A grand jury on Wednesday indicted former Louisiana House Speaker Clay Schexnayder on felony theft and malfeasance in office charges involving a rare artifact that had gone missing from the state Capitol. Schexnayder was accused of stealing an ancient cypress board worth more than $25,000 that had been on display in the Louisiana state Capitol for decades, the AP reports. The felony theft charge can carry a sentence of up to 20 years or a $50,000 fine.
The Times Picayune and the Advocate reported in September that Schexnayder had taken the board from the Capitol more than a decade ago to display in his legislative office in Gonzales, Louisiana. Schexnayder previously told the newspapers that he had received permission to take the board, an account which other state officials rejected. "You don't get to keep state property, it doesn't belong to you," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. A spokesperson for Murrill's office said the board "still has not been recovered."
The board, around 6 feet by 20 feet, came from a tree believed to have been 1,264 years old when it was cut down in 1936. The Times-Picayune reports that Julius Mullins, a retired doctor whose grandfather donated the board to the state in 1955, asked Murrill to find out what had happened to it.
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WAFB reports that Schexnayder was "stunned" when he spoke to the station about the indictment. "I left the board and computer stuff there for the state to pick up," he said "I left it there like any representative does. What happened to it—I don't know." Schexnayder, a Republican, served as a state representative for a stretch of southeast Louisiana from 2012 to 2024 before being term limited. From 2020 to 2024, he was House speaker. In 2023, he ran for secretary of state and lost in the primary.
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