Two years after the legislature passed a law requiring DA’s offices to submit annual data on the use of material witness warrants, the reports only started coming in last week.
Category: Criminal Justice
Posted inCriminal Justice
‘Tantamount to torture’: Complaint alleges inhumane conditions, overuse of solitary confinement at Pine Prairie immigrant detention center
GEO Group, the private prison corporation that runs the facility, denied the allegations.
Posted inNews
New Orleans City Attorney dismisses nearly 400,000 old cases in Municipal and Traffic Court
The dismissals reduce the court’s case load by more than 50 percent.
Posted inCriminal Justice
City Council members press judges on improvements to ankle monitoring
The council meeting follows the recent killing of a 7th Ward woman. The suspect in the killing had been ordered to be on an electronic monitor.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Security district officers sued for allegedly pulling guns on Black youths looking for lost dog
The suit alleges that the officers were racially profiling the group when they stopped them.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Legislature creates task force to consider relief for people still in prison on non-unanimous jury convictions
Lawmaker says the group will aim to find ways to identify cases where defendants were convicted wrongfully as a result of problems in their cases beyond split decisions, such as weak evidence, misconduct or discrimination.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Louisiana State Police tanked automated expungement meant to help thousands, lawmaker says
Legislation would have wiped out millions of arrest and conviction records.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Report: New Orleans judges continued to issue warrants for failure to appear during pandemic despite court closures, health risks
In their annual report, watchdog group Court Watch NOLA called the practice “egregious.”
Posted inCriminal Justice
Nearly 70 percent of people incarcerated at the New Orleans jail are fully vaccinated, according to sheriff
The vaccination rate in the jail is now higher than the rest of the city and state.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Bill to give new trials to people convicted by split juries dies in committee
The bill, which would have given new trials or a shot at parole to 1,500 people in prison, was opposed by the Louisiana District Attorneys Association.