Prometheus 6

Quote of note:

Over the last 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.

Asst. Dist. Atty. 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.

2,500 Arrested Before Katrina Are Still in Limbo
At the heart of the problem is a public defender system almost too broke to function.By Henry Weinstein
Times Staff Writer
November 20, 2005

Nearly three months after Katrina struck Louisiana, about 2,500 people arrested on minor charges before the hurricane struck are still in custody. A number of them have never been charged, many are being held beyond the time they were due to be released, and hundreds have never had a court hearing.

Their plight is one of many troubling issues facing the Louisiana court system, where funding for public defenders, among other problems, has been further imperiled by the storm.

When the storm struck, about 8,500 people being held in the New Orleans jails were relocated to facilities throughout — and, in some instances, outside — the state.

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 H. Kilborne, a Baton Rouge, La., defense lawyer also involved in the effort, said Friday she expected that the attorneys would have to litigate for many more weeks to secure the freedom of the hundreds still incarcerated on minor charges.