This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Verite News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Louisiana passed a new police accountability law following allegations of civil rights violations against a sheriff’s deputy caught on video dragging a Black woman by her hair and slamming her head into the ground.

The woman, Shantel Arnold, sued the deputy and the sheriff, accusing the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office of conspiring to cover up the 2021 assault. The Sheriff’s Office agreed in March to pay Arnold $300,000 after three days of trial but before jury deliberations began, Arnold’s attorney said.

After the incident, ProPublica, in partnership with WRKF, WWNO and The Times-Picayune, published an investigation detailing the long history of excessive-force complaints against Jefferson Parish sheriff’s Deputy Julio Alvarado. Alvarado, a 20-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, was employed by the department as of March.

Arnold’s attorney, state Sen. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans, said he introduced the legislation after it emerged that Alvarado had failed to write a report about his encounter with Arnold despite his department’s policy that officers document each time they use force. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said during his testimony in the March trial over Arnold’s lawsuit that Alvarado’s commanders instructed him against writing such a report after video of his actions spread across social media.

Arnold’s run-in with Alvarado, which was captured in a 14-second video, left the woman with bruises and scratches across her body, a busted lip and recurring headaches, according to her subsequent account to police investigators.

“Had it not been for a bystander capturing how this officer beat up Shantel Arnold, there would be no report, there would be no evidence of it, there would be no indication that it ever happened,” Carter said in a recent interview.

The new law, passed unanimously by state legislators and signed by Gov. Jeff Landry in June, will require all law enforcement agencies to report every time an officer’s use of force results in serious injury. It directs the Council on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which certifies police officers, to adopt a policy on mandatory use-of-force reporting by Jan. 1. Details of how the process will work have not been spelled out, nor has the penalty for failing to comply.

The bill was introduced as “Shantel Arnold’s Law,” but Carter said that name was removed because “Sheriff Lopinto got very upset about that, and that almost killed the bill.”

Neither the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office nor Alvarado’s attorney responded to requests for comment or an interview.

Alvarado came across Arnold in September 2021, when the officer responded to a 911 call about a fight among 25 people in Jefferson Parish. When the deputy pulled up in his patrol car, Alvarado saw Arnold, covered in dirt, walking down the street. Arnold told the deputy she was attacked by a group of boys who frequently bullied her. When Alvarado ordered her to stop, Arnold said she just wanted to go home and kept walking. That’s when the deputy jumped out of his vehicle, grabbed Arnold and slammed her into the sidewalk, according to several witnesses.

In a video taken by a bystander, Alvarado drags Arnold along the pavement, holds her by her braids and slams her repeatedly onto the pavement. Arnold was not charged with a crime and was later taken to a hospital. The Sheriff’s Office did not use body cameras at the time but has since begun using them.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office denied wrongdoing. A 2022 internal investigation by the Sheriff’s Office determined Alvarado’s actions against Arnold were “both reasonable and acceptable.” Alvarado received an “approximately” 40-hour suspension for failing to file a written report, Lopinto said in his March testimony.

Arnold alleged in her 2022 lawsuit that the Sheriff’s Office knew Alvarado had a propensity for violence against Black people and other minority groups yet continued to have him patrol such communities, putting the public in danger.

Lopinto attributed Alvarado’s history of complaints to his working a high-crime beat, according to a 2022 Times-Picayune interview. “It’s not like he’s getting a complaint every month,” Lopinto said. During that same interview, Lopinto dismissed Arnold’s account and accused her of “looking for a paycheck.”

Alvarado’s alleged misdeeds fit a broader pattern in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, as the yearlong investigation into the Sheriff’s Office by ProPublica, WRKF and WWNO found. Between 2013 and 2021, deputies disproportionately discharged guns against Black people. Of the 40 people shot at by Jefferson Parish deputies during that time, 73% were Black, more than double their share of the population. Twelve of the 16 people who died after being shot or restrained by deputies during that time were Black.

Alvarado has been named in at least 10 federal civil rights lawsuits since 2007, all involving the use of excessive force; eight of the plaintiffs were members of minority groups.

The Sheriff’s Office settled three of those lawsuits. Arnold’s $300,000 payout is the third — and largest — settlement involving Alvarado. Five other lawsuits were closed in favor of the Sheriff’s Office, one was dismissed on a legal technicality and one was indefinitely delayed.

The Sheriff’s Office said in filings responding to the eight lawsuits that were not dismissed or delayed that officers’ actions were “reasonable under the circumstances” and characterized the claims as “frivolous.”

