Louisiana Justice Institute Joins Challenges to Racist French Quarter Curfew

The New Orleans City Council Decision to impose a curfew on minors in the French Quarter has been called a racist policy by critics, who have called it "the equivalent of a Black code." Louisiana Justice Institute joins those who have condemned the law, and is taking action. As local station WWNO has reported:

The Louisiana Justice Institute is sending what attorney Tracie Washington says are testers of the 8pm curfew. The New Orleans City Council approved an ordinance that took effect Monday banning unaccompanied minors from gathering in the French Quarter and parts of nearby Frenchmen Street. Supporters say it's aimed at protecting children from violent crime. Mayor Mitch Landrieu signed the ordinance, and backs another pending change that will make the 8pm curfew effective citywide.

Washington says "testers" are African-American males 17 years old or more who, she says, have a constitutional right to assemble in the area - even without identification. Neither Landrieu nor Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas could be reached for comment. Washington says a boycott she announced last week for the French Quarter to begin on Martin Luther King Day is now being reviewed.

The new law comes in the context of a long history of racial discrimination in the French Quarter. On New Year’s Eve in 2004, nine months before Hurricane Katrina hit, bouncers in the Bourbon Street club Razzoo’s killed a Black college student named Levon Jones. The outrage led to near-daily protests outside the club, threats of a Black tourist boycott of the city and a mayor’s commission to explore the issue of racism in the French Quarter. Despite widely publicized advance warning, a “secret shopper” audit of the Quarter, conducted by Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, found rampant discrimination in local businesses. Bars had different dress codes, admission charges and drink prices—all based on whether the patron was Black or white.

Many in New Orleans are still upset that City Council President Jackie Clarkson recently spoke fondly of the New Orleans of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and expressed her hope that the city was returning to the "glory" of that era. When Black residents of New Orleans East complained, she refused to apologise, and simply added that one of her father's "best friends" was Black, adding, "My father never built a white playground without building a black playground."

Wrongfully Convicted Urge Action in Wake of Supreme Court Decision Expanding Immunity for Prosecutors

From our friends at Innocence Project New Orleans:
After Tuesday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Thompson v. Connick granting prosecutors' even greater immunity for their misconduct, the Innocence Network released a letter signed by 19 innocent people who were wrongfully convicted in part because of the bad acts of prosecutors demanding greater accountability for prosecutorial misconduct. The letter, which was addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Presidents of the National District Attorney's Association and the National Associations of Attorneys Generals, demands to know what systems they intend to put in place to ensure that innocent people don't fall victim to overzealous prosecutors.

In its 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the Thompson did not meet the burden of proving that the New Orleans District Attorney's office was deliberately indifferent in failing to turn over information pointing to Thompson's innocence and the need for training and supervision to safeguard those rights. The Court reasoned that because prosecutors are required to attend law school and/or pass the bar exam and are required to meet certain professional standards, "recurring constitutional violations are not the 'obvious consequence' of failing to provide prosecutors with formal inhouse training about how to obey the law."

"Basically what the Court is saying is that because they are lawyers, there was no reason for the District Attorney to believe that his prosecutors might need training to be sure they are fulfilling their constitutional obligations to disclose information that might be useful to their defense," said Keith Findley, President of the Innocence Network. "This logic completely ignores the reality of what happened to John Thompson who was sentenced to death by prosecutors who repeatedly failed in their obligation to disclose exculpatory information. No other profession is shielded from this complete lack of accountability."

The dissent by Justice Ginsberg notes, ". . . the Brady violations in Thompson's prosecutions were not singular and they were not aberrational. They were just what one would expect given the attitude toward Brady pervasive in the District Attorney's Office. Thompson demonstrated that no fewer than five prosecutors - the four trial prosecutors and Riehlmann - disregarded his Brady rights. He established that they kept from him, year upon year, evidence vital to his defense. Their conduct, he showed with equal force, was a foreseeable consequence of lax training in, and absence of monitoring of, a legal requirement fundamental to a fair trial.

