ONE DAY IN NEW ORLEANS  -  12 - 08 - 06

The City is a shadow of its former self.  You don't see the crowds on Canal, and the gaudy Christmas decorations are not there either.  Spanish is becoming the second language and even Ethiopia is providing cab drivers.  There are time warps to a Pre-Katrina era, from which you can see the past and hear hope for the future.  But it feels different, as if a new casting call has gone out, and some of the old actors are being replaced.   Moving away from the French Quarter, you find the path of the dragon Katrina clearly marked by high water marks, collapsing buildings,  and ghost town neighborhoods.

The Hotel Montleone has come back almost to its former self, particularly cheerful this time of year.  A children's choir in the lobby,  red and white uniforms and self conscious posture, takes you back to a time before and you realize the dragon will some day be forgotten.  A few miles away, Criminal District Court is battered, skinless in rough sheetrock and concrete floors and surrounded by abandoned and collapsed real estate.  It seems only at the very core of the building is there any pretense of normalcy.  The cops back up  jail vans on the big steps of the building and park to unload prisoners, removing any pretense things are typical of big city,  well funded courts.  

Paying a visit for casework, and invited to buy an $85 ticket to the 21st Al Tate Awards Banquet, the cold December Friday was a good time to rekindle a memory that we once were all in this one criminal defense lawyer club. That was before the reform storms when people started getting shoved aside if they didn't follow a particular theory.  Would that we could move back to a position in which ideas are discussed, debated and respected.  Maybe we can - but any optimism is tempered by experience.

LACDL's best program is this dinner, at which the praises of courage in criminal defense are loudly chanted.  Nobody is ashamed of the Right to Counsel here, and it is always something to behold, given the Limbaugh Letter and the O'Reilly Factor and the other prejudice sown in the USA over the last 10 years or so.  Public Defenders really have never done this thing well - there's too little money.  Some say the Indigent Defenders become indigent themselves.  If you want to criticize this dinner, the worst you can say is that it never much cares to recognize people who have spent decades in the Louisiana Public Defender "System" and had great success, other than Sam Dalton.  Perhaps for fear of getting off message about the problems in that system,  there is a tragic absence of recognition.  But then you face the question of why public defenders don't do more of this kind of thing.

Honored at the 21st dinner include Mike Small of Alexandria, whose work over the years has included exemplary efforts in cooperation with Ken Rodenbeck's office in Rapides Parish on Capital Cases; Frank Neuner for his leadership through the La State Bar in support of the Right to Counsel; Neal Walker for his Criminal Justice Act Panel Participation in Federal Court and Denny  LeBouef for her Capital Advocacy work.

Some cheerleading is in order, and was duly rendered in the ornate Montleone Ballroom. It was most of all for a courageous Denny LeBouef, who amid the national disaster lost her sister Marie and brother in law Bill Campbell over the last year, but not her zeal for a fight against the Death Penalty.  She was fresh off the Orleans PD Board's stand off with the Criminal Court Judges and the cancellation of a Contempt Hearing originally fixed for October 8th. (A battle helped a bit by the LaPDA drafted Statute prohibiting judicial management under 14:151 (E) passed in 2004)   Denny's view is Indigent Defense is part of a larger movement for Social Justice.  No matter the finer points of policymaking or management,  this is one hell of a lawyer.

Neal Walker noted that Orleans Parish has become a lockup champion, with an explosion in jail that leads to petty lockups for months at a time without counsel.  He recounted a recent incident in court where lawyers,  hearing a woman would be held on $1,000 bail for a misdemeanor barely criminal,  approached her and gathered enough information to convince the court to release her on recognizance: the Court thanked them, proving the Judges want to do the right thing.  They need a defense bar!   The PD still has not met the challenge of service to all its clients, particularly the run of the mill misdemeanants - Neal noted that charges are not even filed over 30% of the time in New Orleans.   Innocents in jail.

Steven Singer was there and you have to admire his courage in confronting power, even if you can't endorse the particular steps.  We found common ground on the statutory mandate prohibiting the Judges from getting their hands into day to day management, and noted that is quite an important point. 

Reading Woodward's "State of Denial",  you are struck by how the Bush Administration bungled into Iraq by giving up fact finding in favor of ideology.  Cheney would make sure that ideologically impure folks didn't get into the picture: General Garner had to actually fire two pros from the State Department who were going to help post war planning because Cheney's office didn't consider them loyal.  Rummy would give some NSA staff an edited briefing book so they couldn't critique him. This consistent practice lead to failure in Baghdad and New Orleans.  Despite claims that "the most important folks are in this room",  there are many important players who must be included if you want good policymaking.  Ideological entry exams are Un-American.

That kind of exclusion was, for a long time, the biggest roadblock to PD reform.  Frank Neuner will earn his biggest reward if he can continue supporting the inclusive process by which public defenders and private bar lawyers are working toward a consensus on reform.  That is the truly exceptional thing happening right now. 

Most of all, when you're the Grinch to somebody else's Whoville,  writing up funny nicknames and allegory about them, you have to give credit for the kind reception, the professional respect, and the kind good humor shown by everybody there Friday night, whether they like you or not!  At the heart, these are quite professional people, and if you talk to a number of them you'll find that like any other group of professionals,  they are not robots in lockstep with a single view.  They may in fact agree with the Grinch on some things!  But most of all,  they are dedicated to their profession - an inspiration for everybody, including the public defenders.  Just because we don't agree on particular political decisions doesn't mean we can't recognize that.

               MERRY CHRISTMAS!