Prior to the 2021 incident involving Arnold, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office had settled a 2016 lawsuit accusing Alvarado of grabbing a 14-year-old Hispanic boy by the neck and slamming his head against the concrete as the child screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?” A woman had called the police complaining that the boy and a friend were wrestling in a parking lot. Alvarado then threatened to have the boy and his family deported, according to the suit. The Sheriff’s Office, which paid the boy’s family $15,000, said in court filings that Alvarado’s actions were “reasonable under the circumstances.”

In 2018, another lawsuit claimed Alvarado and three deputies beat Atdner Casco, a Honduran native, and stole more than $2,000 from him during a traffic stop the year before, then conspired to have him deported. Casco claimed Alvarado beat and choked him until he agreed to keep silent about being robbed. The Sheriff’s Office denied wrongdoing but settled that case in 2020 for $50,000.

Both incidents were cited in Arnold’s lawsuit as evidence that Alvarado has exhibited a pattern of behavior throughout his career that made him unfit for duty. Carter, Arnold’s attorney, raised yet another incident during the March trial in which sheriff detectives in December 2019 witnessed Alvarado patronizing a massage parlor that was being investigated for suspected prostitution. Alvarado denied he went there to “have a sexual act performed on him.” He was demoted from sergeant to deputy for “bringing the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in disrepute” and for patronizing an “illegitimate business while on duty and neglecting your responsibilities to detectives under your command,” Carter said during the trial, citing an internal police report.

Carter said in an interview that Lopinto’s continued defense and employment of Alvarado represented a permissive attitude toward questionable behavior.

“He stood by” Alvarado, who “shows no contrition, no remorse,” Carter said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

Louisiana’s law was based on a template created by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a conservative organization that brings legislators and corporate lobbyists together to draft bills “dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” The law maintains that Louisiana, in order to minimize its reliance on “foreign adversary nations” for energy, must ensure that natural gas and nuclear power are eligible for “all state programs that fund ‘green energy’ or ‘clean energy’ initiatives.” 

But natural gas, also known as methane gas, is no more “natural” than any other fossil fuel. Its primary ingredient is methane, an intense heat-trapping gas that is far more potent than the carbon pollution produced by coal and oil, though it doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as long. It’s often marketed as a “bridge fuel” — a less harmful fossil fuel that can be used as communities transition away from coal — but studies have found that over the long term, the planet-warming impact of the natural gas industry may be equivalent to that of coal. That’s because gas pipelines often leak; according to an Environmental Defense Fund analysis, natural gas pipelines in the U.S. allow between 1.2 million and 2.6 million tons of methane to escape into the atmosphere each year. 

Louisiana State Representative Jacob Landry first introduced a near-identical bill to the model posted on ALEC’s website and to the other bills that have passed in Ohio, Tennessee, and Indiana. (The Washington Post reported in 2023 that ALEC was involved in Ohio’s bill; ALEC denies involvement.) Landry, who represents a small district in the southern part of the state, is the recipient of significant fossil-fuel-industry funding — and co-owns two oil and gas consulting firms himself. During his campaign for the state Legislature, Landry received donations from at least 15 fossil-fuel-affiliated companies and PACs, including Exxon Mobil (which has also funded ALEC) and Phillips 66. Those donations alone totaled over $20,000. 

Representative Landry did not respond to multiple requests for comment. ALEC did not get back to Grist in time for publication.

While Louisiana has one of the least reliable grids in the country, that lack of reliability is in large part due to the state’s reliance on natural gas, which provides most of its electricity, according to a 2025 report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office. 

“Best practices have found that gas plants are susceptible to large-scale failures during extreme weather,” the auditors wrote. “Diversifying the energy sources used for electricity generation is a priority.” 

Bills that benefit both the fossil fuel industry and the individual lawmakers who introduce them aren’t exactly a new genre in Louisiana, said Laura Peterson, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. What’s less standard is that this one is dressed up in climate-friendly language. 

“Louisiana is a classic example of a captured state,” Peterson said. “Their state economy is just so dependent on fossil fuels and petrochemicals.” (The amount of money the fossil fuel industry brings to Louisiana’s people, though, has been on the decline since the turn of the century.) 

The state accounts for about 10 percent of the country’s natural gas production and holds about 6 percent of U.S. natural gas reserves. Natural gas is already used to generate about three-quarters of the state’s electricity, and building out more pipeline projects to carry liquefied natural gas, or LNG, won’t necessarily make electricity bills cheaper for residents, Peterson said.

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“Building LNG infrastructure is not going to lower anyone’s energy prices in the short term,” since it takes many years to build a pipeline, Peterson said. “And there’s a lot of research that shows that overreliance on gas leaves power grids vulnerable to extreme weather, which Louisiana has a lot of.” 

