Pressure is mounting on the incoming St. Tammany Parish coroner to resign before he takes office.
On Thursday, the St. Tammany Parish Council approved a resolution demanding Dr. Christopher Tape resign after learning he was charged with child sex abuse in 2001. Prosecutors waited too long to bring the case to trial, causing a judge to drop the charges.
Despite the council's posturing, a legal analyst says there's nothing the council can do to get rid of Tape.
"The only recourse now would have is to institute a recall, which is a tall order under Louisiana statutory law," Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino said to WWL's Tommy Tucker. "That requires a lot of effort, a lot of momentum, (and) a lot of people walking the streets with recall petitions, and as we've seen in Orleans Parish, even when there is a significant public sentiment against a public official, even then it's difficult to get the required number of signatures."
Ciolino says anyone who organizes a recall effort against Tape would have six months to gather the signatures needed to put the effort on a ballot.
"It would require 20 percent of all the registered voters in St. Tammany Parish to sign a petition," Ciolino said, adding that 20 percent of registered voters in St. Tammany is about 40,000 people.
Ciolino said any recall effort against Tape would be an uphill battle, referring to the recall effort against New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell as an example of how difficult recalling an elected official is.
"They did not come close to getting all the valid signatures needed to recall her, and there was at least a pretty significant public sentiment that that was a good effort," Ciolino said.
Tape is scheduled to take office on March 24.
