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When Hurricane
Katrina struck New Orleans and the Orleans Parish Prison
complex began to take on water, prison guards abandoned
their posts, leaving thousands of
prisoners, many of whom were pre-trial detainees, stranded
in their cells. After enduring the hurricane on Monday,
these prisoners were left without food, water or electricity
as brackish water polluted with sewage flooded the jail.
Prisoners were held under these nightmarish conditions for
up to four days. In a botched and perilous evacuation, they
were shipped to a number of
Department of Corrections’ facilities across the state.
The location of prisoners were unknown to the authorities
for weeks. Criminal defense attorney Phyllis Mann, the LCAC
and other Justice Center organizations promptly traveled
throughout Louisiana, interviewing thousands of displaced
detainees, collecting their information and connecting them
with their families and lawyers.
Many inmates were housed in makeshift facilities; guarded by
groups of shoddily-compiled volunteer corrections staffs.
The LCAC visited one such facility in Jena, Louisiana, and
uncovered harrowing accounts of brutality. Our
organization’s intervention brought about the immediate
closure of the facility at Jena.
In the months since then, volunteer
lawyers have discovered that there
are
scores of inmates who have served their sentences and
are
being illegally held beyond their release date. Similarly,
hundreds of prisoners arrested for misdemeanors and
non-violent offenses before the storm remain imprisoned
without having been formally charged.
Following the storm, the LCAC has been at the
forefront of habeas litigation to pursue
the release of these detainees. A moribund criminal post-Katrina
criminal justice system has posed enormous obstacles for the
lawyers seeking to free them. Still, the LCAC has worked
tirelessly with a handful of other volunteer lawyers to
obtain the release of hundreds of prisoners with more habeas
corpus hearings scheduled in the weeks ahead.
The work we have
undertaken has been covered extensively by the media,
including
The New York Times,
The
Nation, The Los Angeles Times,
ABC News, and
National Public Radio.
At the turn of the year, the LCAC has secured the release of
over 800 inmates and continues to file habeas petitions in
an attempt to obtain the release of the
remaining eligible prisoners.
In the meantime,
the LCAC presses for the appointment of counsel for the
estimated thousands of defendants whose public defenders
have been laid off. We also continue to highlight the plight
of prisoners from the New Orleans area, who languish in
wretched conditions with no prospect of resolution in their
cases for the foreseeable future. The Orleans Parish
criminal justice system is broken. As the city of New
Orleans slowly recovers from Hurricane Katrina and its
aftermath, the LCAC will continue to play an integral role
in the reform of the criminal justice system.
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