NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE STORM: City's criminal trials are on hold; jail fills

JENNIFER LATSON
Detroit Free Press

NEW ORLEANS -- Nearly two months after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana's largest criminal justice system is still in ruins. Court is held in the Amtrak station and inmates are penned up in an outdoor bus bay. Trial dates come and go while defendants sit in crowded prisons as far away as Florida. Criminal trials are on indefinite hold. Murderers will probably go free, admits District Attorney Eddie Jordan.

He faces two obstacles: Witnesses who've scattered with the winds and evidence vaults scoured by flooding. Before Katrina, 3,000 people were awaiting trial, including some 200 facing murder charges. Evidence in many of those cases has congealed into a sodden mess in the boggy basement of the Orleans Parish Courthouse. "The rooms are in chaos," Jordan said. "It looked like a hurricane had been inside the evidence room. The stench was overwhelming."

Source: http://www.freep.com/news/nw/storms18e_20051018.htm