By Laura Maggi
The New Orleans Times-Picayune
NEW ORLEANS — On the heels of the official outcry over District Attorney Eddie Jordan dropping the case against a man accused in last summer’s quintuple murder, state Attorney General Charles Foti agreed Thursday to investigate how the Orleans Parish prosecutor’s office deals with homicides and other violent offenses.
Mayor Ray Nagin requested that the attorney general look into Jordan’s practices, initially floating the idea Wednesday, the same day New Orleans Police Department homicide detectives located the lone witness in the case who the district attorney’s office said had disappeared.
Jordan on Tuesday had dismissed five first-degree murder charges against Michael Anderson, 20, in the June 2006 slaying of five teenagers on a Central City corner.
“A district attorney is an independent elected official, probably one of our most independent elected officials in the state. We are trying to work cooperatively, and we want to make sure we send a signal that we expect change,” Nagin said at an afternoon news conference at City Hall.
While both Nagin and Foti called it premature to suggest that Jordan leave office, New Orleans City Councilwoman Shelley Midura sent a letter asking Jordan to resign.
“An elected official’s legitimacy and moral authority to govern is derived from the consent of the governed,” Midura wrote in the letter, which specifically referred to the Anderson case. “I no longer believe you have the consent and support from the public required to perform your duties adequately.”
In a statement issued Thursday night, City Council President Arnie Fielkow said: “On behalf of the council, I fully support the mayor’s request for Attorney General Foti to get involved, and I applaud the attorney general’s decision to conduct a systemic review of violent crime cases handled by the New Orleans district attorney’s office. The DA’s office has welcomed this review, and that is also good news. I hope that the review will swiftly identify any and all systemic problems which exist in our criminal justice system, and that these problems will be paired with strong, effective solutions that can be implemented immediately.”
Fielkow did not join Midura in urging Jordan to resign.
Jordan’s first assistant, Gaynell Williams, on Wednesday said that the office would welcome any investigation into their practices, a stance reiterated by a spokeswoman Thursday night.
In a written statement released Thursday night, Jordan rejected the notion that he resign.
“I have executed all of my responsibilities with the highest level of ethics and will continue to work with all components of the criminal justice system,” the statement said.
Foti called his office’s evaluation of the district attorney’s shop a “systems review,” saying the probe could go back as far as 10 years. The review that Foti described entails looking at individual crimes, such as researching the criminal records of both victims and perpetrators, as well as how the district attorney handles those cases.
The attorney general said he expects to meet with the district attorney and the police chief within the next couple days. Foti estimated that his staff could come up with preliminary recommendations sometime next month, with the goal of building a better system to deal with critical cases.
One longtime observer of the troubled New Orleans criminal justice system questioned whether Foti’s office has the expertise to conduct what is essentially a “performance audit” of the district attorney.
“Why not bring in someone like the national DAs association? Some entity that has done these type of performance audits before,” said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
Although the attorney general is Louisiana’s highest-ranking lawyer, the office does not prosecute homicides or other violent crimes. Those fall within the jurisdiction of local district attorneys, who typically turn over cases to the state Justice Department only when there is a conflict of interest.
But Foti on Thursday said his office does have experience with homicides.
“We have done murder investigations,” Foti said, pointing to his office’s efforts as a lead agency on the investigation of a serial killer in southeastern Louisiana.
While the district attorney has dropped other murder charges, the public outcry over the June 2006 shooting clearly stems from the number of victims, who police say were systematically gunned down as they drove a sport utility vehicle through Central City. Killed in the 4 a.m. shooting were Reggie Dantzler, 19; Iraum Taylor, 19; Warren Simeon, 17; and brothers Arsenio Hunter, 16, and Markee Hunter, 19.
Police arrested Anderson about a month after the shooting based on the word of one witness. Although the assistant district attorney handling the case, LaShanda Webb, made contact with the witness in September, prosecutors soon had trouble keeping track of her. Jordan said Webb made repeated efforts to find the witness, including contacting an NOPD detective. But Webb did not speak directly to any current members of the homicide division.
Although Jordan said that his office’s investigators made concerted efforts to find the witness, coming up empty-handed, she was quickly found this week by NOPD homicide detectives who got her address out of the case file. Riley on Wednesday said he wanted the district attorney to contact him as well as the police homicide unit, when he is getting ready to dismiss murder charges.
Anderson, who pleaded innocent to the murder charges last summer, has remained in jail because of a federal gun charge arrest. He also faces state charges of heroin possession. The district attorney’s office said it gave the witness a subpoena to testify Thursday to the grand jury about what she saw.
“We will pursue charges and work to have this case reinstituted,” Jordan said in a statement.
Copyright 2007 New Orleans Times-Picayune