Brooks left Angola Prison after serving 42 years of a life sentence for murder. It should have been a joyous moment. Lawyers discovered fingerprint evidence previously concealed by prosecutors that pointed to a wrongful conviction. But Brooks didn’t walk out of Angola an innocent man. To secure his freedom, he had to “make a deal with the devil.”
It seemed like a turning point, one that positioned New Orleans to join a larger, national movement to eliminate or severely curtail money bail. Such sweeping reforms, however, have yet to materialize as Judge Harry Cantrell continues to defy federal court orders.
Between 2011 and 2017, the number of children in foster care in New Orleans fell by 89 percent compared with an 8 percent increase nationally. The children who do enter the system don’t stay long. Seventy percent are discharged within a month; nationally, it’s only 5 percent. Gray has effectively all but eliminated foster care except in extreme situations.
Lauren Anderson, a public defender and attorney supervisor for Municipal Court, is furious as she looks over a list of their names. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “We’re not making the city any safer. We’re only hurting these people, and we just keep doing it over and over. It’s infuriating.”
Forty-six states provide funding to help their most vulnerable citizens secure free legal assistance in civil matters. Louisiana provides nothing.
"She said she had just gotten out of jail a day or two ago. That's where she was all those months. She said, 'I'm clean and sober. My body had a chance to clean itself up. I feel good about life,'" said Brooks. "We just hugged and embraced."
The same day as Pennington's inauguration, officer Len Davis ordered the murder of 32-year-old Kim Groves. She had filed a brutality complaint against him the day before, after seeing Davis pistol-whip a teenager.
He'd steal glances through the curtains and soak it all in -- the men in the slick clothes, shooting dice, driving the flashiest cars, always surrounded by the prettiest women. It seemed magical.
He avoided the temptation of the drug dealers and the pull of prison. He even went to college. He was one of the rare ones. He had a future. And yet there he was, lying on the floor of Club X-Posure in Baton Rouge with a gun pointed at his head.
The dispute illustrates the hoops through which businesses must jump to operate in a protected historic district as well as the dogged determination of French Quarter interests in defending the character of their neighborhood.
"(Investigators) described a situation to where anything goes," Hebert said. "Basically they give you a menu: Sex? Drugs?"
Eight years later, as the city approaches the 10th anniversary of the storm, the massive brick buildings that made up the old housing developments are all but gone, replaced with the multicolored pastel houses and fourplexes of Marrero Commons, Columbia Parc, Faubourg Lafitte and Harmony Oaks, among others.
Later that night, Hulitt heard from an old girlfriend of Willie Lee's. She had just received a call from an inmate in OPP. "She told me Willie was dead, that he was killed in the jail," Hulitt said. "It can't be Willie. It can't be. She said, 'Yes, it is.'"
Sitting in the courtyard outside of the American Can apartment building near Bayou St. John, Doratha "Dodie" Smith-Simmons closed her eyes and began to sing. The words came out like a whispered prayer. "We are not afraid," she sang. "We are not afraid."
Buggy driver Maia Settle knew there was a problem when a customer told her Monday (April 21) there was a tour guide inside St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 reaching into tombs and pulling out jawbones to show the crowds.
Less than 10 days before the council was to hold a hearing on the proposed noise ordinance, lawyer Stuart Smith sent Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer an email message pledging to see that she would not be "electable as a dog catcher" if she backed away from supporting the new law.
When asked what she did for a living, after making sure she wasn't talking to a "cop," the dancing girl said for $50 she would do "everything."
The Pitards spent the mornings during their first year in business cleaning up syringes, used condoms and human feces left behind their restaurant, chased sex workers away throughout the day and worried every night that perhaps they made a terrible mistake.
"People opening my door, trying to coerce me into buying their crack and drugged-up women. Each night I was awakened to screaming and yelling. The rooms smell like death and to top it all, there were syringes in the desk drawer. Overall, if you stay here after reading this, then there is no hope for you."
As Clay took in a forkful, anticipating feta cheese and olives, she tasted something unusual. That's when she looked down at her plate and saw it: half a cigarette nestled among the sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers.
