Day 3: Monday March 13, 2006

Day 3: Monday March 13, 2006 – My Experience with the Right to Counsel Project
We begin our work today at 9am in the federal courthouse. The training is quite extensive and complicated, but I am learning SO much about the situation. Approximately 3500 people are incarcerated illegally. Many of these people have committed very minor violations – and yet are being held in jail for months and months.

In Louisiana, the District Attorney’s office has 45 days after a person’s arrest to decide whether they want to prosecute a case against them for a misdemeanor. At the end of the 45 days, the person is released if no charges have been brought. For a felony, the person can sit in jail for 60 days before a case is actually brought against them.

When the hurricane hit New Orleans, thousands of inmates were transferred from New Orleans jails to jails throughout the south – frequently without any paperwork stating why they were in jail, when they are supposed to be released, and without notifying the inmate’s family or attorney about where they are being transferred to. These inmates include people who never had charges brought against them as well as those arrested on very minor charges – like people who were arrested for traffic violations, people who were supposed to spend 1 night in jail for public drunkenness, failure to pay child support, DWI, first offense possession of marijuana, etc. We even worked on the case of one man who was arrested for leaving trash in the street!

In addition to these minor infractions, we came across MANY cases of inmates who had served far over the maximum sentence for their crime. For example, if someone plead guilty on June 1, 2005 to a drug charge and was sentenced to spend 3 months in jail, they are supposed to be released from jail September 1, 2005. However, when Katrina hit, they were transferred to another jail without paperwork – and are sitting in jail now for 9 months – far over the maximum sentence which may have been 6 months!

Some people have said to me that these inmates are better off in jail because at least they have shelter, food, and water – but Louisiana jails are notorious for their beatings, rapes, sodomy, and horrid conditions. Additionally, many of these inmates also lost their homes and family members, yet they are in jail and are unable to file paperwork to get insurance checks or federal assistance to rebuild their homes. Their family members have no idea where they are and they have no idea where their families are.

These inmates are almost always black, male, and poor – hence why they can’t afford to hire their own attorney and are reliant on the public defender’s system. The American Bar Association maximum standard for the number of cases a public defender can have is 200 cases per each public defender. The New Orleans public defenders are currently handling 900-1000 cases/attorney – far over what is humanly possible – hence this terrible problem of thousands of inmates sitting in jail illegally.

Before Katrina, the NO public defender’s office had about 35 attorneys. But, the office’s budget derives from the city’s traffic ticket payments. When there are no residents living in the city, there aren’t traffic tickets issued – hence the public defender’s office budget has been slashed and they laid off all but 5-6 public defenders.

This week we are working to create an enormous database of the inmates who still reside in jail and are recreating the documents that outline each inmate’s story – when they were arrested, when the charge was brought (or not brought), when bond was posted for them, when they were ordered to be released (and yet were not released), and what happened to them after Katrina. Because many of the files were kept in the basement of the courthouse, a lot of documents were lost – as well as a difficult sheriff’s office which won’t disclose much needed documents.

We discover that there are some inmates who were ordered to be released the week before Katrina, but were not and still remain in jail. Bond was posted for some the week before the storm and they were supposed to be released – but they still remain in jail.

Throughout the week we meet with federal judge Jay Zainey who has generously lent us his courtroom for our project while it is under renovation. He tells us about a case where 94 women (8 of whom were pregnant) were sent to Angola, an all-male maximum security prison for very minor charges, but were transferred during the storm to Angola – a place many consider to be like hell.

We learn about other inmates who were ordered to be released, but the jail refused to release them until they have enough inmates released to “justify” the expense of providing a bus to bring them back to New Orleans. Another jail came up with a creative solution to this problem – they said that they “lost” the inmates clothes and dropped them off on the side of the road miles and miles from a local town, without money, and without paperwork – dressed in their orange prison jumpsuits. Sure enough, a local police officer picked them up suspecting that they were escaped convicts – and brought them back to jail! I can’t help but wonder – does the Constitution exist in Louisiana?

So, I’m not helping to re-build homes, but I’m helping people regain their constitutional rights that have clearly been forgotten in the post-Katrina days. Granted, the Louisiana criminal justice system was broken long before the hurricane, but the storm severely exacerbated these problems and made life a living hell for the poorest of the poor in New Orleans prisons.