Former Mandeville Mayor Eddie Price and former police sergeant David Hurstell will be tried on perjury charges.

On Friday the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request to throw out the perjury charges filed against the two men.

When it received news of that decision, the state Attorney General’s Office did not waste anytime in moving forward with its case against Price and Hurstell.

EDDIE PRICE

On Monday, the Attorney General’s Office filed a motion requesting the court set a trial date so the case could finally be heard.

Price and Hurstell were indicted last August, accused of intervening in the arrest of former Speedy Oil Change Owner Gary Copp.

Price reportedly asked Hurstell to arrest Copp on a misdemeanor offense instead of a felony charge. Price, according to the state Attorney General’s Office, then allegedly lied when he took the stand during Copp’s trial in January 2008 and denied that he had tried to influence the case against Copp.

Price’s attorney Ralph Whalen argued unsuccessfully in August when the case came before District Judge A. J. Hand that while Price may have lied, the lie he told was not material to the case and therefore did not meet the requirement of perjury. He filed a motion to have the perjury charge thrown out.

Hand denied that motion, and Whalen filed an appeal.

That writ challenged Hand’s legal ruling that the statements made by Price and Hurstell in the Copp case were in fact material and thus prosecutable under the perjury statute.  

Hand must now set a date for the case to be heard.

Price has already pled guilty in federal court to mail fraud and tax evasion. He was sentenced to serve just over five years in federal prison on those charges. He was slated to report last Thursday to the federal prison camp at Leavenworth, Kan.; however, the former mayor was granted a 30-day extension as Whalen works to have that sentenced reduced. A hearing on that sentence reduction will be held Sept. 9.