Louisiana's Justice System in Tatters


Dec. 3, 2005
The National Journal
By Brian Friel

If you can't quite appreciate the devastation that still defines life in post-Katrina New Orleans, then consider the criminal-justice system there, to the extent that there is one. More specifically, take a look at the challenges facing Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan. It will take quite a long look.

Before Hurricane Katrina swept across southeastern Louisiana in late August, Jordan had 3,000 pending cases to prosecute, from minor misdemeanors to murders. But when the storm flooded New Orleans, it also flooded the city's prison complex and led corrections officials to mount a harried three-day rescue operation that scattered some 6,000 prisoners to jails throughout Louisiana and even as far away as Florida. Thus, when the waters began to recede, Jordan didn't even know where the accused were. Just finding jailed defendants and matching them to their charges took the better part of three months, because records have been hard to come by and some prisoners have been, well, uncooperative.

Now that he knows where the prisoners are, Jordan's next challenge is locating evidence and witnesses. Police evidence rooms were flooded, and lawyers and officers are slowly trying to reconstitute case files. Written police reports, crucial to dealing with cases, are hard to get, because the New Orleans Police Department is decimated and several hundred of its 1,500 officers abandoned their posts during the storm. "There may be several hundred individuals who were arrested, but no detailed police report was ever submitted to the office, and therefore it is impossible to make an intelligent decision to determine if the charges have any basis in fact," Jordan said in an interview.

The evacuation of New Orleans means that witnesses are scattered to the wind, and tracking them down is a challenge that Jordan's office is still in the midst of tackling.

Even when Jordan is able to match a defendant to a charge, to get a police report, to review evidence, and to find witnesses, he will face yet another problem when he tries to bring a case to court: no juries. With New Orleans depopulated by an estimated 80 percent, putting together a jury pool is no easy task. Even the question of how to get notices to potential jurors is one that hasn't yet been solved, because many people who have returned to the city are living in temporary housing. Some of Jordan's own employees are temporarily living on a cruise ship provided by the federal government. Plus, defense lawyers are likely to challenge any jury that could currently be constituted, on the grounds that it would not reflect the racial and economic makeup of pre-Katrina New Orleans.

In addition, Jordan has a major money problem: New Orleans is surviving primarily on loans from the federal government. Because of money shortfalls, he has had to lay off 57 of his 250 employees since September. He let go secretaries, victim- and witness-assistance staff, and administrative personnel. In addition, 20 of his 90 attorneys have quit for a variety of reasons, such as being unable or unwilling to return to New Orleans. The lack of housing for his employees has become one of Jordan's central concerns.

The staffing problems naturally make it more difficult for the district attorney's office to do its job. "Either some of those things are not going to be done at all, or they will be done but it will be work that will distract the prosecutors from their primary function," Jordan said, "and so it's going to make it more difficult to prosecute cases."

Even worse, Jordan is operating under a court order to make prosecutorial decisions by January 6 on the backlog of 3,000 prehurricane cases. "I'm confident the court will be realistic about that deadline," Jordan said. "If we act in good faith and do everything we can, the court will allow us more time where that is necessary and where that will lead to an intelligent decision." If not, judges may order Jordan to free some prisoners who have been sitting in jail since before the
hurricane without being charged. "The court will be sensitive to releasing people charged with heinous crimes," Jordan added.

The challenges Jordan and other Louisiana prosecutors, law enforcement personnel, and court officials face in reconstituting the justice system appear to be unprecedented in American history. Evidence is in disarray, prisoners and witnesses are scattered, justice personnel themselves are trying to survive in a disaster zone, and many prisons are destroyed or unusable.

More than 10,000 prisoners, including 6,000 from Orleans Parish, were moved because of the hurricane, according to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Because of the disarray involved in that relocation effort, many people who should not still be in jail are locked up. Meanwhile, a few prisoners who escaped during the flood are believed to have gone on to commit other crimes. One convicted murderer who escaped during the flood, George Schaefer, was arrested on November 2 in Jones County, Miss., and charged with killing a man during a burglary. "There are issues out the gazoo," said E. Pete Adams, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association. "There are going to be writs and appeals, and everything's going to be litigated."

Prisoner advocates are apoplectic about the situation in Louisiana, arguing that people are being held far too long without due process. Inmates have complained of mistreatment by corrections officials, prompting a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union against Orleans Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman, who is responsible for the jail complex that flooded when the New Orleans levees broke. Defense lawyers are bombarding the courts with demands that their clients be released. So far, however, judges are largely giving prosecutors more time to sort out the mess.

David Price, president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that the justice system is stalled out. "Everything has ground to a halt," he said. "There seem to be a whole lot of people who are in custody who shouldn't be."

Adams said that officials are making progress in getting the justice system going again. Courts, after holding proceedings for the past three months in makeshift quarters in undamaged parts of Louisiana and Texas, are beginning to open up again in affected parishes. Most courts are expected to reopen by early next year. "The ship is upright," Adams said. "If it's not sailing, it's at least watertight." But the system faces continuing aftershocks from the hurricane, largely driven by money problems.

Many parishes' criminal-justice systems rely on court fees and revenue from parking tickets to pay for their operations. Some also normally receive supplements from local governments' general revenue funds. But that money is no longer flowing in to keep courts and public defenders' offices running. "What we're beginning to experience is a dramatic choke-down of the lifeline of revenues that keep operations going," Adams said. For the justice system, "some sense of normalcy will resume after the first of the year, but it's about that time that the hole in revenue will hit home. You're basically going to have people not being able to draw salaries."

To cope with that problem, local officials are asking Congress to create a $100 million grant program through the Justice Department that would provide operating funds to Louisiana courts, district attorney's offices, and public defenders to get them through the beginning of 2006. "We will need the money pretty soon after the first of the year," Adams said. "The hole is going to hit in February. We don't know what we're going to do. We're hoping that Congress will act."

But he said officials worry that Washington has moved on and is no longer paying much attention to Katrina-related matters. "We're afraid that Congress is becoming Katrina-deaf," Adams said.

In the longer term, reformers are hoping that the hurricane will spur changes to Louisiana's and New Orleans's criminal-justice systems, which like many aspects of the state's and city's governance were widely lampooned even before the storm hit. "New Orleans has long had a reputation for both corruption and roughness in dealing with suspects," said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, based in Atlanta. "One would hope there would be an opportunity to make some changes in the culture there." Critics also question the tenuous funding arrangement for courts and public defenders. "Why have this ridiculous parking-ticket system anyway?" Bright said.

But such longer-term reforms will be hard to address for officials just trying to keep their heads above the mess that Katrina made of the criminal-justice system. On top of the pending cases, new ones are being added. Jordan's office is investigating looting problems and suspected police brutality in the months following Katrina, and is looking into possible corruption or malfeasance in the construction of the city's flood walls. "The challenges are very substantial," Jordan said.

He is relieved by at least one recent development: Jordan recently found a place for himself and his employees to work for the next four or five months, since their permanent offices were heavily damaged. "We now have a location for the district attorney's shop," he said. "That's a former nightclub."


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