Jeffrey Clark, president of the Louisiana Advanced Power Alliance — an industry group representing both renewable and fossil fuel energy companies and investors — testified in opposition to the bill in early June. 

“This legislation is being promoted as a solution to Louisiana’s reliability challenges. But with all due respect, it is a solution in search of a problem,” Clark said. “We support fossil fuels as a key part of the nation’s energy mix, but codifying them as the only acceptable path forward dismisses a growing body of evidence that grid reliability depends on resource diversity.” 

Fossil fuel advocacy groups lauded the move. Larry Behrens of the nonprofit Power the Future wrote that the legislation turns Louisiana into an “energy sanctuary state,” taking “a direct shot at the China-backed solar and wind lobby.”

Reclassifying natural gas as “green” energy means that proposed natural gas pipelines may be able to access funding that would otherwise have gone to new solar or wind projects; it may also make natural gas companies more appealing to environmentally conscious investors. ALEC, the right-wing think tank that provided the template language for Landry’s bill, noted in a press release that resolutions like this could pave the way for more AI data centers in the state, too. “Redefining ‘green energy’ allows utilities to continue using natural gas while fulfilling state ‘green energy’ or ‘clean energy’ initiatives,” ALEC staffer Mark Lucas wrote. 

Over the years, ALEC has succeeded in getting laws that benefit fossil fuel companies passed across the country. Recently the group, which was founded in the 1970s, has helped draft legislation criminalizing grassroots protest against pipelines, gas terminals, and other fossil fuel infrastructure — versions of that bill had passed in 17 states by 2022. They have also drafted bills aiming to punish economic boycotts of the oil industry. And there are currently 114 different model policies related to energy on their website, 23 of which specifically address “green energy.” 

“It’s classic greenwashing, right?” said Peterson of the new Louisiana law — using the language of sustainability to describe an activity that’s actually not sustainable at all. “The intent of these laws is to allow the buildout of fossil fuel infrastructure, which will perpetuate the use of fossil fuels for decades to come.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Louisiana is the latest state to greenwash gas on Jul 10, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sophie Hurwitz.

At a community meeting in April, Stelly, who runs an organization called the Claiborne Avenue Alliance Design Studio, was excited to unveil some of this data in a new interactive tool on the alliance’s website. People would be able to see hot spots for particulate matter — a pollutant generated by heavy traffic and associated with health risks like heart attacks and aggravated asthma — near their homes, schools, and workplaces. The data would support her push for the expressway’s removal and could be used by other neighborhood groups to advocate against highway expansion.  

But the data on her website was short-lived. Stelly had her webmaster remove it soon after the community meeting. She had gotten wind of a 2024 state law that made it illegal to share air pollution data generated from technologies not approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. Violations could incur hefty fines of up to $32,500 a day, with violations done “intentionally, willfully, or knowingly” racking up an additional $1 million.

“It just didn’t make sense to do a big push, given the fact that we were violating the law by even having a meeting,” Stelly said. “I can’t afford $32,500 a day. I don’t have that, nor do I have the million dollars. So it just seemed more prudent to remain quiet for a while.”

The Claiborne Avenue Alliance is part of a coalition of neighborhood and environmental groups that sued Louisiana regulators last week over the state’s Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act, or CAMRA. The 2024 law was ostensibly meant to standardize community-based air monitoring programs throughout Louisiana, many of which had recently expanded thanks to funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But the community groups — including The Concerned Citizens of St. John; The Descendants Project; Jefferson, Orleans, Irish Channel Neighbors for Clean Air; Micah 6:8 Mission; and Rise St. James; along with the Claiborne Avenue Alliance Design Studio — said the law is a de facto ban on the dissemination of their research and a violation of their First Amendment rights to free speech.

“It’s pretty mind-boggling,” Stelly said.

CAMRA was backed by petrochemical industry trade associations. It essentially says that if community groups want to monitor air pollution and share their data with the public, they have to use “an [EPA]-approved or promulgated emission test or monitoring method,” based on the pollutant being monitored. CAMRA’s requirements only apply to monitoring “for the purpose of alleging violations or noncompliance” with federal, state, or local air quality laws. In other words, they only kick in for community groups trying to identify illegal levels of air pollution. 

Pollutants covered by CAMRA include six federally regulated “criteria air pollutants” (carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide), 188 federally regulated “hazardous air pollutants,” and 14 “toxic air pollutants” regulated by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

According to a Louisiana DEQ study from earlier this year, regulatory-grade monitors for these pollutants costs more than $791,000 each, plus up to $200,000 more for annual maintenance and operations. Those prohibitive costs are, in a way, the reason community air monitoring programs exist in the first place. By using less expensive equipment, they’re able to deploy air monitors in places that would otherwise not be covered by the EPA’s reference monitors and the 27 air monitoring sites within the National Air Toxics Trends Station Network.

