Irvin Mayfield performs in 2017 in New Orleans. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail for diverting to his personal use donations that have been purported to be for public libraries after Hurricane Katrina.
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
cover caption
toggle caption
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Irvin Mayfield performs in 2017 in New Orleans. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail for diverting to his personal use donations that have been purported to be for public libraries after Hurricane Katrina.
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
NEW ORLEANS — Irvin Mayfield, the jazz trumpet participant who grew to become an emblem of New Orleans resilience after Hurricane Katrina, was sentenced to 18 months in jail Wednesday for steering charity cash meant for public libraries to his personal use.
Mayfield’s musical and enterprise associate, pianist Ronald Markham, was additionally sentenced to 18 months Wednesday in federal court docket. Each pleaded responsible final November to a single cost of conspiracy to commit fraud.
Prosecutors alleged they steered greater than $1.3 million from the New Orleans Public Library Basis to themselves, largely by funneling it by means of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, which Mayfield based.
Mayfield, allowed to talk earlier than he was sentenced, apologized to the library basis, its donors and the New Orleans group. He acknowledged the library as a spot the place he first was capable of take heed to jazz information as a toddler. That introduced one in every of a number of interruptions from U.S District Decide Jay Zainey.
Mayfield at his nightclub on Bourbon Road in New Orleans in 2009. He grew to become an emblem of New Orleans resilience after Hurricane Katrina, however was sentenced to jail on Wednesday for steering charity cash meant for public libraries to his private use.
Cheryl Gerber/AP
cover caption
toggle caption
Cheryl Gerber/AP
Mayfield at his nightclub on Bourbon Road in New Orleans in 2009. He grew to become an emblem of New Orleans resilience after Hurricane Katrina, however was sentenced to jail on Wednesday for steering charity cash meant for public libraries to his private use.
Cheryl Gerber/AP
“The very library that bought you your begin … you ripped off,” Zainey stated. At one level, Zainey advised Mayfield to show and deal with the courtroom, the place Mayfield’s supporters and supporters of the library system sat. “I hope you settle for my apology. I settle for 100% duty,” Mayfield advised the viewers.
Attorneys for the muse, whereas not talking on what sort of sentence Mayfield and Markham ought to get, stated the injury accomplished went past the $1.3 million. The scandal, they stated, additionally critically broken the muse’s status and fund-raising potential.
Supporters of Mayfield included former New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass. Compass urged that Mayfield be spared jail time so he can proceed to take care of his disabled mom and an autistic older brother. “He nonetheless fixes his brother’s meals like he did when he was just a little child,” Compass stated.
Protection lawyer Claude Kelley stated nothing could be gained by sending Mayfield to jail for a non-violent crime. He pointed to Mayfield’s mentoring of younger musicians and different group growth efforts led by the musician and stated Mayfield has “and unimaginable capability to actually make it proper.”
“Ebook One,” an album by Mayfield and the Jazz Orchestra, received a Grammy in 2010. However the library basis scandal led to his resignation as creative director of the orchestra in 2016 whereas scrutiny of his position with the library grew following investigative studies by WWL-TV.
Mayfield was amongst musicians who took a high-profile position in selling New Orleans after levee failures and catastrophic flooding throughout Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mayfield’s father died within the floodwaters.
Mayfield was additionally a founding member of the Afro-Caribbean jazz ensemble Los Hombres Calientes.
Prosecutors stated that along with orchestra working bills and salaries for Mayfield and Markham, library basis cash went into Mayfield’s private financial institution accounts and towards the acquisition of a gold-plated trumpet.
Previous to his indictment and responsible plea, Mayfield had outlined grand plans for the town’s libraries in an AP interview in 2008.
“A library is democracy inside 4 partitions, the liberty to data,” he stated then. “Jazz is democracy we hear.”
