FROM
NYTIMES
October 14, 2005
Criminal Justice

Courts' Slow Recovery Begins at Train Station in New Orleans
By CHRISTOPHER DREW

The inmates, bleary from trying to sleep on a fenced-in chunk of pavement outside the bus and train station in New Orleans, parade upstairs to the makeshift courtroom, their hands in white plastic cuffs. The prosecutor hustles up from his office - a k a the Taste of New Orleans gift shop - where his file folders now share the display window with bottles of hot sauce and plastic ladles that say "Cooking with Jazz."

The magistrate judge, Gerard J. Hansen, is making do behind an old desk, briskly setting bail for some of the 1,100 people arrested in the metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29.

When one man steps up, accused of looting an odd mix of boat batteries, a drill, antifreeze, 23 bags of coffee and 53 bottles of alcohol, all found in his car, the judge greets him with a touch of sympathy and $25,000 in bail. "I can understand the alcohol," the judge says, but he adds, "I don't think you were taking all that out of your house, sir."

The bail hearings, which began at "Camp Amtrak" recently, are the first step toward reviving one of the nation's busiest criminal justice systems, a crucial component to bringing residents and tourists back to a city with a potent subculture of guns, drugs and crime.

But it could be weeks before the city's jails, police headquarters and courthouses are repaired, before witnesses can be found and jury trials begin again.

Even then, problems will remain. Floodwaters deluged evidence rooms, destroyed the police crime laboratory and wiped out courthouse computer systems. Officials have had to reconstruct from thick printouts the charges lodged against more than 6,000 inmates before they were evacuated in small boats and scattered among 39 state prisons. Judges say about 800 who were in jail on minor charges, including some who normally would have been held for just a night or two for public drunkenness, were held for two to three weeks amid the confusion.

Court officials have suspended speedy-trial rules and delayed all but the most urgent proceedings until at least Oct. 25. And the city has said it can no longer pay its share of the operating expenses for the courts and the local prosecutor, forcing both to lay off dozens of workers.

"People say 'come hell or high water,' but both came for us," Judge Calvin Johnson, the senior judge on the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, said in an interview.

Even when trials resume, the first will be simple cases in which defendants are willing to be tried by a judge and police officers are the main witnesses. One big problem, judges say, is picking a jury that is a cross-section of this city when no one knows who will move back and who will not.

"That is a big question mark," said another criminal court judge, Frank A. Marullo Jr., who took his turn on the temporary bench the other day wearing a bright red polo shirt and a dark windbreaker, a far cry from judicial robes. "The city we used to have is not the city we have anymore."

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that many inmates were being treated unfairly. But many awaiting trial are being patient, said Tilden H. Greenbaum III, the director of the Orleans Indigent Defender Program.

"Sooner or later, we're going to have to start making noise about it," Mr. Greenbaum said. "But given the magnitude of what everybody's been through, now is not the time to push."

Law enforcement officials say they are moving as quickly as possible, because they recognize that keeping order in the streets is as critical to bringing residents and tourists back to New Orleans as restoring electricity and cleaning toxic residues.

The spasm of looting in the days after Hurricane Katrina focused the nation's attention on a harsh side of New Orleans. Away from the gaudy mirth on Bourbon Street and the graceful homes in the Garden District, many of the city's poor neighborhoods have a desperate quality, with more than one-quarter of the city's 450,000 people living in poverty.

"It's like two different worlds," said Charles E. Smith, a supervisory special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who grew up in a New Orleans housing project. "When we need a break, we make plans to go to an island or take the family to Disney World. But a majority of these people can't get away, so they get away with alcohol and drugs."

Police officers say the drugs and the multitude of guns often lead to brazen crimes. A few days after the storm, one looter shot another in the head in a fight over a flashlight in a dark clothing factory, officers say. And federal authorities have indicted a man for shooting at a rescue helicopter, one of several incidents in which emergency workers were fired on.

"We do have our hard-core criminal element that is not afraid of dying, that is not afraid of prison," Eddie Jordan, the Orleans Parish district attorney, said in an interview.

That is still true after the storm. Some of those arrested for violating the city's post-Katrina curfew have been found with marijuana and cocaine in their cars. The police SWAT team recently arrested two men driving around with an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle - and papers indicating they had just returned from a shelter in Houston.

Burl Cain, the warden at the Angola state prison who is in charge at the temporary jail, said that when officials arrived for their first look at the station in early September, they had to chase away looters trying to crack into the Greyhound and Amtrak safes. The 1,100 people from the metropolitan area who have passed through the jail include nearly 450 arrested in New Orleans for minor offenses and about 200 for serious crimes.

Inmates are held in chain-link pens behind the station, under a canopy where the buses once pulled up. Each cell has a portable toilet, like those at construction sites. Inmates eat packaged military meals - "Sometimes we make peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for them," Mr. Cain said - and sleep on the pavement. Each day, buses haul most of them to a state prison near Baton Rouge, where they either make their bail or wait for a court date.

On Wednesday, Robert Davis, the man who was videotaped being beaten by police officers, was at the temporary courtroom, pleading not guilty to charges including public intoxication and resisting arrest.

Fears of further looting have swelled the jail population. Talking angrily through the jail fence one afternoon, Charles Johnson, 17, said he had been arrested outside his grandmother's house for driving without a license.

"The officer was going to let me go, but then he saw a brand-new printer in the car," Mr. Johnson said. "I'd gotten it out of the house. I have a lot of computer stuff, but he figured I'd stolen it."

In the temporary court the next morning, Municipal Judge Paul N. Sens assigned Mr. Johnson a hearing date in January and released him. About 15 others were sentenced to community service for curfew violations, trespassing or public intoxication. "You have an opportunity to help the city recover," Judge Sens told them.

Judge Sens said in an interview that when Hurricane Katrina hit, 800 of the city's 6,200 inmates were serving time for or awaiting trial on minor offenses. He said he was able to release 130 on Sept. 15 and most of the rest over the next week.

The senior municipal and criminal court judges have sought help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in salvaging some flooded evidence and in repairing the damaged courts. Marlin N. Gusman, the Orleans Parish criminal sheriff, said he hopes to have the first two of his 10 jails repaired by Oct. 17, though more than half of his 1,100 employees have not returned to work.

Mr. Jordan, the district attorney, and the judges said the city's failing finances pose another threat. The city normally supplied about one-third of the prosecutor's budget and split court expenses with the state. But city officials have said they cannot provide any money for the rest of the year.

Mr. Jordan said he has already laid off 37 people from his support staff and he might have to let some of his 90 prosecutors go.

"It's a Catch-22," Judge Marullo said. "We need people to come back. But in order to bring people back, and to have people visit New Orleans, we've got to have all the elements of the system, from the police to the courts, working to keep them safe."