SMOKE SCREEN

Shortly after Keva Landrum-Johnson took over as district attorney
following Eddie Jordan's resignation Oct. 30, hundreds of new felony
cases flooded the public defenders office, overwhelming the 29
defense attorneys.

After New Orleans regained its title as the nation's murder capital,
the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By
filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the
new DA heeded their call.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, said Steve Singer, chief of
trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.

The flood of new felony charges didn't target murderers, rapists or
armed robbers -- they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes
caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy
prison sentences.

The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty
offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and
damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.

"We hardly have enough lawyers to handle the serious, violent cases,
and now we're jamming up the entire system with marijuana cases,"
Singer said. "We never used to see this happen, then all of a sudden
every second and third marijuana offense starts coming in as a felony."

Change in Tactics

Landrum-Johnson's decision to accept felony charges on people
arrested for second and third marijuana possession offenses is a
dramatic break from the tactics of former DAs Jordan and Harry Connick.

A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a
misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically
results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry
up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.

Under Jordan and Connick, however, second and third offenses were
routinely reduced to misdemeanors that typically did not require a
trial. This freed up public resources to be spent on violent crimes
as opposed to minor, victimless offenses, Singer said.

But under Landrum-Johnson, the system has been turned upside down at
the expense of the taxpayer and the communities of New Orleans, said
Tulane University criminologist Peter Scharf.

Between June 16-22, New Orleans police arrested 71 people for
marijuana offenses, according to the public defender's office. That
seven-day stretch represents what defense attorneys see on an average
weekly basis And if that trend holds out for the entire year, the
courts will handle nearly 3,700 marijuana possession cases in 2008.

In Seattle, a city with a population of 570,000, police arrested just
59 people for marijuana possession in all of 2004. The low number is
a result of a publicly approved measure that directed police to make
marijuana possession cases their lowest priority so they could
concentrate on violent offenders.

"If you want a recipe for bankrupting society, you got it here in New
Orleans," Scharf said. "You charge someone for smoking a joint, clog
up the time of attorneys, juries and judges and then give them a
10-year sentence that will cost society $300,000 for keeping them in
jail. They can't catch murderers so they may as well go after dope smokers.

"This is a really bad business model where there's no sense of
priority, no sense of cost and no sense of a return on investment."

Some say Landrum-Johnson's decision to buck history and charge
marijuana users with felonies is a political decision meant to assist
in her run for Orleans Criminal District Court Section E judgeship.
By prosecuting thousands of marijuana possession cases as felonies,
Landrum-Johnson can then go to the voters of New Orleans and claim
she is "tough on crime," Scharf said. She can point to the massive
increase in felony prosecutions under her tenure without explaining
that those prosecutions were for people holding joints and not guns, he said.

Another member of the DA's office who stands to benefit from the
increase in felony prosecutions is Melanie Talia, deputy chief of the
DA's Screening Division. She is running for the Criminal Court Section J.

Landrum-Johnson was unavailable for comment but her spokesman Dalton
Savwoir said that while he agreed there has been an increase in
second and third offense marijuana felony acceptances, the increase
is not attributable to a change in policy.

"Rather, the increase is a result of the fact that during 2008, it
has become easier to obtain certified copies of prior convictions
(that are) required evidence (to prosecute) second and third offense
marijuana cases," Savwoir said.

In other words, Savwoir said, clerical malfunctions that prevented
the DA from seeking felony prosecutions of marijuana cases in the
past have been rectified.

Felony Impact

The strategy of attacking minor offenses as a way of combating larger
problems is called the "broken windows" theory. Proponents of the
theory typically point to New York as a successful example.

In the 1990s, the New York Police Department aggressively went after
petty, non-violent offenses, such as marijuana possession, in an
attempt to reduce violent crime and clean up troubled neighborhoods.
During that time the number of homicides dropped from 2,262 in 1990
to 596 in 2006.

The New Orleans DA may be following a similar strategy but there is a
big difference, said David Kennedy, a criminal justice professor at
the City University of New York.

In New York, second and third marijuana possession cases are treated
like traffic tickets where the offender is issued a civil citation
and fined up to $250.

The problem with Landrum-Johnson's strategy is that the harm done to
the community by charging people with felonies for possessing a gram
of marijuana far outweighs the harm done by the drug itself, Kennedy said.

People charged with felony marijuana possession will sit in Orleans
Parish Prison for up to 60 days awaiting trial during which time they
can lose their job and their family's only source of income. And if
they are convicted of a felony, it will severely damage their ability
to find employment, a place to live, join the military, enter college
or earn custody of their children in divorce proceedings, he said.

"This type of conviction can bring permanent damage to the entire
life course of that individual," Kennedy said. "And when there is a
high density of these types of marijuana convictions in one area, it
can do great harm to the community because you have people constantly
going in and out of prison.

"Unless I'm completely missing something here, there is no
crime-control rationale for this kind of approach."

'Targets of Opportunity'

Ursula Price is the senior organizer for Safe Streets Strong
Communities, a community-based organization dedicated to criminal
justice reform. She said her friend was recently arrested for felony
possession of marijuana. He had been arrested once before as a
teenager 20 years ago and in that time he has married, raised a
family and kept out of trouble.

If his recent arrest occurred while Jordan or Connick were DA, he
would have been charged with a misdemeanor, paid a fine and been on
his way. But now he is facing a lengthy prison sentence that could
destroy his family, Price said.

"He had resources set aside to send his older son to college this
fall, but now he's thinking about having to spend them on a lawyer so
he can stay out of jail and continue to support his family," Price
said. "I don't understand why anyone would think marijuana possession
should be a priority given everything else we're dealing with. But
this is a convenient way of targeting a particular group of people.
It's an easy arrest to make and these cases are difficult to defend.
It's hard to prove you weren't in possession of some marijuana that
the police offer says you were."

Almost all of the people charged with felony marijuana possession
each month in New Orleans are low-income African-Americans, Scharf
said. And they are the people who are hurt the most by the DA's new
approach because they typically can't afford to bail themselves out
of jail. So they sit in Orleans Parish Prison for extended periods of
time unable to support their families.

But it is well known that low-income African-Americans are not the
only people in the Big Easy guilty of lighting up a joint every now
and then, Scharf said.

"They're targets of opportunity, lower-class individuals without
resources. And for the most part, the public doesn't seem to care.
But you start arresting a bunch of Loyola and Tulane students and
give them 12 years for smoking a joint and just see what happens.
Parents will be out in the streets screaming with moral outrage and
demanding justice."