Complicated Justice In The 504

In June of 2006 someone shot and killed five teenagers in cold blood. Whoever did that needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. The District Attorney in New Orleans swears it’s a young man named Michael Anderson. He was already convicted for it once. If he truly is the shooter then I guess the prosecutors will have to do a better job because he was awarded a new trial yesterday. My stand on this particular case is I want the right person punished for the crime. Someone needs to be held responsible. Community leaders have to be careful that they don’t get so focused on going after the DA they forget that five young men aren’t here anymore. Everyone needs the proper justice carried out. The best case scenario to me is if everyone would work together to find the right person but I know that is not going to happen. Our current district attorney is taking a page out of long time DA Harry Connick’s book and is swearing he has the right guy. I take that to mean that it doesn’t matter what any other possible leads come up. He’s going all in with convicting Michael Anderson and if he has to trying another two or three times then he will do it. If everyone would have done their jobs correctly the first time then we wouldn’t have to go through all of this.

I find things like this difficult to properly make sense of in my own mind because of the way things have been in the city lately. I am confused and waiting for things to sort themselves out. The way it stands now is that at the time this case first came up we had a black district attorney that could have not accepted the charges if the case didn’t seem right but he didn’t. He went ahead with the case and it's questionable evidence. It goes back to the question of how you fight the power when the power looks like you. It makes it even more confusing when people excuse the mayor and police chief from responsibility for things their office does but want to protest the same office. If the shadow government is so powerful that you can’t even do anything against them even when you are in charge of the office then why try to fight them in the first place. The easiest way to avoid episodes like the Michael Anderson trial is for young men not to kill one another in the first place. Then there won’t be any high profile cases for the district attorney’s office to prosecute unless they created it themselves. The sad reality of the situation is that whatever is going on now is not more serious of the fact that five kids were murdered that night and money more have been murdered after that. We have a lot of work ahead of us.