“There is no need for these groups to spend $60,000, $80,000, $100,000 on equipment when in fact there is equipment that, for $200 or less, will give you perfectly adequate results for you to be able to tell your community, your family, whether or not the air they’re breathing is safe,” said David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, at a press conference last week. 

Cynthia Roberts, executive director of the nonprofit Micah 6:8 Mission — one of the groups that brought the lawsuit — told reporters that CAMRA “is not about protecting public health or ensuring good science. It’s about silencing communities like mine.” She said her organization’s air monitors near a Westlake Chemical complex in Sulphur, Louisiana, have frequently shown particulate matter concentrations higher than what the EPA considers unhealthy. Roberts used to post this information on Facebook. But now, she said, “simply posting that kind of data could cost us $32,500 per day.” 

“That’s not just chilling,” she added. “That’s censorship, and it’s dangerous.”

None of the community groups that brought the lawsuit has been fined since CAMRA was enacted last year, but their leaders say the law has obstructed their work. Caitlion Hunter, research and policy coordinator for Rise St. James, said community air monitoring has been critical along the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River dubbed “Cancer Alley” due to its density of petrochemical facilities and elevated cancer rate. People rely on her organization’s data, she said, because federal regulators have failed to monitor for ethylene oxide, a human carcinogen. Joy Banner, who co-directs The Descendants Project, said she “put a pause” on a planned program to publicize data from her nonprofit’s air quality monitors in St. John the Baptist Parish, in the heart of Cancer Alley. 

CAMRA is “scaring us away from being able to share the data with our community members who need it the most,” Banner said at the press conference.

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Nandan Joshi, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which is representing the community groups alongside the Environmental Integrity Project, told Grist that CAMRA violates Louisianans’ First Amendment rights to free speech in three ways: First, it seeks to broadly regulate any “allegations” made against polluters — even if those allegations are made in an informal context, rather than in court. Second, it includes a provision requiring “quality assurance certifications” to be published alongside certain air pollution analyses, even though it doesn’t say what those certifications are. And third, it requires that any air pollution-related communications come with “clear explanations” of the data interpretation and any relevant uncertainties. Joshi described this as compelled speech — an “obvious” First Amendment violation — and said it wasn’t clear what the regulators would consider to be a sufficient explanation.

“It’s rare these days to see something so directly regulating speech,” Joshi said. The West Virginia House of Delegates passed a similar bill last year, but it died in the state senate. A law passed earlier this year in Kentucky limits community air monitoring data in rulemaking, but does not attempt to stymie the public sharing of that data.

The Louisiana community groups’ lawsuit also argues that CAMRA violates their First Amendment “right to petition” — to use their air monitoring data when asking the Department of Environmental Quality or the EPA to step in when clean air laws have been violated. A third claim says CAMRA is in conflict with the Clean Air Act and the EPA’s efforts under the Inflation Reduction Act to promote the use of community air sensors. The plaintiffs want the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the state attorney general’s office to be barred from enforcing CAMRA.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality declined to comment. The state’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, told Grist, “I’m not sure how regulating community air monitoring programs ‘violates their constitutional rights.’ But we’ll defend the lawsuit.”

Stelly, with the Claiborne Avenue Alliance Design Studio, said she and her colleagues have found themselves in a confounding situation. In many cases, they obtained air sensors through EPA grants — but now they’re being told that those sensors are insufficient. For Stelly specifically, her grant and partnership with Louisiana State University will eventually require her to submit a written report on the data she’s collected, even though CAMRA suggests such a report could be illegal.

CAMRA “will force us into a position of noncompliance if we cannot provide that written report with that data,” she said. “It’s very weird.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Chilling and dangerous’: Grassroots groups sue over Louisiana law that censors air quality data on May 29, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

According to The Washington Post, since 2023 the city has relied on face recognition-enabled surveillance cameras through the “Project NOLA” private camera network. These cameras scan every face that passes by and send real-time alerts directly to officers’ phones when they detect a purported match to someone on a secretive, privately maintained watchlist.

The use of facial recognition technology by Project NOLA and New Orleans police raises serious concerns regarding misidentifications and the targeting of marginalized communities. Consider Randal Reid, for example. He was wrongfully arrested based on faulty Louisiana facial recognition technology, despite never having set foot in the state. The false match cost him his freedom, his dignity, and thousands of dollars in legal fees. That misidentification happened based on a still image run through a facial recognition search in an investigation; the Project NOLA real-time surveillance system supercharges the risks.

