KATRINA AFTERMATH City's courts try to move forward

Many pieces of evidence sat in muck for weeks and could be ruined.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- In his third day back on the bench since Hurricane Katrina struck two months ago, Criminal District Judge Benedict Willard opens court by entering a plea of his own -- for patience.
"We're going to do as much as we can, with the limited resources," Judge Willard says of this battered city's struggle to resuscitate a justice system crippled by the monster storm.
With the criminal courthouse still mired in muck, Judge Willard presides at the old parish jail in a room once used for witnesses to identify criminal suspects in lineups. One-inch hash marks for measuring height dot the wall behind his small office desk. Attorneys sit in folding chairs.
Two defense lawyers for men jailed on drug charges before the storm ask for reduced bail and to see evidence against their clients. But the lawyers don't know which jails now hold the evacuated, absent defendants. And evidence rooms in the courthouse remain a swampy mess.
So Judge Willard postpones hearing their motions. In 20 minutes, he's done all he can -- until his next court session Nov. 14, when he hopes there will be less confusion and disarray and perhaps more lawyers and defendants needed to conduct the court's business.
Like the city's crumbled levees and gutted homes, New Orleans' courts have been reduced to shambles -- and the chaos could jeopardize many of the 3,000 cases pending before the hurricane hit.
Judges, prosecutors and clerks displaced from the damaged courthouse are scattered from French Quarter hotels to a Baton Rouge college campus.
Court moves to Houston
Other courts have been affected, too. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles cases from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, has temporarily relocated to Houston, 350 miles to the west. Its courthouse suffered little damage but court officials say they need hotel rooms and other amenities that remain in short supply here for visiting attorneys.
In the flooded basement of the criminal courthouse, guns, drugs and other evidence sat soaked for weeks and could be ruined. Witnesses and defendants fled the city to far-flung refuges. The fraction of New Orleans' 475,000 residents who returned aren't nearly enough to fill jury pools. Judges are holding court without dockets, hearing whatever attorneys happen to show up.
Delicate situation
Obstacles threaten to trip the courts at every step: overdue bail hearings for defendants jailed before the storm, trials delayed as clerks try to salvage evidence and prosecutors track down witnesses, appeals resting on records that may have been destroyed.
Judges and lawyers fear they could be forced to scrap some cases altogether for lack of evidence and testimony, leaving them no choice but to turn accused criminals loose.
"That's a nightmare scenario no one in their right mind could possibly want," said Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie J. Jordan Jr. "I think it may very well be possible in some cases, but it's still too early to say."
Prosecutors have their own problems. The cash-strapped city, which pays for roughly one-third of the district attorney's budget, has failed to fund the prosecutor's office for the last three months of the year. Mayor Ray Nagin says the city is broke.
While a backlog of cases piles up, Jordan says he's been forced to make money his top priority. He's laid off 57 support staffers, from clerical workers to investigators, and his office hasn't paid its phone bill in months. If the budget crunch spills into next year, he says, attorneys may be let go as well.
In addition to the 3,000 cases pending in Orleans Parish before Katrina hit, Jordan's staff -- working with laptops in a French Quarter hotel suite -- still are screening pre-hurricane arrests for possible prosecutions while taking in 20 to 30 new arrest reports each day.
Meanwhile, there may be fewer attorneys for defendants who need them.
Preliminary work
Before trials can resume, court officials will have to hire salvage experts to determine how much evidence they can save from the seven evidence and records rooms in the courthouse basement, where the water covered nearly everything in mold and slime.
Floors have become a filthy mess of soaked papers and boxes. Evidence from guitars to crowbars and car fenders is covered in grime, its value in court unknown. Guns have rusted and drugs disintegrated from water seeping into their plastic bags. Records dating back 70 years are warped and smothered in green spores.
Records dealing with unresolved trials were kept upstairs, beyond reach of the floodwater. But even though documents in the swampy basement were all from closed cases, convictions could be jeopardized if flooding destroyed records of a particular trial.
There are signs of progress, however.
Space for 800 prisoners opened Oct. 17 at the House of Detention, the old jailhouse still stained by a grimy flood mark 4 feet above ground. That enabled jailers to move out of the Union Passenger Terminal train and bus station, where they'd been booking and detaining prisoners since Katrina passed.
Judges are holding daily bail hearings and scheduling dockets for November. Some say jury trials could resume as early as February.