"Prosecutors posses enormous power over our all over our lives, yet today the Supreme Court took away one of the few remaining vehicles that we have for holding them accountable for their actions. It is virtually impossible for the wrongfully convicted to meet the standard endorsed by the Court today," said Kathleen Ridolfi of the Northern California Innocence Project. "If prosecutors don't quickly enact systems to stem misconduct, we are sure to see an increase in innocent people's lives being destroyed by prosecutors who too often put securing convictions above their obligations to seek the truth."

In recent Supreme Court cases dealing with the issue of prosecutorial misconduct, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Association of Assistant United States Attorney's Attorney Generals and the Solicitor General have filed friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that there are already plenty of systems in place to cure the problems of misconduct, including internal disciplinary systems, state bar disciplinary systems, monitoring by the courts, and in extreme cases, criminal prosecution.

Yet, as the letter released on Tuesday notes, prosecutors are rarely disciplined for their misdeeds. The letter sites a recent landmark report by the Northern California Innocence Project, Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009, that found prosecutors were guilty of misconduct in California 707 times from 1997 to 2009, yet were disciplined only 7 times. The letter also points to a USA Today investigation by Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy that was published on Sept. 23, 2010, that documented 201 instances where federal prosecutors violated laws or ethics rules since 1997, yet only one of those prosecutors was suspended from practicing law - and that was only for one year.

"Misconduct was found in the cases of all the innocent people who signed onto this letter, yet none of the prosecutors involved were disciplined in any way," said Barry Scheck, Co-director of the Innocence Project. "How many lives are going to be destroyed before we realize that prosecutors are no different than any other professionals? There are good ones and there are bad ones, and we need systems in place to stop the bad ones."

"Our condolences go out to John Thompson and his family, who endured his nightmare with him. He spent 18 years in prison -- 14 on death row -- because of the bad acts of prosecutors," said Emily Maw, Executive Director of the Innocence Project of New Orleans. "While nothing could bring back the years he lost to this misconduct, a jury and an appellate court felt he should at least be compensated for his wrong. But the Supreme Court in a poorly reasoned decision, that failed to recognize the reality of the New Orleans prosecutors office in 1984, has stripped him of that compensation today."

A copy of the letter, which was also sent to the district attorney offices in the counties where the signors were originally prosecuted, is available at this link .

Race and Politics in a Rural Louisiana Town Attract National Attention

A legal dispute in the rural Louisiana town of Waterproof has attracted the attention of national civil rights organizations and activists. Color Of Change, an online activist group that helped garner national attention for the Jena Six Case, and recently rallied their members in support of Waterproof mayor Bobby Higginbotham, who has been held without bail since May of 2010. Advocates say the town's mayor and police chief, both African American, were targeted by an entrenched white power structure, including a Parish Sheriff and District Attorney, who were threatened by newly empowered Black political power in the town and are seeking to use the court system to undo an election.

While the mayor and police chief were both found guilty last year, their defenders say the trials have not resolved the conflict. Rachel Conner, a lawyer representing Higginbotham in his appeal, says she has never seen a case with so many flaws. "Essentially, every single thing that you can do to violate someone's constitutional rights from beginning to end happened in his case," she says.

The charges and counter charges are difficult to untangle. At the center of the case is a state audit of Waterproof that found irregularities in the town's record keeping. The Parish District Attorney says the audit shows mayoral corruption. The mayor says the problems pre-date his term, and he had taken steps to correct the issues. The mayor's opponents claim he stole from the town by illegally increasing his salary. His supporters say he received a raise that was voted on by the town aldermen. The mayor initially faced 44 charges; all but two were dropped before the trial began. Those charges -- malfeasance in office and felony theft -- were related to the disputed raise and use of the town's credit card. Miles Jenkins, the police chief, faced charges related to his enforcement of traffic tickets.

The mayor was quickly convicted of both charges but lawyers have raised challenges to the convictions, bringing a number of legal complaints. For example: in a town that is 55% African-American, Mayor Higginbotham had only one Black juror. Higginbotham's counsel was disqualified by the DA, and the public defender had a conflict of interest, leaving the mayor with no lawyer. Two days before the trial began, the DA gave Higginbotham 10 boxes of files related to his case. Higginbotham's request for an extension to get an attorney and to examine the files was denied.

