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A day in a New Orleans courtroom offers a window into the city's embattled justice system
Judge Julian Parker rules with a firm gavel and a Creole-spiced sense of humor in trying to reduce a backlog of 300 cases.
By Bill Sasser | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the February 27, 2008 edition
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New Orleans - While the flood waters of hurricane Katrina followed no laws but nature's own, Judge Julian Parker rules again in Courtroom G in Orleans Parish District Criminal Court. For a year and a half after the calamitous Katrina, Mr. Parker shared a courtroom with another judge – or didn't have one at all.
Now he's dispensing justice again from behind his wine-dark wooden bench, even though some basic courthouse amenities – including the elevator to his chamber – still don't work. On his docket today: 13 drug charges, six felony assaults, two murders, and a dozen other offenses ranging from car theft to burglary, not to mention his homilies about life and the law.
"You need to get back into school and get into sports," he tells a 17-year-old charged with possession of marijuana, who has spent two months in lockup because his family couldn't raise $250 bail. "You look like you would make a good second baseman." He releases the teenager with a future date for a hearing.
In fact, of nearly 30 cases on the judge's docket this day only a handful will be concluded. The rest are continued.
While the wheels of justice turn slowly in all courthouses, perhaps no part of New Orleans civil government has struggled more since hurricane Katrina than its criminal-justice system. Indeed, persistent crime – and the related flow of criminal cases through the court system – are often cited as symbols of how far New Orleans still has to go to rebound from the country's costliest natural disaster.
Much of the judicial stasis has been understandable. After Katrina, courthouses were damaged, files lost, and lawyers, judges, and witnesses fled the state.
Today, while courtrooms are functioning again and many agree the system is operating more smoothly, critics maintain it still has a long way to go. They blame an overworked prosecutor's office, judges – almost anyone involved with criminal justice. Each day Courtroom G becomes a microcosm of the progress and pitfalls of a court and city laboring to return to normalcy.
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