Jim Finnel
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
Shortly after Keva Landrum-Johnson took over as district attorney following Eddie Jordan’s resignation Oct. 30, hundreds of new felony cases flooded the public defenders office, overwhelming the 29 defense attorneys.
After New Orleans regained its title as the nation’s murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.
The flood of new felony charges didn’t target murderers, rapists or armed robbers — they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.
The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.
“We hardly have enough lawyers to handle the serious, violent cases, and now we’re jamming up the entire system with marijuana cases,” Singer said. “We never used to see this happen, then all of a sudden every second and third marijuana offense starts coming in as a felony.”
Change in tactics
Landrum-Johnson’s decision to accept felony charges on people arrested for second and third marijuana possession offenses is a dramatic break from the tactics of former DAs Jordan and Harry Connick.
A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.
Under Jordan and Connick, however, second and third offenses were routinely reduced to misdemeanors that typically did not require a trial. This freed up public resources to be spent on violent crimes as opposed to minor, victimless offenses, Singer said.
But under Landrum-Johnson, the system has been turned upside down at the expense of the taxpayer and the communities of New Orleans, said Tulane University criminologist Peter Scharf.
Between June 16-22, New Orleans police arrested 71 people for marijuana offenses, according to the public defender’s office. That seven-day stretch represents what defense attorneys see on an average weekly basis And if that trend holds out for the entire year, the courts will handle nearly 3,700 marijuana possession cases in 2008.
In Seattle, a city with a population of 570,000, police arrested just 59 people for marijuana possession in all of 2004. The low number is a result of a publicly approved measure that directed police to make marijuana possession cases their lowest priority so they could concentrate on violent offenders.
“If you want a recipe for bankrupting society, you got it here in New Orleans,” Scharf said. “You charge someone for smoking a joint, clog up the time of attorneys, juries and judges and then give them a 10-year sentence that will cost society $300,000 for keeping them in jail. They can’t catch murderers so they may as well go after dope smokers.
“This is a really bad business model where there’s no sense of priority, no sense of cost and no sense of a return on investment.”
Some say Landrum-Johnson’s decision to buck history and charge marijuana users with felonies is a political decision meant to assist in her run for Orleans Criminal District Court Section E judgeship. By prosecuting thousands of marijuana possession cases as felonies, Landrum-Johnson can then go to the voters of New Orleans and claim she is “tough on crime,” Scharf said. She can point to the massive increase in felony prosecutions under her tenure without explaining that those prosecutions were for people holding joints and not guns, he said.
Another member of the DA’s office who stands to benefit from the increase in felony prosecutions is Melanie Talia, deputy chief of the DA’s Screening Division. She is running for the Criminal Court Section J.
Landrum-Johnson was unavailable for comment but her spokesman Dalton Savwoir said that while he agreed there has been an increase in second and third offense marijuana felony acceptances, the increase is not attributable to a change in policy.
“Rather, the increase is a result of the fact that during 2008, it has become easier to obtain certified copies of prior convictions (that are) required evidence (to prosecute) second and third offense marijuana cases,” Savwoir said.
In other words, Savwoir said, clerical malfunctions that prevented the DA from seeking felony prosecutions of marijuana cases in the past have been rectified.
Felony impact
The strategy of attacking minor offenses as a way of combating larger problems is called the “broken windows” theory. Proponents of the theory typically point to New York as a successful example.
In the 1990s, the New York Police Department aggressively went after petty, non-violent offenses, such as marijuana possession, in an attempt to reduce violent crime and clean up troubled neighborhoods. During that time the number of homicides dropped from 2,262 in 1990 to 596 in 2006.
The New Orleans DA may be following a similar strategy but there is a big difference, said David Kennedy, a criminal justice professor at the City University of New York.
In New York, second and third marijuana possession cases are treated like traffic tickets where the offender is issued a civil citation and fined up to $250.
The problem with Landrum-Johnson’s strategy is that the harm done to the community by charging people with felonies for possessing a gram of marijuana far outweighs the harm done by the drug itself, Kennedy said.
People charged with felony marijuana possession will sit in Orleans Parish Prison for up to 60 days awaiting trial during which time they can lose their job and their family’s only source of income. And if they are convicted of a felony, it will severely damage their ability to find employment, a place to live, join the military, enter college or earn custody of their children in divorce proceedings, he said.
