Christopher Paul is running unopposed for police chief in Elizabeth, Louisiana, while facing two pending child-rape charges. He has not been convicted, and state law does not automatically bar him from taking office.
Most political candidates spend the final stretch of a campaign worrying about turnout, yard signs and whether somebody remembered to order enough pizza for election night. Christopher Paul has a different problem: he is effectively set to become police chief of a small Louisiana town while facing two pending charges of child rape.
Paul, the Republican candidate for police chief in Elizabeth, Louisiana, is now running unopposed after his only opponent withdrew from the race. According to The Guardian, Paul is accused in separate cases involving girls who say he raped them in 2005 and 2006. He has not been convicted, is out on $60,000 bail and remains legally eligible to hold office unless a felony conviction changes that.
The situation became dramatically stranger when Paul’s opponent, Zachary LaCaze, discovered that his federal employment made him ineligible to run for the local office. LaCaze withdrew after the deadline for replacing candidates had already passed, leaving Paul as the only name left standing.
That means a man awaiting trial on two child-rape charges could become the person formally responsible for leading the town’s police department. There are political scandals, and then there are sentences that sound like somebody accidentally combined the crime blotter with the municipal ballot.
The charges involve allegations that Paul assaulted two girls roughly two decades ago. Prosecutors brought the cases years later, and Paul has denied wrongdoing. Under the American legal system he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty, which is not a technicality but a fundamental legal protection.
Louisiana law, however, creates a separate question from criminal guilt: whether someone facing serious charges can still assume an elected law-enforcement position before the courts resolve them. In this case, the answer appears to be yes. A pending felony charge does not automatically disqualify a candidate from taking office.
That has sent the town scrambling for alternatives. Elizabeth’s governing council has scheduled a special election for December 12 to ask voters whether the police-chief position should be changed from elected to appointed. If voters approve the switch, local leaders could have more control over who occupies the job.
There is also a potential recall process under Louisiana law, though that would require signatures from a significant share of eligible voters. In a small town, gathering the required signatures is possible, but it is hardly the smooth handoff most communities imagine when choosing the person who will oversee arrests, investigations and public safety.
Local officials have stressed the presumption of innocence, and that part is important. Paul has not been found guilty of the allegations against him. At the same time, the office he is poised to occupy is not an ordinary municipal seat. The police chief is responsible for enforcing the same criminal laws under which Paul himself has been charged.
That creates an obvious conflict of public confidence even before any legal conflict is established. Residents are being asked to trust a police department whose incoming leader could simultaneously be defending himself against allegations involving some of the most serious crimes in the criminal code.
The Youth Peace & Justice Foundation has publicly urged Paul to withdraw. Local officials have also acknowledged the extraordinary nature of the situation while emphasizing that the law currently allows his candidacy to proceed.
Paul could still choose to step aside. The criminal cases could also resolve before he formally assumes or fully settles into office. But unless one of those things happens, the town may find itself with a police chief whose own next major courtroom appearance is not necessarily going to involve him sitting on the law-enforcement side of the room.
The entire episode is a reminder that ballot rules are usually written for normal situations. They assume candidates will lose because voters reject them, withdraw because they change their minds or become disqualified for relatively straightforward reasons. They are not necessarily designed for the moment when the last eligible candidate standing is awaiting trial on two child-rape charges.
The clean factual line is uncomfortable enough without embellishment: Paul is accused, not convicted; his opponent withdrew; he is effectively unopposed; and Louisiana law does not automatically bar him from taking office because of the pending charges.
The question now is whether Elizabeth changes the structure of its police department before the legal system answers the much bigger question hanging over the man poised to run it.
