Attorney General Confers With Key Criminal Justice System Players

On Monday afternoon September 12, 2005, Attorney General Charles Foti lead a meeting of key players in the Louisiana Criminal justice System to discuss the evacuated prisoner situation and coordinate efforts to rebuild. Among the many stakeholders present were Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Kitty Kimball, LACDL President David Price, LIDAB Director Ed Greenlee, LAPDA Director Paul Marx, LACDL Liaison Jim Boren. Also present were representative of the Department of Corrections, and the Louisiana District Attorney’s Association. Significant progress was made on several fronts.

The meeting was very productive. The Attorney General acknowledged the need to get municipal detainees and misdemeanants (both pretrial and convicted) out of jail. Procedures to get all held on misdemeanors before cross-deputized judges, to release on recognizance or for time served were discussed.

The Attorney General has given temporary office space to the prosecution and defense, including computer access, and Tilden Greenbaum has about 6 Public Defenders that he expects to reconstitute the Orleans Indigent Defense Program. This arrangement will facilitate the disposition of the easy cases.

The State will be combing the records of the Clerk and Sheriff in Orleans that have been recovered. They plan to "Release on Recognizance" the people who are charged with or have status of “Municipal Misdemeanors pending.” They will release misdemeanants whose time served is equal to their sentence. The D.A.'s staff will review State Misdemeanors and hopefully will agree to release some of those on recognizance.

Tilden wants to avoid felony plea bargains unless it is clear the evidence has not been lost. Nonetheless, whatever can be done to release is going to be done.

We are going to rush to complete our inmate tracking efforts as much as possible as insurance that what was promised at the meeting will happen. We expect that by the end of next week we will see some release. We will need to support the Public Defenders as they start to dig out and follow up on inmates that are transferred to see that they are fairly treated.

We expect that Jefferson Parish will be back in operation in 14 days. It remains unclear when St. Bernard and Plaquemine will be back up

LIDAB, will also have office facilities at the Livingston Building, but Greenlee is currently operating out of Shreveport where Richard Goorley has provided him space in the CAPOLA offices. Currently Orleans Parish is operating at Hunt.

A working group will consult the LDAA on an Executive Order to issue late September and to include criminal law issues in the Governor's Emergency Decree to lift certain deadlines.

Importantly there was acknowledgement of the impending funding crisis. FEMA Funds may be available for both DA’s and Defenders as well as members of the Private bar. We will need to help Ed Greenlee come up with a special budget proposal for the special legislative session. LDAA says they will support a joint emergency budget request based on the storm damage.