“This type of conviction can bring permanent damage to the entire life course of that individual,” Kennedy said. “And when there is a high density of these types of marijuana convictions in one area, it can do great harm to the community because you have people constantly going in and out of prison.
“Unless I’m completely missing something here, there is no crime-control rationale for this kind of approach.”
‘Targets of opportunity’
Ursula Price is the senior organizer for Safe Streets Strong Communities, a community-based organization dedicated to criminal justice reform. She said her friend was recently arrested for felony possession of marijuana. He had been arrested once before as a teenager 20 years ago and in that time he has married, raised a family and kept out of trouble.
If his recent arrest occurred while Jordan or Connick were DA, he would have been charged with a misdemeanor, paid a fine and been on his way. But now he is facing a lengthy prison sentence that could destroy his family, Price said.
“He had resources set aside to send his older son to college this fall, but now he’s thinking about having to spend them on a lawyer so he can stay out of jail and continue to support his family,” Price said. “I don’t understand why anyone would think marijuana possession should be a priority given everything else we’re dealing with. But this is a convenient way of targeting a particular group of people. It’s an easy arrest to make and these cases are difficult to defend. It’s hard to prove you weren’t in possession of some marijuana that the police offer says you were.”
Almost all of the people charged with felony marijuana possession each month in New Orleans are low-income African-Americans, Scharf said. And they are the people who are hurt the most by the DA’s new approach because they typically can’t afford to bail themselves out of jail. So they sit in Orleans Parish Prison for extended periods of time unable to support their families.
But it is well known that low-income African-Americans are not the only people in the Big Easy guilty of lighting up a joint every now and then, Scharf said.
“They’re targets of opportunity, lower-class individuals without resources. And for the most part, the public doesn’t seem to care. But you start arresting a bunch of Loyola and Tulane students and give them 12 years for smoking a joint and just see what happens. Parents will be out in the streets screaming with moral outrage and demanding justice.”
News Hawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: New Orleans City Business
Copyright: 2008 New Orleans Publishing Group
Contact: New Orleans CityBusiness -- The Business Newspaper of Metropolitan New Orleans
Website: New Orleans CityBusiness -- The Business Newspaper of Metropolitan New Orleans
After New Orleans regained its title as the nation’s murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.
The flood of new felony charges didn’t target murderers, rapists or armed robbers — they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.
The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.
“We hardly have enough lawyers to handle the serious, violent cases, and now we’re jamming up the entire system with marijuana cases,” Singer said. “We never used to see this happen, then all of a sudden every second and third marijuana offense starts coming in as a felony.”
Change in tactics
Landrum-Johnson’s decision to accept felony charges on people arrested for second and third marijuana possession offenses is a dramatic break from the tactics of former DAs Jordan and Harry Connick.
A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.
Under Jordan and Connick, however, second and third offenses were routinely reduced to misdemeanors that typically did not require a trial. This freed up public resources to be spent on violent crimes as opposed to minor, victimless offenses, Singer said.
But under Landrum-Johnson, the system has been turned upside down at the expense of the taxpayer and the communities of New Orleans, said Tulane University criminologist Peter Scharf.
Between June 16-22, New Orleans police arrested 71 people for marijuana offenses, according to the public defender’s office. That seven-day stretch represents what defense attorneys see on an average weekly basis And if that trend holds out for the entire year, the courts will handle nearly 3,700 marijuana possession cases in 2008.
In Seattle, a city with a population of 570,000, police arrested just 59 people for marijuana possession in all of 2004. The low number is a result of a publicly approved measure that directed police to make marijuana possession cases their lowest priority so they could concentrate on violent offenders.
“If you want a recipe for bankrupting society, you got it here in New Orleans,” Scharf said. “You charge someone for smoking a joint, clog up the time of attorneys, juries and judges and then give them a 10-year sentence that will cost society $300,000 for keeping them in jail. They can’t catch murderers so they may as well go after dope smokers.
“This is a really bad business model where there’s no sense of priority, no sense of cost and no sense of a return on investment.”
