Justice on Katrina
time
Hundreds, if not thousands, languish behind bars without their
day in court.
By Ann M. Simmons
Los Angeles Times
December 12, 2006
NEW ORLEANS — In October 2005, less than two months after Hurricane Katrina
struck, Pedro Parra-Sanchez was arrested for allegedly stabbing a man with a
broken bottle during a fight. With the city's prison damaged by flooding, he was
taken to a makeshift jail at the Greyhound bus station, then transferred to a
correctional facility about 70 miles away, and later to a prison in southwest
Louisiana.
That's where Parra-Sanchez sat for more than a year — never seeing a lawyer or
setting foot in a courtroom. At the time of the fight, he had been in New
Orleans only six days: He'd left his family in Bakersfield, Calif., and come to
help with the storm cleanup effort.
By law, the district attorney should have brought Parra-Sanchez to court to
formally charge him within 60 days. Instead, "he disappeared," said Pamela R.
Metzger, director of Tulane University's Criminal Law Clinic. "The system
failed."
Parra-Sanchez's case is not unique in post-Katrina New Orleans. An untold number
of people got "lost" in the prison system in the weeks immediately after the
storm, Metzger said. Many are still among the 3,000 active criminal court cases.
At least 85% of them qualify for representation by a public defender from the
Orleans Parish Indigent Defender program.
The city's indigent defense system has long been plagued by negligent attorneys
who provide haphazard and deficient representation. But in the months after
Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the program spiraled into chaos: Funding
plummeted; 15 lawyers quit the already thin legal staff; documents and evidence
were lost or destroyed.
"None of the functioning institutions of government were there," Metzger said.
Now, "the public defenders office is dealing with a massive influx of new
arrests, and cannot go back to other cases."
Parra-Sanchez at least should have had access to a lawyer from the public
defenders office, Metzger said.
She has helped to form the Katrina-Gideon Interview Project, a national
coalition of law students and law professors. Gideon refers to Clarence Earl
Gideon, whose landmark appeal in the 1960s led to a Supreme Court decision
mandating that all criminal defendants be provided with a lawyer even if they
were too poor to hire one.
Led by the Tulane law clinic and the Student Hurricane Network, the project aims
to free indigent "Katrina prisoners" — people who have served time but remain in
jail because they haven't had legal representation.
*
1,800 cases under review
The students and lawyers are reviewing about 1,800 pre- and post-Katrina
cases. They include people who have been imprisoned well beyond any sentence
they might receive for such charges as probation violation, failure to pay a
fine or prostitution.
Tulane law clinic students helped indigent clients before Katrina, but since the
storm they've gone into overdrive. The Katrina-Gideon team's permanent members
consist of Metzger, another full-time attorney and three law students. Attorneys
from around the country have come to do pro bono stints.
They learned of Parra-Sanchez's case from other inmates: His name didn't appear
on the sheriff's list of prisoners in custody because of a booking error.
Katrina-Gideon team member and student lawyer Sara Johnson, 23, says she becomes
so outraged over the system's inefficiencies, and the treatment of indigent
clients, that "some days, you want to throw something … you want to go into the
jail and just leave with them."
Leah Shaver, a woman in her 50s, is another of the team's cases. She has been in
jail since July 2005 on prostitution and drug-possession charges. She was
arraigned a week after her arrest. Two status hearings were called in her case
earlier this year, but no public defender brought her to court until May — nine
months after her arrest. She is still incarcerated.
Iben O'Neal was charged with possession of heroin in October 2004 and was out on
bail until spring 2005, when the court revoked his bond in error. In June of
that year, O'Neal had a pretrial hearing. An August 2005 trial date came and
went. His case was scheduled on the court calendar several times, but he was
never brought to court. Instead, he spent another 14 months in jail without
seeing a lawyer or a judge.
The public defenders office had no file on O'Neal, Metzger said, "not a scrap of
paper" since 2004. Her team secured O'Neal's release on Oct. 31, 16 months after
his last court appearance.
*
Volunteered to help
The first time Parra-Sanchez spoke with a lawyer was on Nov. 17, when
Metzger interviewed him in jail.
Parra-Sanchez, a legal U.S. resident from Mexico, had initially volunteered with
a hurricane-relief effort sponsored by his church, according to court documents.
But his limited English skills disqualified him for volunteer work; instead, he
signed on as a paid laborer with a tree-removal company. Less than a week later,
he was in jail.
Johnson and fellow Tulane law senior Alex Wells wrote the motion for Parra-Sanchez's
arraignment.
Before the hearing, Wells, a 29-year-old former political consultant turned
attorney, Johnson, Metzger, Parra-Sanchez and the court-appointed interpreter
rehearsed and did role-playing in the hallway outside the courtroom of Judge
Darryl Derbigny. Then Wells took his place at Metzger's side to question Parra-Sanchez
about what he described as "a human tragedy."
Speaking through the courtroom interpreter, Parra-Sanchez said he repeatedly
asked prison guards and a prison psychologist when he would be brought to trial.
His wife, Alma, tried to call the public defender, but the office phone was not
working, Wells said.
When Parra-Sanchez did not show up in court for arraignment in May, Derbigny
issued a warrant for his arrest, even though he was already in jail.
The father of four wept as he spoke of the hardships his imprisonment had had on
his family.
His wife was forced to move from a rented house to a trailer park. She sold her
husband's tools to pay bills and depleted the family's savings. The bank
repossessed Parra-Sanchez's truck. And his eldest daughter left home to help
alleviate some of the family's financial burden.
"It was very difficult mentally," Parra-Sanchez told the court as he dabbed his
eyes with a tissue.
"I asked for help, but nobody would give me" any, he added in later testimony.
Assistant Dist. Atty. Greg Thompson called the Parra-Sanchez case "a snafu" and,
during the defendant's arraignment, formally apologized on behalf of the state
for his "prolonged incarceration."
A judge freed Parra-Sanchez the Friday before Thanksgiving. His arraignment
finally took place on Nov. 28, and a local synagogue donated money for Parra-Sanchez's
train journey home to Bakersfield on Nov. 29.
He has since consulted Bakersfield attorney Daniel Rodriguez about possible
civil rights litigation against law enforcement agencies in New Orleans.
Derbigny is slated to hear a defense motion to drop Parra-Sanchez's case on the
grounds that his constitutional right to a speedy trial has been violated.
"I have no idea whether this man is guilty or innocent," said Metzger. "What I
do know for sure is that the state is guilty for depriving this man of his bill
of rights for the last 13 months."
Stephen Singer, a professor at Loyola University New Orleans law school and the
lead trial counsel for the public defenders office, said his agency welcomes
input from the Katrina-Gideon group because "we can use all the help we can
get." But he said indigent defense needs more than the spot treatment the
Katrina team provides.
"That helps individual clients, but it doesn't help us solve the problem,"
Singer said. "What we really need to do is fix the public defenders office