Found by lawyer

And it wasn't the prison system or the prosecution or the courts that found him, but rather a pro bono defense attorney acting on a tip from other prisoners at the St. Charles Parish jail where Parra-Sanchez was held for the longest period. The attorney, Pamela Metzger, a professor with the Tulane Law Clinic, said "He has been terribly wronged."

In an interview Tuesday, Parra-Sanchez, wearing long curly hair and a wide smile, said his family also suffered during his incarceration. Without his salary, the family struggled financially, unable to make rent on their house in Bakersfield. They ended up in a trailer in an RV park. On the witness stand, Parra-Sanchez broke down in tears when he described how his oldest daughter moved out of the house to live with her boyfriend to lessen the financial burden on his wife.

Because of the expense of collect calls from prison, he was unable to talk much to his wife or children. Instead, they mostly sent letters, he said. Today, Parra-Sanchez hopes to begin his journey home to see his family for the first time in more than a year, catching a train that will take him to California. The ticket was purchased through a donation from Touro Synagogue.

When alerted to Parra-Sanchez's situation, Derbigny released him from jail Nov. 17. On Tuesday, Derbigny gave him permission to leave the New Orleans area. The judge next month will consider a defense motion to drop the case on the grounds that Parra-Sanchez has been denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial.

Parra-Sanchez's arraignment 400 days after his arrest is highly unusual by normal legal standards, a fact that Tulane Law Clinic student attorney Alex Wells noted during Tuesday's hearing. Typically, the district attorney has 60 days to decide whether to accept felony charges against somebody in jail. The defendant should appear in court to plead "not guilty" or "guilty" within a maximum of 30 days, unless prosecutors can get a judge's approval for a longer delay.

Not unusual

In the post-Katrina criminal justice environment, Parra-Sanchez's case isn't unique. Metzger and others at the Tulane Law Clinic have discovered at least three other inmates lost in the prison system after they were arrested in the weeks after the storm. All of these defendants were booked through "Camp Greyhound," at the Union Passenger Terminal on Loyola Avenue.

"We keep finding them," said Katherine Mattes, another professor at the Tulane Law Clinic.

Metzger said that she has combed through the various lists of people arrested during that period and believes that one particular clerk failed to enter information correctly, resulting in people incarcerated, but not showing up for court.

Officials with the state Department of Corrections, which ran the temporary bus station jail, and the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office, offered no clear answer about how somebody like Parra-Sanchez could slip through the cracks.

By Oct. 13, when he was arrested, the responsibilities for booking new arrestees had moved to the Sheriff's Office, said Pam Laborde, a spokeswoman for the state correctional agency. But she also noted that Parra-Sanchez is just listed as having the last name "Parra" in the state's database, which could have resulted in some of the mix-ups.

Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman disputed that account, saying his agency did not start processing arrests until Oct. 17, 2005, when the House of Detention was reopened. Gusman said the state corrections agency was responsible for the people arrested post-Katrina and processed through the temporary facility and should have transferred Parra-Sanchez back into local custody.

Parra-Sanchez has never appeared on the Orleans list of those people in the sheriff's custody.

Came for work

A Mexican native who has been a legal resident of the United States since 1989, Parra-Sanchez came to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina, putting aside his trucking business in Bakersfield to work for a tree removal company. He left behind his wife and four daughters.

The work first took Parra-Sanchez to Alabama, but he ended up in New Orleans on Oct. 7, he said in an interview.

He was booked with aggravated battery on Oct. 13, 2005, after a fight that is somewhat vaguely described in a short police report in his court file. According to the report, Parra-Sanchez was involved in a "physical altercation" with another man, which eventually involved him stabbing the man in the upper abdomen with a broken bottle.

Mattes declined to address much of the substance of the charges against Parra-Sanchez, saying that varying police reports provided to the defense contain conflicting information.

The record shows that police booked Parra-Sanchez through the temporary jail at the bus station. He then ended up at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, a state prison in St. Gabriel that took local prisoners after the storm, when the flooded Orleans Parish Prison complex remained completely incapacitated.

For seven weeks, Parra-Sanchez remained out of touch from his family, he said in court testimony Tuesday. After telling his wife about his plight, she tried to reach the Orleans Parish public defenders office for help, but was unable to reach anybody. At the time, the courthouse at Tulane Avenue and Broad Street was closed and the public defenders office did not have a working telephone number.

Parra-Sanchez remained at Hunt until Jan. 26, when he was moved to the Nelson Coleman Correctional Center, which is run by the St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office, Laborde said. He stayed there until Nov. 13, when he was transferred to Orleans Parish Prison.