Activists, Lawyers, Feds See A Chance To Fix New Orleans' Judicial Problems New Orleans police got a reminder of the challenges facing the local justice system two weeks ago, when they finally pried open the rusty doors of their department's evidence rooms, which had been flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last year. As was the case when a similar evidence vault was opened at the local courthouse six months earlier, much of what was inside was a moldy mess. A jumble of rusted guns was on the floor, and plastic bags of narcotics were stuck in the ceiling's rafters, left there when the water receded. [continues 895 words]
Defendants' rights violated, lawyers say New Orleans plans to hold its first criminal trial since Hurricane Katrina as soon as next week, the first step in solving a judicial crisis in which thousands of suspects have been jailed for months without trials. Criminal District Court Chief Judge Calvin Johnson says courts will reopen in the downtown courthouse, which was flooded after the Aug. 29 storm. He says 3,000 jury summonses have been mailed, and criminal trials could resume soon after Memorial Day weekend. It's unclear who will be tried or how they will be chosen. [continues 287 words]
A 16-year-old federal program that has poured about $500 million a year into more than 750 regional anti-drug task forces is under fire from critics who say that a lack of oversight has led to wrongful convictions of citizens and theft, perjury and misuse of public funds by law enforcement officers. The focus of many of the complaints from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union has been the scandal in Tulia, Texas, where more than 40 residents -- most of them black -- were sent to jail after an officer allegedly lied in court about selling them drugs during a sting operation in 1999. [continues 894 words]
Analysts look at the ethical line that's crossed when the desire to win turns zealous prosecution into misconduct. The star witness in a case that has been called the worst miscarriage of justice in Texas history got all the headlines recently, after a judge found that he lied in court in order to convict 38 people -- 36 of them black -- on drug charges. But the district attorney in the dusty Texas Panhandle town of Tulia knew that undercover cop Tom Coleman was lying on the witness stand, and he did nothing to correct the record, according to a scathing, 129-page critique of the original trials written by a judge who reviewed the cases for a state appeals court. [continues 1148 words]
BODY: WASHINGTON -- The states spend, on average, about 13% of their budgets cleaning up "the wreckage" of alcohol and drug abuse -- the same sum they spend on higher education, a study shows. Of the $ 81.3 billion the states spent in 1998 dealing with substance abuse, less than 4%, or about $ 3 billion, was spent on prevention and treatment programs. The remainder is spent on a range of services including law enforcement, welfare and health care. The three-year study, prepared by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York, provides state lawmakers and governors with the first comprehensive cost analysis of the impact of substance abuse on state budgets, according to its authors. [continues 342 words]
