ARRESTS BLAMED ON VENDETTA AFTER MOTHER'S DEATH

Tensions Flared While Police Searched House

In life, Cynthia Franklin did everything she could to protect her three
sons from what she perceived as a vendetta by overzealous police officers.
She blasted the authorities who prosecuted her oldest son, Percy Franklin,
and sent him to prison for 20 years for his involvement in the notorious
7th Ward Soldiers drug gang. She stormed the New Orleans Police Department
with complaints every time her younger sons -- 20-year-old fraternal twins
Brandon and Randon Robinson -- were stopped on the street and searched for
drugs.

After her death, little changed. In fact, her seemingly peaceful passing
seemed to aggravate the long-running conflict between her family and police.

On Jan. 24, Franklin didn't wake up. Her death appeared to be from natural
causes, but after police arrived, the house was declared a crime scene,
neighbors nearly rioted , and Brandon and Randon were arrested on gun and
drug charges. Several witnesses said some officers used profanity to
address grieving family members.

At one point, after the house was sealed off for a search by narcotics
detectives, Franklin's sister Connie said she asked to see the body and was
told, "What do you think this is? A f -- ing funeral home?"

Despite those claims, the officers in the case were cleared of wrongdoing
last week after a review by the Police Department's Public Integrity
Bureau. The criminal case against the twins is pending.

"The officers were exonerated," police spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said.
"PIB reviewed the facts and determined that the officers were in compliance
with all departmental rules and regulations."

According to police records, Franklin was still lying on her death bed when
officers said they spotted an AK-47 in plain sight in the family's home on
Bayou Road. The family said the police account is a fabrication. They said
the weapon, however menacing, was hidden under a mattress and behind the
closed door of the twins' bedroom. Randon said he had purchased the weapon
legally at a gun show and produced a receipt showing he had paid $391.45
for the gun in March 2003.

Officers sealed off the house, called Franklin's death suspicious and roped
off much of the block while they obtained a search warrant.

About six hours later, police said they found two small bags of marijuana
and a small amount of cocaine. Randon was arrested first, accused of
marijuana possession and illegally possessing a firearm with narcotics.
Soon after, Brandon was booked on the same charges, plus an additional
charge of cocaine possession. The family said police officers planted the
drugs; defense attorneys are working to get the charges dropped.

"I couldn't believe any of it was really happening," Randon said of his
arrest. "It was like a bad dream. My mother's dead, police are tearing up
the house and I'm in handcuffs."

Police concede that other than Franklin's relatively young age, 52, there
was nothing outwardly suspicious about her death, which remains
unclassified pending toxicology results. An epileptic and borderline
diabetic, Franklin was found in bed by a sister who lived with the family.
Rushing in from their bedroom down the hall, Brandon and Randon frantically
tried to move her, turn her over, wake her, revive her -- but she was
unresponsive. Brandon called 911.

First to arrive was a fire emergency truck. Next, an ambulance. Finally, a
police cruiser pulled up. It was about 10:30 a.m. Franklin's death was
unexpected and family members and neighbors began assembling around the
house. By all accounts the police officers and emergency workers initially
seemed to treat the case as a sad, but routine, death.

That is, until 1st District narcotics Detective Jake Schnapp showed up in
an unmarked police car, the family said. Schnapp was well known to the
family and soon after his arrival more than a dozen officers were swarming
around the scene while an increasingly hostile crowd of onlookers voiced
their protests.

On the day before Franklin's death, court records show, Schnapp appeared at
a pretrial court hearing to testify against Brandon Robinson in an earlier
drug case. Franklin accompanied her son to the hearing, as she did whenever
one of her sons had a scrape with the law.

For the twins, both high school graduates, those scrapes were mostly minor,
court records show. In addition to the two pending cases against him,
Brandon pleaded no contest to a marijuana possession charge in 2001, and a
marijuana possession charge against him last year was dismissed. Randon was
found innocent by a judge after being charged with marijuana possession in
2002 and he is awaiting trial on a 2003 charge of illegally carrying a
weapon. More than a dozen other stops by police did not result in arrests,
the twins said.

If there is any reason for the family to show up on police radar, it would
be the twins' older brother, Percy Franklin. Franklin was one of seven
members convicted for their roles in the so-called 7th Ward Soldiers, a
street-level drug gang involved in six murders and eight attempted murders.
Cynthia Franklin went to her death trying to convince people Percy's
conviction was a raw deal. While the other six gang members are serving
life prison sentences, Franklin is serving 20 years because none of the
violence and only a minimal amount of drugs were pinned on him. Upon
Franklin's sentencing, then-U.S. District Judge Edith Brown Clement found
he had "operated only at the fringes of the conspiracy."

Regardless of the family history, family members said the decision to call
Schnapp to the scene of Cynthia Franklin's death was callous, provocative
and unnecessary.

"My mom is dead and suddenly this is all about Jake Schnapp trying to put
me in jail. He has a vendetta," Brandon said.

John Fuller, an attorney for the family, was called to the house after
police declared it a crime scene. He said the discovery of the gun was
clearly the result of an illegal search.

"The tears weren't even dry on those people's faces and you had cops using
this death as a pretense to conduct a search," Fuller said. "Then they say
they saw an AK-47 in plain view? What's the chance of having an AK-47 in
plain view in your mother's house? Especially after you call the police. I
have a problem with that. . . . Bad searches happen every day, but this was
repulsive."

The situation may have been unusual, Defillo said, but the officials at the
scene went by the book. He even credited the officers for showing restraint
in the face of hostile family members and friends.

"It's an unfortunate situation, but if we haven't determined that the death
is from natural causes, we call it a crime scene," he said. "It was a tough
situation for the officers. There was a lot of vulgarity toward the
investigators."

A cousin of the twins, Mark Rainey, was arrested at the scene on charges of
disturbing the peace and trying to incite a riot, but those charges were
later dismissed.

One of Cynthia Franklin's sisters, Pamela Monroe, admitted family and
friends at the scene were very vocal in expressing their displeasure toward
the officers. But for good reason, she said.

"We were upset, yeah, but all Brandon was saying was don't let Jake Schnapp
inside the house because he just went to court on him," Monroe said. "My
sister died in her sleep and police turned it into a damn circus."