parish for the former rodeo star Jack Favor, who was falsely accused and convicted in 1967 of the murders in 1964 of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Richey, operators of a bait stand near Haughton. After a seven-year period of incarceration at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Favor was exonerated in a second trial in 1974. After Cawthorn's death, the co-counsel, James B. Wells of Bossier City, who believed in Favor's innocence, continued to represent his client. The exoneration of Favor required a lawsuit against the then warden at Angola, C. Murray Henderson,^[11] and a request before a federal judge to grant a second trial on the premise that the trial court judge, O. E. Price, along with Bossier Parish Sheriff Willie Waggonner, Waggonner's chief deputy and successor as sheriff, Vol Dooley, and District Attorney Louis H. Padgett, Jr., had illegally conspired to rig the trial to convict Favor despite knowing of his innocence.^[12]

Cawthorn died on Veterans Day 1967 of a sudden illness in Memorial Hospital in Lake Charles, where he was stricken while on business. A week before his passing, Cawthorn had been defeated in a Democratic primary for a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives from DeSoto, Sabine, and Red River parishes in a two-member district by incumbent Joe Henry Cooper of Mansfield and subsequent Judge John S. Pickett, Jr., of Many.^[2][13] Though defeated for the legislature, he had won in the same election a seat on the Democratic Executive Committee for the 38th representative district.^[2]

Cawthorn and his wife, Merle Sloan Cawthorn (1919-1998), had a daughter, Melody Merle Cawthon (born c. 1954). He is interred at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in DeSoto Parish alongside his brothers, W. B. Cawthorn (1900-1963) and Fred Cawthorn (1908-1940).^[1]

References