Some say Landrum-Johnson’s decision to buck history and charge marijuana users with felonies is a political decision meant to assist in her run for Orleans Criminal District Court Section E judgeship. By prosecuting thousands of marijuana possession cases as felonies, Landrum-Johnson can then go to the voters of New Orleans and claim she is “tough on crime,” Scharf said. She can point to the massive increase in felony prosecutions under her tenure without explaining that those prosecutions were for people holding joints and not guns, he said.
Another member of the DA’s office who stands to benefit from the increase in felony prosecutions is Melanie Talia, deputy chief of the DA’s Screening Division. She is running for the Criminal Court Section J.
Landrum-Johnson was unavailable for comment but her spokesman Dalton Savwoir said that while he agreed there has been an increase in second and third offense marijuana felony acceptances, the increase is not attributable to a change in policy.
“Rather, the increase is a result of the fact that during 2008, it has become easier to obtain certified copies of prior convictions (that are) required evidence (to prosecute) second and third offense marijuana cases,” Savwoir said.
In other words, Savwoir said, clerical malfunctions that prevented the DA from seeking felony prosecutions of marijuana cases in the past have been rectified.
Felony impact
The strategy of attacking minor offenses as a way of combating larger problems is called the “broken windows” theory. Proponents of the theory typically point to New York as a successful example.
In the 1990s, the New York Police Department aggressively went after petty, non-violent offenses, such as marijuana possession, in an attempt to reduce violent crime and clean up troubled neighborhoods. During that time the number of homicides dropped from 2,262 in 1990 to 596 in 2006.
The New Orleans DA may be following a similar strategy but there is a big difference, said David Kennedy, a criminal justice professor at the City University of New York.
In New York, second and third marijuana possession cases are treated like traffic tickets where the offender is issued a civil citation and fined up to $250.
The problem with Landrum-Johnson’s strategy is that the harm done to the community by charging people with felonies for possessing a gram of marijuana far outweighs the harm done by the drug itself, Kennedy said.
People charged with felony marijuana possession will sit in Orleans Parish Prison for up to 60 days awaiting trial during which time they can lose their job and their family’s only source of income. And if they are convicted of a felony, it will severely damage their ability to find employment, a place to live, join the military, enter college or earn custody of their children in divorce proceedings, he said.
“This type of conviction can bring permanent damage to the entire life course of that individual,” Kennedy said. “And when there is a high density of these types of marijuana convictions in one area, it can do great harm to the community because you have people constantly going in and out of prison.
“Unless I’m completely missing something here, there is no crime-control rationale for this kind of approach.”
‘Targets of opportunity’
Ursula Price is the senior organizer for Safe Streets Strong Communities, a community-based organization dedicated to criminal justice reform. She said her friend was recently arrested for felony possession of marijuana. He had been arrested once before as a teenager 20 years ago and in that time he has married, raised a family and kept out of trouble.
If his recent arrest occurred while Jordan or Connick were DA, he would have been charged with a misdemeanor, paid a fine and been on his way. But now he is facing a lengthy prison sentence that could destroy his family, Price said.
“He had resources set aside to send his older son to college this fall, but now he’s thinking about having to spend them on a lawyer so he can stay out of jail and continue to support his family,” Price said. “I don’t understand why anyone would think marijuana possession should be a priority given everything else we’re dealing with. But this is a convenient way of targeting a particular group of people. It’s an easy arrest to make and these cases are difficult to defend. It’s hard to prove you weren’t in possession of some marijuana that the police offer says you were.”
Almost all of the people charged with felony marijuana possession each month in New Orleans are low-income African-Americans, Scharf said. And they are the people who are hurt the most by the DA’s new approach because they typically can’t afford to bail themselves out of jail. So they sit in Orleans Parish Prison for extended periods of time unable to support their families.
But it is well known that low-income African-Americans are not the only people in the Big Easy guilty of lighting up a joint every now and then, Scharf said.
“They’re targets of opportunity, lower-class individuals without resources. And for the most part, the public doesn’t seem to care. But you start arresting a bunch of Loyola and Tulane students and give them 12 years for smoking a joint and just see what happens. Parents will be out in the streets screaming with moral outrage and demanding justice.”
News Hawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: New Orleans City Business
Copyright: 2008 New Orleans Publishing Group
Contact: New Orleans CityBusiness -- The Business Newspaper of Metropolitan New Orleans
Website: New Orleans CityBusiness -- The Business Newspaper of Metropolitan New Orleans
