Gil Dozier

Dozier was one of two sons born in rural Fields in Beauregard Parish in southwestern Louisiana to the educators A. J. Dozier (1907–1997) and the former Sylvia Mae Hennigan (1910–1977). Dozier's brother, Kenneth Rufus Dozier (born 1938) of DeRidder, is partly named for their paternal grandfather, Rufus Dozier. Sylvia Dozier's mother, the former Myrtie Mae Whitman, died before her fortieth birthday in 1927 in childbirth with her ninth pregnancy.^[2] Sylvia's father, Gilbert Franklin Hennigan, for whom Gil Dozier received his first name, was a rancher, a member and president of the Beauregard Parish School Board, and from 1944 to 1956 a state senator for Allen, Calcasieu, Cameron, Jefferson Davis, and Beauregard parishes.^[3]

As chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Hennigan was instrumental in the upgrading in 1950 of McNeese State University in Lake Charles to a four-year institution. Toby O'Rillion, the husband of Dozier's maternal aunt Hope,^[2] ran for the office of state comptroller in 1959 on the Bill Dodd intraparty ticket but was eliminated from the runoff election won by Roy R. Theriot, then the mayor of Abbeville in Vermilion Parish. O'Rillion was running to succeed Dodd in the former position of state auditor, renamed comptroller. With the new state constitution of 1974, the comptroller position became non-elected.

A. J. Dozier obtained a master's degree from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He began teaching in 1930 at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The family moved to Beauregard Parish, where he taught or was a principal for thirty-seven years in several locations, including Fields, Singer, and Merryville. Sylvia taught in DeRidder.^[4] After Sylvia died in 1977, the next year A. J. married the former Elizabeth Jane Huckaby Kelly (1918–2008), the widow of Elton D. Kelly (1916–1968), a football coach at Minden High School in Minden in Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, whose team won the Class AA state championship in 1963. The Kellys, who married in 1940, had three children, David Kelly, Kathy Kelly Hynson of Rosenberg, Texas, and Debby Kelly-Hiebert, Gil Dozier's step-siblings. The Kellys were science teachers in Minden; both had earlier been on the faculty at DeRidder High School. After Elton's death, Elizabeth, or "Libby," retired from teaching, became a registered dietitian and worked at various medical facilities in the DeRidder area. She also managed a small apartment complex. She died in 2008 at the age of ninety in Needville in Fort Bend County, Texas.^[5][6]

Dozier played basketball from 1952 to 1955 for the Ragin' Cajuns of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, when the institution was known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana.^[7][8] He obtained his bachelor's degree from ULL in 1955.

From 1957 to 1959,^[1] he served in the United States Air Force, having attained the ranks of captain and then lieutenant colonel. He was trained in North Carolina and stationed in California, where the two older of his five children by the former Jean Helen Kirkland of Plaquemine in Iberville Parish were born. A pilot at the age of twenty-four, Dozier commanded aircraft in the military transport service and flew missions to South Korea, Japan, Hawaii, Southeast Asia, and the Bering Strait.^[9] From 1965 until at least 1980, he was a member of the Air Force Reserve.^[1]

After his military service, Dozier graduated from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He taught in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program while earning his Juris Doctor degree at night.^[10]

As a youth, Dozier was a page and then legislative assistant for his grandfather, State Senator Gilbert Hennigan. In 1971–1972, he was the campaign manager for U.S. Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana. Ellender died in the summer of 1972 while campaigning for a seventh term; Democrat J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., then of Shreveport was elected to succeed Ellender in the 1972 general election. In 1974, Dozier ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana Public Service Commission.^[9]

In 1965, Dozier established a law office in Baton Rouge.^[1] On November 1, 1975, he was elected agriculture commissioner in the first nonpartisan blanket primary ever held in Louisiana. He led the balloting with 42 percent of the vote. Long-term incumbent Democrat Dave L. Pearce trailed with 30 percent and decided not to pursue a general election (commonly called the runoff in Louisiana) contest with Dozier, who therefore won the position outright.^[11] A third candidate was the outgoing State Representative Lantz Womack of Winnsboro in Franklin Parish, who like Pearce had roots in West Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana.^[12]

