TROUBLED NEW ORLEANS CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM STRUGGLES

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Their faces glisten with sweat, their red-rimmed eyes
stare ahead vacantly as they're herded into the sweltering room where
another day of court is about to begin.

"Sorry you have to sit on the floor," Commissioner Marie Bookman says to
about 50 men and women in orange shirts and pants and leg shackles before
she calls her first case in the bond hearing.

It's a spring morning in the New Orleans court system's long road back from
Hurricane Katrina.

This session of magistrate court is temporarily being held in a police
lineup room furnished with plastic tables. Flies buzz about. Two giant fans
offer no relief; a few deputies seem about to nod off in the oven-like heat.

Most of the men here have been arrested on drug charges; most of the women
- - some barefoot, some in stiletto heels - have been accused of
prostitution. Few can afford lawyers.

Everybody else is represented by the same public defender, who hasn't had
time to interview anyone beforehand. It's the commissioner - blue jeans
peeking out from under her black robe - who flips through manila folders
and questions the prosecutor.

She asks about residue in a crack pipe in one case, the number of guns in
another.

Occasionally, she addresses the defendants. She has questions for one
ruddy-faced man: "You're homeless? No trailer? No friends? No relatives?"

She moves through the cases quickly.

No one can make bail, so it's back to jail for what can be a long wait - up
to two months - before they see a lawyer again.

As one man shambles up the stairs, Tulane University law professor Pam
Metzger leans over to a visitor and whispers: "How do you like our brand of
justice?"

The criminal justice system - like so much else in New Orleans - was
ravaged by the hurricane. The courthouse was flooded. Files were ruined,
evidence contaminated. Judges and lawyers lost their offices and homes.
Witnesses and victims fled for their lives.

Ten months later, this vision of legal hell is slowly being cleared away.
As the city heads into a steamy summer, judges are back in court and trials
have begun.

But it's going to take much longer to fix a system whose long-neglected
flaws were ruthlessly exposed by Katrina - defendants run through hearings
at near tobacco-auction speed, 60-day jail stays without seeing a lawyer,
low pay for overworked public defenders and a jambalaya of outmoded
statutes that some scholars say should have been overhauled a century ago.

After floodwaters receded everybody recognized the problems, says David
Carroll, director of research and evaluation at the National Legal Aid &
Defender Association.

"Katrina ... removed the pretension that the system was working," he says.
"They're now able to start with a clean slate."

To rebuild, this tradition-minded community must come up with not only
money but fresh ideas and the political will to make them a reality.

Some changes already have occurred. A new board has been selected to
oversee the New Orleans indigent defender program, which represents about
85 percent of people arrested.

The program has been cash-starved for years - both here and throughout the
state - because it's funded primarily by fees tacked on to traffic fines.
After Katrina, tickets became nonexistent because everyone had evacuated
the flooded city. With little money, three-quarters of the defenders were
laid off, leaving thousands of prisoners in legal limbo.

Two judges recently ruled this kind of funding system is unconstitutional.
The legal battle is now heading to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which has
declared in other cases that reforms are needed.

A new report sponsored by the Justice Department also recommended more
stable funding and offered this grim assessment: For the poor in New
Orleans, "justice is simply unavailable."

How much will change depends, in part, on how much money is available.

The state bar association already has kicked in about $1 million. The
Justice Department has awarded the New Orleans indigent defender program
$2.8 million - though the study it sponsored said more than $10 million is
needed for the year. And Gov. Kathleen Blanco's call to double to $20
million the amount going to indigent defense for Louisiana was approved
last week by the legislature.

District Attorney Eddie Jordan agrees, too, that the defenders' office
needs more money and a more reliable source of funds.

Some plans already are being put in place to help inmates and end what many
view as one of the system's most mind-boggling features: the lack of
attorneys for indigent suspects in the early stages of their cases.

Poor people have defenders at their bond hearings, but unless they can hire
a lawyer afterward, they don't have representation until they're officially
charged. Prosecutors can take up to 60 days to make that decision for
felonies - during which time suspects are be locked up if they can't make bail.

