Shreveport attorney pleads no contest

SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) — A plea of no contest has been entered by a Shreveport attorney who was accused of illegally accessing and disclosing confidential court documents while she was a candidate for a seat on a court bench.

Trina “Trinh” Chu, 48, was set for a bench trial but instead entered the plea Monday, Oct. 24 in Caddo District Court to one count of offenses against intellectual property.

District Judge Lee Faulkner Jr. then sentenced Chu to serve six months in the parish jail, suspended the jail term and placed her on six months of unsupervised probation. She also must pay $45 to the Indigent Defender fund and $2,000 in court costs.

Chu, who at the time of her candidacy listed her address as the 8800 block of Youree Drive in Shreveport, qualified July 24, 2020, as a candidate for the 3rd District, Election Section 2C seat on Louisiana’s 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal bench. That election was held Nov. 3, 2020.

Chu allegedly used a USB flash drive to copy sensitive court documents from the 2nd Circuit’s files during her brief time as a law clerk to Chief Judge Henry N. Brown Jr.

Digital forensic examinations, in-person interviews and search warrants that were served on email providers led sheriff’s Detective Douglass Smith to determine that Chu forwarded three confidential court documents to her personal email account in July 2018.

Authorities said those documents were about a case the 2nd Circuit was considering. It involved a judgment against Chu’s close friend Hahn Williams for more than $460,000. The Caddo district attorney’s office described it as a million-dollar judgment. Chu reportedly forwarded those documents directly to Williams.

Chu, after being terminated by the 2nd Circuit, was arrested on one count each of trespass against state computers and offenses against intellectual property.

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