TheAgitator.com
Scandal in Louisiana’s Criminal Courts
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008There’s a major scandal brewing in Louisiana’s criminal justice system.
Since 1994, Chief Judge Edward Dufresne has been handling the appeals of indigent Louisiana convicts who had to file their own briefs. Last year, the aid Dufresne had assigned to handle those appeals committed suicide. According to his suicide note, Jarrold Peterson killed himself in part because of the guilt he faced over what he had been asked to do as part of his job.
Peterson sent a posthumous letter to Louisiana’s Judiciary Commission with a damning allegation. He said Dufresne had instructed him to deny every appeal not prepared by an attorney. Peterson said he was instructed to write up and file the denials without every showing the appeals to the judges. Peteson handled about 2,400 such cases in the 13 years he was in charge of them.
The Louisiana Supreme Court will now decide if the investigation of the allegations and the review of those cases will be handled by another circuit, and outside panel, or the same 5th Circuit court where all of this may have happened.
A few facts about Louisiana’s criminal justice system that might be helpful in putting the seriousness of this scandal into perspective:
• About 90 percent of criminal defendants in Louisiana are indigent.
• Louisiana only provides post-conviction legal aid in death penalty cases. Everyone else must either hire a lawyer, find a lawyer to handle their case pro bono, or handle the appeal themselves. Obviously, most have no choice but to opt for the latter.
One criminal defense lawyer in Louisiana told me that if you’re convicted of murder in Louisiana and you’re innocent, you’re actually better off getting the death penalty. At least then you’ll get a team of lawyers, investigators, and experts to help with your appeal.
• Because convicts aren’t considered citizens in Louisiana, they have no standing to make requests for public records—and that would include copies of their own case files. Some prosecutors’ offices will grant such requests anyway, but they’re under no obligation to do so. When such requests are granted, or are made by the family or friends of the defendant, defense attorneys tell me that DA’s offices charge $1-2 per page, for files that can easily run thousands of pages.
• So what? Most of these people are probably guilty anyway, right? Maybe not. Earlier this month, the Louisiana Innocence Project released a study of 36 death penalty convictions won by the office of former New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick (yes, he’s the father of the famous crooner). The report found that prosecutors had withheld important exculpatory evidence in nine cases, or 25 percent. In four cases—one in nine death sentences—the condemned defendant was later declared innocent.
Given that these were death penalty cases, the defendants had good representation from the state’s capital post-conviction office.
Not only are 90 percent of defendants in non-capital cases left to find such abuses in their own cases by themselves, DAs are under no obligation to give them copies of their own case files, can charge exhorbitant fees when they do, and for 13 years, at least one of Louisiana’s appeals courts couldn’t even bother to read the appeals, anyway.
One more thing to consider: Many Louisiana DAs have been sending regular work to former Mississippi medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne and his disgraced "forensic odontologist" sidekick Dr. Michael West since the early 1990s.
I’m seeing HTML code in this post, you may want to fix it up.
Nevermind. Either it was my browser or you fixed it already.
Is there anyone doing anything to organize free or low cost legal assistance to people who want to appeal their cases? Love to see some info on that.
This is a tragedy, to be sure. That said…
Good. The more people lose faith in the system, the quicker they will be psychologically willing to throw it away.
Does this really surprise anyone? Our criminal justice system is in bad need of an overhaul and hopefully one day many in positions of authority will be trading place with the people they railroaded.
This is sickening in so many ways.
I’m going to go out in left field a bit on this, though. One thing I wish libertarians would more consistently talk about is subverting the employee/employer power relationship. Obviously, Peterson had other issues besides his job that must of contributed to his tragic decision. But people do things every day, for lifetimes even, that they wouldn’t do on their own, merely because somebody who’s arbitrarily higher on the organizational hierarchy told them to. Hell, kids go through over a decade of training to subordinate themselves in just this way. If we want a culture of individual responsibility that doesn’t sacrifice individuals on the altar of institutional primacy, I believe libertarians should be involved in fighting these holdovers from feudal and slaveholding times.