Though Dozier had planned to run for governor in the 1979 nonpartisan blanket primary in which no incumbent was listed on the ballot, his ensuing legal problems and unsavory headlines made such a race highly speculative. In 1976, he had given an emergency appointment to the radio broadcaster and campaign consultant, R. T. "Dan" Hanchey, with the idea that Hanchey would manage the gubernatorial campaign. Hanchey, whose broadcasting career included stints in Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, recalls that he left the post when Dozier's legal troubles began to surmount.^[13]

Dozier instead ran for reelection as agriculture commissioner in the primary held on October 27, 1979. Agribusinessman and fellow Democrat Bob Odom of Zachary in East Baton Rouge Parish, who had worked in three positions under Pearce and was thereafter fired from the department by Dozier, defeated both Dozier and Pearce, who made his last comeback attempt for the office which he had held from 1952 to 1956 and again from 1960 to 1976. Leland George Rawls (born August 9, 1950), a young farmer from Bastrop in Morehouse Parish and then a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee, also ran in the 1979 primary. Rawls carried a hoe during the campaign as a reminder of his promise to "promote, protect, and advance the Agriculture Department."^[14] Rawls finished far behind the three leading Democrats. Odom prevailed with 563,515 votes (45.9 percent) to Dozier's 382,486 (31.1 percent). Pearce polled 163,873 (13.4 percent), Rawls 67,021 (5.5 percent), and 50,045 votes (4 percent) were cast for still another Democrat, Joe Coco.^[15]

In the general election held on December 8, 1979, Odom handily unseated Dozier, 853,578 (67.2 percent) to 415,714 (32.8 percent). The general election drew some 43,000 more voters in the agriculture commissioner's race than had participated in the first round of balloting. Dozier's percent hardly changed from the primary to the general election.^[16]

The month after his defeat for reelection, Dozier was formally charged in a five-count indictment with violations of both the Hobbs and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations acts. On September 23, 1980, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana convicted Dozier of extortion and racketeering. The sentence of ten years imprisonment and a $25,000 fine was suspended pending appeal, and Dozier remained free on bail.^[17] Among specific instances of extortion cited: Dozier sought $25,000 in 1977 from Nicholas Fakouri and the Vermillion Dairymen's Cooperative Association in Abbeville in Vermilion Parish in return for a loan guarantee from the Louisiana State Market Commission. He also attempted to extort $20,000 in 1976 from the Louisiana Computer Company in return for favorable treatment from the state. In all the incidents specifically cited, Dozier maintained that "his various solicitations were nothing more than the ordinary fundraising activities of a public official faced with the financial burdens of electioneering."^[18]

While on bond, Dozier was arrested in a jury tampering scheme after he asked Huey P. Martin, who then solicited the assistance of George Davis, to contact the petit jurors to declare in letters to the court that deliberations in Dozier's trial had been improper. For their compensation, Martin and Davis were to split $50,000 for each of five years.^[17] Dozier was also found to have attempted to hire a (1) burglar to break into the office of a business competitor and (2) a hitman for an unknown target. District Judge Frank Joseph Polozola, a recent appointee of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, hence added another eight years to the sentence though there was no indictment or additional trial proceedings.^[19][20]

Dozier had faced a potential eighty years in prison and fines of up to $55,000 when he was found guilty on four of five counts against him:^[21] one for racketeering and three for extortion. He was convicted of taking bribes of at least $10,000 and attempting to extort $267,000 from persons doing business with the state agriculture department, such as dairy processors.^[7][22] Prosecutors asserted that Dozier had turned his department into a "cash register" to bilk campaign donations from those having business with the state.^[21]

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans upheld Dozier's conviction. The court said that Dozier had used his office illegally when he set a price to assist someone who had a problem with a state agency or a contract issue.^[23]

On June 24, 1982, the district court revoked Dozier's probation and imposed a prison term of eight additional years on one of the counts in the original indictment. The eight years was to have been served consecutively with the two other five-year prison terms. The court ordered Dozier to serve a minimum of eighteen months of the eight years before he could be eligible for parole. Dozier was ordered to be placed on five years' probation once released from prison.^[17]