By: Jillian Kramer | nola.com | July 26, 2025
An Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judge quietly stepped away from the bench last month, prompting the Louisiana Supreme Court to install a temporary replacement.
Retired Judge Calvin Johnson began presiding over Judge Darryl Derbigny’s courtroom on May 27, according to the court order appointing Johnson as a pro tempore judge, and will serve until June 29.
Derbigny has not publicly explained his absence.
An administrator for the Louisiana Supreme Court denied a public records request on Wednesday from The Times-Picayune | The Advocate for the letter Derbigny sent requesting a leave of absence, writing in an email that communications between judges and the high court are “privileged and are not subject to public disclosure.”
Derbigny did not return a phone call requesting an interview, and questions sent to Robert Kazik, judicial administrator for the Criminal District Court, went unanswered this week.
Derbigny’s temporary departure from the bench came just weeks after the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a local crime watchdog, released a court-efficiency study that found Derbigny presides over the longest and oldest felony docket among the court’s 12 judges.
His average caseload last year, according to the study, was “almost double the court average,” with a little more than half the cases open longer than a year.
Derbigny is currently serving his fourth term, which ends Dec. 31, 2026, on the court. He was first elected to its bench in 2002.
The commission also ranked Derbigny as the court’s least efficient judge in 2008, shortly before he won his first reelection. At the time, Derbigny called the commission’s findings “a snapshot in time” and its criticism “rather dated.”
A subsequent report released by the commission later that year showed a dramatic reduction in Derbigny’s caseload.
Metropolitan Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche said this week that he shared the commission’s report with the Louisiana Supreme Court, but that “I have had no communication with them [the justices]” since then.
The commission has continued to track Derbigny’s docket since Johnson’s appointment, Goyeneche said.
“His [Derbigny’s] docket is smaller and the pretrial inmate population in [the jail] is lower after his departure,” he said, calling the decreases “a sign” that Johnson “is beginning to move his [Derbigny’s] docket.”
In 2017, the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered Derbigny to repay more than $57,000 in improper health care expense benefits, after finding he accepted benefits beyond what was allowed by law. He was cleared of any ethical misconduct.