Friday, July 13, 2007

Here We Go Again Pt. 2


Once again a major murder case fell apart and the city is in an uproar. Before I give my opinion let me say that I have a friend that is a district attorney so if I sound bias it’s because I am. Here is my opinion about the situation at the DA’s office.

  • I think the public discussion is good as long as we realize that everyone’s ultimate goal is to make the system better and the city safer. I don’t think Eddie Jordan would willingly send murderers back to the street if he thought he could convict them. He lives here too. If a person like Shelly Midura starts placing the blame on this man like Tulane and Broad was such a well run place when Harry Connick was in office then he will have no choice but to defend himself and the local news media (who all suck) will start focusing on that.
  • I haven’t heard this being asked anywhere else. I watch reality police shows everyday from The First 48 to The New Detectives. I realize these shows highlight special cases but why is it that every time someone in New Orleans gets set free before trial it’s because we don’t have a witness? Do we have a forensics team? I know having a witness is a slam dunk but damn. Nobody saw Scott Peterson kill his wife but he’s on death row. The guy who is causing all this uproar killed five teens at close range. He had to leave some kind of circumstantial evidence behind. When you ask people from those neighborhoods to testify you are basically telling them to take their entire family away from their roots because we can’t protect them enough to stay. That’s a hard thing to do. It's more convenient for them to just be quiet and hope the guy who did the killing doesn't realize they saw something.
  • If you were the arresting officer in this case, shouldn’t you be following it so closely that you know the DA’s office couldn’t find the witness and already be on the way to pick her up? I can’t believe these two offices can be that independent of one another that the police don’t know what’s going on in these high profile cases until they fall apart. That’s the only thing that makes me want to tell Warren Riley to shut his ass up when he comes on T.V. This is a quadruple murder case not a man with too many parking tickets. He should be the main one not wanting this guy back on the streets. As soon as he gets home one or two things are going to happen. He is going to kill someone else or someone is waiting to kill him.
  • As much as I can’t stand the fact you can murder people in the city and get away with it, I don’t want that to be the reason young brothers don’t receive the same chance at due process like the rest of the population. They may be crazy but they are still citizens. How long are we supposed to hold them without doing anything? Letting them go back to the streets unpunished is bad but so is trying a man 5 times for the same thing and keeping him in jail for 5 years without a conviction like Harry Connick used to do. Neither situation is a good thing. Just like everything else in this city the issue goes back to money. Pay the policemen, pay the attorneys, and get them out of trailers and out dated facilities and lets see what happens. On CSI the forensics team has those lights that can detect blood in a room. In New Orleans we have a guy that gets on the ground with a white outfit see’s if he gets red on it. How in the hell are you supposed to get evidence on that kind of budget?

1 comment:

mominem said...

Cliff,

I don't think it's the Arresting Officer's job to follow up on his arrests.

His job is to go back out there and arrest another one.

It's the job of his bosses and the DA to move the arrestee along he system and when necessary call in the officer.

The officer's best effort is arresting people. The DA's job is convicting them.