Acadiana Ex-Da Stansbury Dies

By Robert Stewart
The Advocate
April 15, 2012

http://theadvocate.com/news/2571917-123/acadiana-ex-da-stansbury-dies

J. Nathan Stansbury, a district attorney for 22 years in the Lafayette area, died Saturday morning.

He was 76.

Stansbury served as district attorney for the 15th Judicial District, which covers Lafayette, Acadia and Vermilion parishes.

Stansbury prosecuted Dalton Prejean, who eventually was convicted of shooting and killing State Trooper Donald Cleveland in 1977. Prejean was executed in 1990.

Stansbury also helped arrange a 20-year plea deal sentence in 1985 for the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, a former Lafayette Catholic priest who served about half of that sentence for 33 sex-related criminal charges involving 11 of his former altar boys.

Stansbury retired in 1994 because of complications stemming from a heart attack he had at age 59.

Ann Stansbury Redlich, the former district attorney's sister, said Saturday that her brother was a "champion for the justice system."

"He felt that he did have a destiny as a district attorney," she said. "He believed firmly in the Constitution and the justice system."

Redlich said her brother also had a hand in renovating the cells in the Lafayette Parish Prison.

She said her brother was a strong, positive influence on her.

"He was the fairest-minded man I've ever known," she said.

Stansbury earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then known as Southwestern Louisiana Institute, before obtaining his law degree from Tulane University Law School, Redlich said.

Stansbury, who was captain of his Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at SLI, spent three years in the U.S. Air Force before moving to Abbeville to become the district judge's law clerk, Redlich said.

Stansbury was elected as district attorney in the 15th Judicial District in the 1970s.

Stansbury died at Our Lady of Louis Hospital at 6:30 a.m. Saturday after dealing with the complications from his heart attack in 1994, Redlich said.

No funeral arrangements have been made, Redlich said.

"He was an honorable man, and he fought very hard for life," Redlich said.