Billy Lutes

Billy Gene Lutes, I
District Attorney for Grant Parish
In office January 1, 1973 – November 15, 1980
Preceded by	Sam Wells
Succeeded by	Joe Beck, II
Judge of the 35th Judicial District (Grant Parish)
In office January 7, 1984 – March 1, 1994
Preceded by	Wilbur Teal "Brandy" McCain
Born	December 18, 1931 Colfax, Grant Parish Louisiana
Died	February 3, 2006 Colfax, Louisiana
Political party	Democrat
Spouse(s)	Virginia Lee Marler Lutes (married 1960-2006, his death)
Children	Julianne Lutes Despino Billy Lutes, II
Religion	Episcopalian

Billy Gene Lutes, I (December 18, 1931 – February 3, 2006), was a lawyer and businessman from his native Colfax in Grant Parish, Louisiana, who served as a district attorney and a judge of his state's 35th Judicial District.

Background

A son of Paul E. Lutes, Sr., (1908-1984) and the former Clara Sheets (1905-1997), he enlisted in the United States Army and served in an engineering battalion in the Korean War. Thereafter, he attended the Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville and then earned law degrees from both Loyola University in New Orleans and the University of Mississippi at Oxford. In addition to his Colfax law practice, he owned and operated Lutesville Sand and Gravel Company, which makes asphalt and ready-mix concrete for the construction industry.

In 1960, Lutes married the former Virginia Lee Marler (1935-2017), daughter of a prominent Colfax couple, James Everett Marler, I (died 1979), and the former Wilma Bunch (1906-1995). The Luteses had two children, both of Colfax, Julianne Despino (born March 14, 1962) and husband Randall Holden Despino (born March 8, 1961), and Billy Lutes, II (born March 31, 1964), and wife Cheryl Denise Lutes (born October 25, 1966).

Judicial career

Lutes was elected district attorney in 1972 and served until his resignation on November 15, 1980. In the special election to choose Lutes' successor as DA, Robert Kennedy, an opponent of Lutes' interim successor and former law partner Joe Beck, II, of Pollock, questioned how the DA handled a shooting on Egg Farm Road on November 30, 1979; one five men involved eventually pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. Lutes' handling of the Bobby Ray Brown case came under fire when attorney Kennedy claimed that Brown should have been prosecuted for two deaths before his later indictment for manslaughter in connection with a barroom brawl. Kennedy further claimed that brutal crimes were not prosecuted because of what he called "laziness or incompetence."

Beck, who became acting DA when Lutes stepped down, pledged in the campaign to reduce the backlog of cases in his office.Beck went on to defeat Kennedy in the special election to choose a successor for the three years remaining in Lutes' term. A Democrat, Lutes was elected in 1983 as district court judge, a post which he held from January 7, 1984, until his resignation on March 1, 1994, at the age of sixty-three. Lutes was sworn in as judge by Jeannette Theriot Knoll (born 1943), then a judge of the Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit in Lake Charles and later a justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court in New Orleans. She became acquainted with Lutes when she was an assistant DA for Avoyelles Parish. Knoll mentioned "several occasions" in which she worked with Lutes on criminal cases: "Billy is a man of integrity and legal ability qualities that are needed in a judge. ... He assumes "a great judicial task. The people of Grant Parish are very privileged to have such a man as Billy Lutes to serve as their judge."

Lutes sat on the boards of the Alexandria Country Day School in Alexandria, Louisiana, and of the Kisatchie Delta Law Enforcement agency. He was a member of the Masonic lodge and a Shriner. He was an Eagle Scout and past den leader of the Attakapas Council of the Boy Scouts of America at Alexandria Country Day School. He was a board member of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Boyce in northwestern Rapides Parish.

The Luteses and Marlers are interred at Colfax Cemetery.