Great reporting, Radley.
Sadly, I imagine we can anticipate some serious attacks on the credibility of the late Mr. Peterson in lieu of serious inquiries into these allegations.
It’s great that he blew the whistle, but he must have been mentally unwell, and he’s obviously not available to shed any more light on all of this.
Questions for you legal eagles out there: Does anyone know if judges in Louisiana are elected? What are the ramifications for Judge Dufresne? Can he be recalled or disbarred? I would imagine judges have immunity from civil lawsuits as well, right?
Allow me to add: Louisiana has some of the worst marijuana laws in the country beginning with 6 months for first timers charged with simple possession. Sale of any amount or a second possession offense will make you a felon (non-citizen) and you can spend 5 years in the joint. On your third simple possession charge you can face 20 years. Oh and if you live in public housing beware, possession within 1000′ of a church, school, or public housing will make you a felon facing a mandatory minimum of 2.5 years. One more thing, you’d better have a tax stamp affixed to your bud, because if you don’t you’re looking at civil penalties too.
Ginger Dan,
I don’t see why a judge wouldn’t be subject no a 1983 lawsuit in his individual capacity for violating a defendant’s consitutional rights (5th Amend. Due Process would seem to be the most obvious).
That’s not an easy case to make out, but if all of this is true, a person who’s appeal was summarily denied would have a strong case. I could be wrong, but that is my understanding.
Jeremy (#6),
Good point. As a libertarian now working for a global company headquartered in Europe (with over 100,000 employees), I struggle with this every day. I learned early on that the sheep are the ones who survive, albeit at the loss of their identity.
While it is a problem and I would also like to see more about libertarian thought applied to organizations, I think we’d all agree that what’s happening in Louisiana really puts things in perspective. Completely outrageous. Keep up the fight, Radley. Maybe someday something like this could actually be on the _gasp_ news.
It matters not where you live. It is always THEM against us and they are counting coup. I’ve known a number of judges, DAs and attorneys and the prosecution ALWAYS presumes guilt. Hell even in court, one is guilty or not guilty. It should be guilty or innocent. And remember, Louisiana works from the French law basis established before it became part of the US.
There on the Bayou
If you do not have money
It is file by you…
To answer Nick T and Ginger Dan –
Many groups have been working to improve the access to counsel in LA. No counsel for non- death penalty sentences is not uncommon in the rest of the country as well. In LA, the law clinics from the four LA law schools as well as the state criminal defense organizations beginning to or continuing to do all they can, but it’s triage work. You figure out where you can have the greatest effect and where the politics won’t shut you down, and you work from there.
Judges are elected. LA Supreme Court handles disbarment, suspensions, etc. That’s the Disciplinary Board that the cited letter was sent to. Judges have absolute immunity for anything that has to do with judicial duties. The larger problem is that central staff usually handles criminal matters, not judge’s personal staff (at least that’s the case in other LA circuits). It’s going to be hard to tie this to just one judge.
Hey, this is Louisiana. At least they got trials in the first place. That’s sort of an improvement.
@ Nick T: The Fifth Amendment right to due process doesn’t extend to the states, but the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause applies to states specifically.
In order to state a claim, a person whose appeal was summarily denied would probably have to show some likelihood of success on the merits to show that he was prejudiced by the summary denial.
@FWB: Louisiana still has a Civil Law system with respect to non-criminal procedure (which is a lot of fun: no central filing for UCC financing statements, for example, because of the Parish system). I am not sure that is true with respect to criminal prosecutions, but they still have to meet the minimum due process requirements imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
To be fair, the prosecutors OUGHT to believe that the accused is guilty as hell. If they don’t, then they ought not bring charges in the first place. Unfortunately, this often morphs into the attitude you describe, that any person arrested is guilty.