Two dozen lawyers have volunteered to participate in a "quick fix" plan,
representing the poor from the time of the arrest until charges are filed.
"It gives them an advocate and ... it ensures some accountability," Metzger
says.

Calvin Johnson, former chief judge of the Orleans Parish criminal courts,
sees it much the same way. "I think we're finally seizing the moment," he says.

After Katrina, thousands of inmates were evacuated to jails and prisons
around Louisiana, some as much as six hours away.

Private lawyers mobilized to represent inmates on an emergency basis after
indigent defenders were laid off. But since there was no central list of
clients, it was hard to figure out at first how many people were being
held, what they were charged with - or even where they were locked up.

Hundreds of prisoners were eventually sprung after lawsuits were filed.
They included inmates awaiting trial on petty offenses who'd already served
more time than they would have if convicted and those held past their
release dates without anyone noticing.

"People were hundreds of miles from a courthouse, with no court date and no
lawyers. If these conditions existed in Mexico, our State Department would
have been issuing a blistering human rights report," Neal Walker, director
of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center.

For example, one man who got in a fistfight three days before Katrina was
jailed 4 1/2 months before prosecutors decided not to file charges, Walker
says.

Jordan, the district attorney, says he knows some inmates fell through the
cracks early on and his office has tried to be reasonable in working with
defense lawyers.

But he says each case needs to be judged on its own merits. "There are a
number of individuals who should be in jail," Jordan says, "and we're going
to fight to keep them in jail."

The debate over inmates is just one part of the lingering turmoil in the
system.

Prosecutors still aren't back in their building, which were severely
damaged by floodwaters. But the district attorney's office recently moved
out of its unlikely temporary home - a dimly lighted nightclub - to more
suitable accommodations.

Judges face a backlog of an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 cases, compared with
about 3,800 before Katrina. They had been using two federal courtrooms,
handling a sharply reduced number of cases for security and transportation
reasons, as their 1930s Art Deco courthouse was repaired.

The actual prosecution of cases poses its own obstacles, says Rick
Teissier, a defense lawyer appointed by Hunter to evaluate the indigent
defender program.

"How do you find the victims? What do you do about the cops who were fired?
Do these cases wash away with them running away?" he says, referring to the
testimony of police dismissed after failing to report for duty in the
tumultuous days after the storm. "How long is it going to take to process
the evidence?"

In a flood-ravaged evidence room, "I was stepping over guns and hoping none
of them were loaded," says Katherine Mattes, a Tulane law school professor,
who says some evidence has been lost, some contaminated. "How much? I don't
if anyone can rightfully say," she says.

Johnson believes most evidence will be salvaged but has another worry:
Luring back experienced workers who've settled outside Louisiana. "They
have lives, they have jobs, their kids are in schools. The salaries we
offer are not the same," he says.

Prosecutor Jordan understands: He says 23 of 90 lawyers did not return
after the storm, and it's hard to recruit replacements with $30,000-a-year
starting salaries. That pay will increase by $10,000 over the next two
years; state lawmakers last week approved raises for assistant district
attorneys throughout the state.

Though those jobs are critical, much depends on what happens to the
indigent defender program.

Some say it's time to scrap the practice of using part-time lawyers
assigned to courts, rather than to cases. "Public defenders see their job
as keeping the assembly line moving as opposed to defending the client,"
says Carroll, the legal aid expert.

The recent Justice Department report said the indigent defense program in
New Orleans needs 70 full-time lawyers - compared with 42 part-time
defenders before Katrina - as well as investigators and other staff.

Dwight Doskey, a veteran public defender, also praises his colleagues,
saying they were committed to their jobs despite juggling scores of cases,
making little money and working in cramped conditions. He says he wants to
be optimistic, but he's dubious about long-term change.

Teissier is betting this will be a turnaround.

"I think the justice system is way ahead of the game in trying to make a
comeback," he says. "And if a few people can change it, that's just the
beginning ... Why can't the whole city change? ... I think this is a
defining moment."