Name Bill LaFortune | Role Attorney at law | |
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Education Cascia Hall Preparatory School, University of Tulsa College of Law | ||
Judge Bill LaFortune speaking at Tulsa Christian Businessmen 10/12/17
William "Bill" LaFortune (born August 23, 1957), a native Tulsan is currently a district judge in Tulsa County. He was elected to a four-year term in 2014. He replaced former Judge Tom Gellert, who did not run for re-election, but retired from politics.
Contents
- Judge Bill LaFortune speaking at Tulsa Christian Businessmen 101217
- History in Tulsa Politics
- Jabara Case
- References
LaFortune's grandfather, Joseph LaFortune, was an oil executive and a noted philanthropist in Tulsa. His uncle, Robert J. LaFortune, was mayor of Tulsa from 1970 to 1978. He attended Cascia Hall Preparatory School, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Tulsa College of Law.
History in Tulsa Politics
Bill LaFortune served as district attorney of Tulsa County, as a special judge for Tulsa County, and as Assistant Attorney General for the state of Oklahoma. Running as a Republican, he was elected mayor in 2002, but he was unsuccessful in his bid for re-election on April 5, 2006 when he lost to his Democratic opponent, former Oklahoma Secretary of Commerce and Tourism Kathy Taylor.
LaFortune's nephew, G. T. Bynum, ran for mayor of Tulsa in 2016 and was elected to begin the role that December.
Jabara Case
LaFortune was the judge for the trial of Stanley Vernon Majors, accused of killing his neighbor, Khalid Jabara, on August 12th 2016. He served as the 34th mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma from 2002 to 2006.
In May 2016, the district attorney’s office asked the Judge LaFortune to hold Vernon Majors without bond or set bond to $300,000 for charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon case in which Majors is accused of running over Haifa Jabara, an Arab-American Christian, with a car in September 2015. Judge Lafortune set bond at only $60,000, after which Majors was released on May 25, 2016. Vernon Majors was arrested on Friday August 12, 2016, accused of shooting and killing Haifa Jabara's son, Khalid Jabara.