‘Your honor, can I tell the whole story?’ Part 1
A murder in New Orleans, a trial that lasted less than a day, and the lives they entangled for the next three decades.
Category
Criminal Justice
Mental Illness Behind Bars: The hard lessons of Orleans Parish
The city and the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office are implementing short- and long-term plans for housing mentally ill inmates, but critics say jail is no place to treat mental illness.
Advocates: City Council should use power of the purse to force criminal district court to change its use of bail and court fees
The city gave the court $3.8 million in additional funding this year. Reform advocates argue that the money should be contingent on reform.
City Planning Commission votes against increasing jail capacity
The request to increase the bed cap from 1,438 to 1,731 will now go to the New Orleans City Council.
City Planning staff recommends raising bed cap at Orleans jail
Council committee urges courts to forgive court debt, outstanding warrants
Council members question whether the city is holding too many teens in the adult jail
There are currently 17 teenagers — ranging in age from 15 to 17 — being held in the juvenile wing of the adult Orleans Justice Center, even though there are 18 open beds at the juvenile facility.
State Supreme Court updates standards for drug courts throughout the state to require confirmation testing
New Orleans court does not currently offer confirmation testing, which may lead to punishment based on false positives
Advocates take their case for ending cash bail in New Orleans to the City Council
Council members appear supportive of the plan, proposed by the Vera Institute for Justice last month. But a prominent crime watchdog group and the Orleans DA have criticized jail population reduction efforts.
Police found surveillance cameras with NOPD logos mounted to a Lakeview light pole. They weren’t the city’s. But they were near a house connected to a city crime-camera contractor.
Active Solutions COO Jeff Burkhardt denied that he purchased or owned the cameras, calling a reporter’s questions “fake news.” Less than 24 hours after The Lens called him, the cameras were gone.