There's more: during jury selection, when Higginbotham -- forced to act as his own lawyer -- tried to strike one juror who had relationships with several of the witnesses, he was told he could not, even though he had challenges remaining. There was also a problem with a sound recorder that the court reporter was using, and as a result there is no transcript at all for at least two witness' testimonies. Finally, during deliberation, the judge gave the jury polling slips that had "guilty" pre-selected, and then later hid the slips.

When Higginbotham was convicted, the judge refused to set bail in any amount. Although a possible sentence for the crime was probation, and despite the former mayor's obvious ties to the community, Higginbotham has spent the last ten months in jail while his lawyers have worked on his appeal. "He's not a flight risk," says Conner. "He's tied to Waterproof and he's got a vested interest in clearing his name."

In January, the mayor of the Louisiana town of Richwood was convicted of malfeasance in office for writing more than $90,000 in checks to himself and others from the town bank account. He received five years probation, and never spent a day in jail.

Civil Rights and Black Political Power

Waterproof, Louisiana is a rural town near the Mississippi border best known for holding an immigration detention center. The town -- population approximately 800 -- sits in Tensas Parish, a mostly agrarian region of the state. Community members say the civil rights movement came late to Tensas -- it was the last parish in the state where Black residents were able to register to vote, and the Klan was active until late in the 20th century.

The current troubles began in September of 2006, when Higginbotham was elected mayor of Waterproof. Soon after, he appointed his associate Miles Jenkins as chief of police. Jenkins, who served in the U.S. military for 30 years and earned a master's degree in public administration from Troy University in Alabama, immediately began the work of professionalizing a small town police department that had previously been mostly inactive. While both Jenkins and Higginbotham are from Waterproof, both had also spent much of their adult lives working in other places, and brought a professional background to their new positions. Allies of Higginbotham and Jenkins say this threatened Parish Sheriff Ricky Jones and DA James Paxton. Annie Watson, a school board member and former volunteer for the mayor, says officers working for Jones told her, "As soon as you people learn that the sheriff controls Tensas Parish, the better off you'll be."

The charges against Higginbotham come in a context where many African Americans in Louisiana feel that Black political power in the state -- and in the country -- is under attack. Tens of thousands of African American, mostly Democratic, voters remain displaced from the state post-Katrina. For the first time since the post-civil war era, both houses of the legislature have Republican majorities, and every statewide elected official is Republican. The newly-dominant Republican majority will oversee the state's legislative redistricting, as well as passage of Governor Bobby Jindal's agenda, which includes large cuts to public education and other services, including the elimination of Southern University of New Orleans, a historically Black state university.

The allegations also come at a time of corruption investigations around the state that many civil rights activists say have disproportionately targeted Black elected officials. Tommy Nelson, the Black mayor of the Louisiana town of New Roads, recently filed a motion in U.S. district court that accuses government investigators of exclusively targeting Black elected officials, beginning with a National Conference of Black Mayors gathering in New Orleans in June 2008. The investigation Nelson refers to resulted in racketeering charges against him, as well as Black elected officials in the Louisiana towns of White Castle and Port Allen. While the Waterproof case is not connected to these other corruption investigations, the cases add context to the charges from allies of Higginbotham that Black political power is the real target of the investigations.

For Conner, the fact that the former mayor remains locked in jail awaiting appeal is the most shocking part of this case. "The vindictiveness, and whatever else is going on under the surface, I think that's where it shows itself," she says. Pointing to much more high-profile cases, with much more money involved, Conner asks why Higginbotham is still locked up. "William Jefferson is out on bail, Tom Delay is out," she says. "And then you've got a guy with errors in his trial from A to Z. They didn't even set three million dollars as his bond. They set no bond."

The mayor and his allies have filed legal appeals, and are hoping for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate, or for national media to come in. More than 50,000 people have signed a petition, initiated by Color Of Change, asking Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to intervene. Chief Jenkins, who still has pending charges, believes that once word gets out, justice will come to Waterproof. "People need to see exactly what is going on in these little southern towns around here," he says.

Photo above: Former Waterproof Police Chief Miles Jenkins.