The defender

Some lawyers are ambulance chasers. Donald Sauviac is a float chaser.

A big man of 41 years and 300 pounds, with a tawny complexion, a delicate Vandyke beard and a diamond ring the size of a doubloon, Sauviac bills himself as "The King of Mardi Gras Criminal Defense." As such, he specializes in some of life's seamier events: urinating in public, drunk in public, simple battery and the ever-popular lewd conduct.

His busy season, he says, is the weekend before Mardi Gras. His clients are overwhelmingly young male out-of-towners. His job is to get them out of Orleans Parish Prison as quickly as possible. And his life's philosophy is conveniently summed up by his phone number: 1-800-NOTGUILTY.

So just exactly how not-guilty are these clients? Are they really-and-truly not guilty or wink-wink not guilty? Sauviac explains it this way, with clarity and fervor: "Hey, it's Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras! Everybody there is drunk! There's nobody on Bourbon Street that's not drunk! My client was drinking, oh yeah. But all one million people on Bourbon Street were drinking, too.

"These people come to New Orleans and they're on Bourbon Street and all of a sudden something happens and the cops grab everybody in proximity for being drunk in public.

"Drunk? On Bourbon Street? Go figure!"

The man's got a point. . . . . . .

Sauviac is actually capable of working up a self-righteous head of steam on the subject.

"Somebody will see a fight," he says, "and they'll walk up to see what's going on and a cop will arrest them as if they were involved in the incident. And they're, like, a spectator.

"This is a black eye for the city of New Orleans. Somebody has the money and the interest in travel to come see the city and he ends up spending his time here locked up in Orleans Parish Prison. There are a lot of wrongful arrests out there."

In those not-so-wrongful cases, Sauviac says, the big problem is that his clients don't get it because they're not from here, as they say in New Orleans.

"The locals understand the atmosphere of Mardi Gras and what you can do and what you can't do," he says. "The out-of-towners do not have that understanding."

Locals know, for instance, that you can't cross a police barricade, that you can't climb up to a balcony, that you can't start a fight. And most of them don't.

But tourists, he says, think that maybe in so licentious a place, anything goes.

"So they get drunk, they get thrown in the back of a van with 20, 30 other drunks, they get hauled into jail and they're told to take off their clothes and put on this orange uniform."

And that's where Sauviac comes in.

Typically, he is first contacted by a client's family or friends. Then he goes online, where he can find most of the information he needs, including the status of a case, what the charges are, whether bond has been set. Then he swings into action.

"I'll go to the jail," he says, "I'll find the guy, I'll say hey, your family's hired me, you should be rolling out of here soon. Chill out."

The scene at Tulane and Broad around Mardi Gras, Sauviac says, is raucous.

"They've got preachers pretending to be lawyers," he says, "and bail bondsmen pretending to be lawyers and hustlers for the bail bondsmen and hustlers for the lawyers. It's like a three-ring circus down there."

In an average case, if there are no complications, Sauviac says it takes him 4 to 12 hours to get a client out of jail. Most of them are released on their own recognizance. Last year he handled 100 cases in the two weeks before Mardi Gras.

Needless to say, this get-out-of-jail card is anything but free. The cost to the clients is somewhere between $750 and $1,500, depending on how many charges they have against them, whether they have a criminal record, whether they want to plead guilty or fight.

And, oh, that would be cash or credit card only. No checks, thank you very much.

. . . . . . .

Like a character out of "Guys and Dolls," Donald Sauviac sits in his plaid chair with his open collar, his half-done tie and his ample paunch, behind a desk that is small by comparison. His modest office on Canal Boulevard is decked out in knotty-pine paneling with a gallery of framed pictures that range from kids and maps and college degrees to Sister Helen Prejean and the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a pencil drawing of Clint Eastwood.

Sauviac has a certain unflappable air about him, with his steady, calm voice and his self-assured delivery. He has a dry sense of humor and a willingness to make fun of himself. There is not a trace of hubris visible.

A native New Orleanian, Sauviac came of age in Lakeview, went to Brother Martin and married his high school sweetheart. They live in Metairie with their four daughters, ranging from 6 to 18.

The secret of his unusual legal practice appears to be threefold.

First, he works hard, starting routinely at 6 in the morning and going until midnight.

"I've got to," he says. "I've got so many kids."

Second, he's happy to take jobs that others wouldn't. Aside from his Mardi Gras cases, his practice, he says, is heavy with traffic violations, municipal offenses and a range of serious felony cases, including child abuse, drug distribution, sex offenses and murder. Anything that involves a jury, he says, appeals to him.

"My mom always wanted me to be a corporate lawyer -- ivory tower, downtown, fancy," he says. "I always told her, you know, I could do those things but it's just not fun. It's not like picking juries and watching miracles happen. This is the oldest form of legalized gambling in Louisiana."

And third, Sauviac has a flair for marketing. More like a passion, actually. He's done $250,000 worth of marketing in the past two years.

"Most lawyers," he says "sit in their office and wait for clients to come in."

Not Sauviac. He goes after them -- in a big way.

There are the matchbooks, the coffee mugs, the bumper stickers, the billboards, the hats, the ink pens, the parade schedules, the newspaper ads, the TV spots and the infomercials -- all with the 1-800-NOTGUILTY message.

There are the plastic bead-bags -- 16,000 of them, many distributed by taxi drivers and hotel front desks.

There is the Web site (bigeasyjustice.com), with a special link for "Express Mardi Gras service."

There are the shills, who wander through the French Quarter with signs on poles strapped on their backs, like high-rise sandwich boards.

There are the T-shirts, which he pays people to throw off balconies in the French Quarter.

"We even give some away to T-shirt shops on Bourbon Street," he says. "They're theirs to sell, but the deal is, they have to put them in the window or on the racks as you walk in the door."

And then there is the yellow suit. It's not a Mardi Gras thing necessarily. It's a thing he uses for the last day of a jury trial.

"Canary yellow," he says with pride. And therein lies the appeal.

"If you show up in court on the last day of a trial in a murder case wearing a bright yellow suit, you have nothing to hide."

His wife, he says, cringes at the notion.

"She is embarrassed beyond belief," he says. "She's as Metairie as you can get -- a schoolteacher, first grade, Catholic. She's quiet, conservative, reserved. Big Italian family. She's never lived further than a 10-block radius from her house. This whole thing is one big embarrassment to her."

But for Sauviac, the shtick works.

"It draws a lot of attention," he says. "It shows confidence, willingness to go out on a limb. It's flashy, it's showy."

That it is.

. . . . . . .

 

Staff writer Elizabeth Mullener can be reached at emullener@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3393.