Nearly three months after Katrina struck Louisiana, about 2,500 people arrested on minor charges before the hurricane are still in custody – a number of them have never been formally charged, many are being held beyond the time they were due to be released, and hundreds have never had a court hearing.
When the storm struck, about 8,500 people being held in the Orleans Parish prison were relocated to jails across the state, and in some instances outside Louisiana.
A small group of volunteer defense lawyers has filed writs and obtained the release of more than 1,800 of the evacuees, said Phyllis Mann of Alexandria, La., who has been coordinating the effort.
Still, Julie Kilborne, a Baton Rouge, La., defense lawyer also involved in the effort, said Friday that she expects the attorneys will have to be litigating for many more weeks to secure the freedom of the thousands still incarcerated on minor charges.
Over the past two weeks, in hearings in Baton Rouge, Judge Calvin Johnson, the chief criminal court judge from New Orleans, ordered more than a hundred people released. But the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office appealed – a state appellate court and then the state Supreme Court stayed the release order.
Assistant District Attorney Donna Andrieu asserted, among other things, that there was “just cause” for holding the detainees longer because Orleans Parish prosecutors, dislocated from their office, had not had sufficient time to make decisions on whether to charge various people.
Andrieu also said that among the reasons prosecutors have been unable to make decisions on whether to charge certain people was the breakdown in communication experienced by the New Orleans Police Department following the storm.
Defense lawyer Neal Walker cited a breakdown of discipline – including criminal activity – in the city’s police force. The Louisiana Supreme Court is scheduled to consider the merits of the arguments early this week.
In a related development, the American Civil Liberties Union filed papers in a Louisiana federal court Thursday providing disturbing details from 45 men and women who were incarcerated in the Orleans Parish prison when Katrina struck.
“It was like we were left to die – no water, no air, no food. We were left with deputies that were out of control,” said one woman, identified in court papers as Inmate No. 19.
She said that the women eventually were abandoned by guards and left with nothing to eat or drink, and that many of them drank water out of trash cans.
