State district Judge Arthur Hunter in New Orleans ordered District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office and the public defender's office to compile a list of poor pre-trial defendants, with details of each case, for him to review.
Once it is complete, he will begin releasing inmates if the state does not begin providing enough money to cover the needed amount of public defenders, he said.

Hunter said people "have been waiting in jail pre-Katrina and post-Katrina to have their cases heard and victims, victims' family members and witnesses have also been waiting to testify and seek closure."

Meanwhile, poor defendants awaiting trial have been denied not only the right to adequate legal representation, but also the constitutional right to have an attorney at all, Hunter wrote in a court order.

"Hurricane Katrina exposed a critical wound within the Indigent Defender Office," the judge wrote. "But instead of the state providing a cure, it has only prescribed a Band-Aid and the bleeding continues."

Jordan could not be immediately reached because he was in Tampa, Fla., at a conference, his spokeswoman said.

Hunter issued the ruling after a hearing in the case of Kenneth Edwards, 32, who is awaiting trial on a December 2005 armed robbery charge. Edwards' criminal record includes convictions for possession of crack cocaine and prostitution.

The ruling follows one Hunter made in February to suspend about 250 cases in his section from prosecution since the defendants lack public defenders.

No jury trials have been held since August. Jordan's prosecutors work out of a former nightclub in the Warehouse District since their offices on South White Street were ruined by flooding.

The clerk of court has relocated to an office in the 300 block of Magazine Street. And judges preside in borrowed courtrooms at U.S. District Court because the parish courthouse at Tulane and Broad remains uninhabitable.

Hunter's latest order came after he took testimony from Orleans Parish Chief Indigent Defender Tilden Greenbaum.

New Orleans has fewer than ten of the 42 public defenders it employed pre-Katrina. Meanwhile, thousands of criminal defendants have been scattered across the state, after the evacuation of about 7,000 inmates in parish prison during Katrina-related flooding.

In New Orleans, about 85 percent of criminal defendants are represented by public defenders.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco has proposed doubling state financing for the public defender office in Orleans, to $20 million, but neither the administration nor Legislative leaders appear prepared to back bills that would dramatically change the system.

In February, Hunter, a former New Orleans police officer elected to the bench in 1996, warned the state Attorney General's Office to expect a flood of motions from impoverished defendants demanding trial or release unless state lawmakers sent money for lawyers. The motions would have to be defended on the state's dime, he added.