Chloe,
Thanks for your answer, sorta the disheartening news I was expecting.
any one have any info on the fact that convicts arent considered citizens? is this common. I cant find anything on teh google.
Boston,
It’s not that convicts aren’t citizens. The LA open records act restricts access to records for convicted felons in certain circumstances by excluding the felon from the definition of “person” under the statute. See La. R.S. 44:32(A); See also, Hilliard v. Litchfield, 822 So. 2d 743 (La. App. 2002).
The concept of citizenship doesn’t even arise in the enabling statute. (…[a]ny person of the age of majority may inspect, copy, or reproduce any public record.) See La. R.S. 44:31.
While it may be that Louisiana treats convicted felons as not being citizens of Louisiana, under the open records act that doesn’t seem to matter. (there may be judicial gloss that says it does matter, I don’t have a citationized version of the Louisiana revised statutes).
Has nobody commented on the irony of the judge’s name? Dufresne? One’s a fictional character who lives by hope, the other’s a judge that takes hope away…
My 24 year old son was going through this in Mesa Arizona, he had whats called a public defender what a joke. Public Defenders work for the government and they could care less what happens. I just started to show up at his court dates. I have seen the BS the judge pulled, I finely wrote the judge and told him what I had seen in his court. Of course I got a letter to appear in His court. No if ands or buts. So I showed up with a lawyer, the judge said I can’t understand why your here, then I explained I was the one who wrote the letter to him. Well its all an misunderstanding the judge replied, I told him I understand eveything that’s going on here. My son has proved he was innocent, but the arresting police officer says he was lieing, to which the police officer had no proof. I just recieved a letter from the Judge saying he believes the case will be droped due to lack of witnesses, there never was a witness, because it didn’t happen. The judge dragged this out for 8 months. A waste of tax payers monies, but the illegal aliens here get away with murder! When I stood up and made the judge accountable for his actions he left my son alone. I’m working on getting citizens on days they can go into a court room and keep the judges accountable!
So, outrider, your son’s PD didn’t care, but the ones for all the illegal aliens care SO MUCH that they routinely get them exonerated for murder (illegal aliens are virtually always represented by the PD for obvious reasons).
But, in your son’s case, where no witnesses showed and he was acquitted, that was entirely because you showed up at his four or five court dates over eight months and nothing do do with the PD who had the file talking with the DA during the other 260 days in that time period.
Real life isn’t Law & Order, and the real resolution of most cases does not come in a court room.
Is it called the Criminal Court System, because they deal with
criminals, or because the Court System is Criminal?
Since taxes pay for the court system…should it not be free for
the people to use?
Justice behind costly scheme(s)…ain’t justice.
Thanks and Good Luck
Robert (17)
Of course – if you live in a free market, you can go do something else to make money. The problem is that we don’t live in a free market. Essentially, this is where left libertarians conflict with center or right libertarians: the latter think the current market approximates a free market much more closely than the former do. The latter tend to think a completely free market would look pretty much as it does now, save lower taxes.
The corporate state artificially restricts the number of alternative options available, artificially favors certain kinds of options over others, favors certain kinds of business models over others, and inculcates habits of subordination that make people less likely to strike out on their own. If it’s just about “quit if you don’t like it” then I agree with you: suck it up and DIY. But it goes deeper than that, and it’s in those deeper issues that we leave the realm of personal preference and enter the realm of political economy.
In order to know what kind of free market we’re fighting for, we have to at least have a theory about what parts are the result of privilege, what parts are legitimate, and what possibilities we’d have in the absence of privilege. This is the kind of politics associated with radical libertarianism, and as you can see it leads to conclusions that go far beyond markets.
[...] Scandal in Louisiana’s Cri… [...]
[...] the Agitator: There’s a major scandal brewing in Louisiana’s criminal justice [...]
Any idea what the current status of this scandal is? There doesn’t seem to be much coverage other than the initial articles that appeared after the suicide.