“We cannot ignore the real possibility of this tool being weaponized against marginalized communities, especially immigrants, activists, and others whose only crime is speaking out or challenging government policies. These individuals could be added to Project NOLA's watchlist without the public’s knowledge, and with no accountability or transparency on the part of the police departments,” said Alanah Odoms, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana. "Facial recognition technology poses a direct threat to the fundamental rights of every individual and has no place in our cities. We call on the New Orleans Police Department and the City of New Orleans to halt this program indefinitely and terminate all use of live-feed facial recognition technology. The ACLU of Louisiana will continue to fight the expansion of facial recognition systems and remain vigilant in defending the privacy rights of all Louisiana residents.”

Key details revealed in the reporting include:

• Real-time tracking: More than 200 surveillance cameras across New Orleans, particularly around the French Quarter, are equipped with facial recognition software that automatically scans passersby and alerts police when someone on a “watch list” is detected.
• Privately run, publicly weaponized: The watch list is assembled by the head of Project NOLA and includes tens of thousands of faces scraped from police mugshot databases—without due process or any meaningful accuracy standards.
• Police use to justify stops and arrests: Alerts are sent directly to a phone app used by officers, enabling immediate stops and detentions based on unverified purported facial recognition matches.
• Searchable database: Project NOLA also has the capability to search stored video footage for a particular face or faces appearing in the past. So in other words, they could upload an image of someone’s face, and then search for all appearances of them across all the camera feeds over the last 30 days, thus retracing their movements, activities, and associations. Pervasive technological location tracking raises grave concerns under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
• No retention, no oversight: NOPD reportedly does not retain records about the alerts it receives and officers rarely record their reliance on the Project NOLA FRT results in investigative reports, raising serious questions about compliance with constitutional requirements to preserve and turn over evidence to people accused of crimes and to courts, thus undermining accountability in criminal prosecutions.
• Violates city law: When the New Orleans City Council lifted the city’s ban on face recognition and imposed guardrails in 2022, it maintained a ban on use of facial recognition technology as a surveillance tool. This system baldly circumvents that ban. The system also circumvents transparency and reporting requirements imposed by City Council. Officials never disclosed the program in mandated public reports.

In 2021, the ACLU of Louisiana sued the Louisiana State Police for information about secretly deploying facial recognition technology, despite years of officials assuring the public it wasn’t in use. Time and again, officials claim these tools are only used responsibly, but history proves otherwise. After the Washington Post began investigating this time around, city officials acknowledged the program and said they had “paused” it and that they “are in discussions with the city council” to change the city’s facial recognition technology law to permit this pervasive monitoring.

The ACLU is now urging the New Orleans City Council to launch a full investigation and reimpose a moratorium on facial recognition use until robust privacy protections, due process safeguards, and accountability measures are in place.

“Until now, no American police department has been willing to risk the massive public blowback from using such a brazen face recognition surveillance system,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “By adopting this system–in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security–the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line. This is the stuff of authoritarian surveillance states, and has no place in American policing.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Verite News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A Louisiana judge this week set aside the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence of Jimmie Chris Duncan, whose 1998 conviction for killing his girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter was based in part on bite mark evidence that experts now say is junk science.

The decision comes after a Verite News and ProPublica investigation in March examined the questions surrounding Duncan’s conviction as Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch death penalty advocate, made moves to expedite executions after a 15-year pause.

Judge Alvin Sharp, of the 4th Judicial District in Ouachita Parish, pointed to new testimony during a September appeals hearing that such bite mark analysis presented by a once-heralded forensics team is “no longer valid” and “not scientifically defensible.”

The original analysis came from forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose longtime partnership as state experts fell under legal scrutiny after questions emerged about the validity of their techniques.

Over the past 27 years, nine prisoners have been set free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence given by West and Hayne. Three of those men were on death row.

Duncan was the last person awaiting an execution based on the pair’s work, which Sharp said in his ruling appeared “questionable at best.”

Other expert witnesses said that Hayne’s autopsy and his findings were “sloppy in practice” and “inadequate overall.”

“It is worth noting that the qualifications of Dr. Hayne were lacking in certain ways to an extent that called into serious question” the pathologist’s “expert designation,” Sharp wrote in his ruling.

Sharp also stated in his ruling that he found “very compelling” the September testimony of an expert medical witness who said that the child’s death was not the result of a homicide but of an accidental drowning.

It remains unclear when — or if — Duncan will walk free.

Robert S. Tew, district attorney for the 4th Judicial District, can choose to appeal the decision, retry Duncan on the murder charge or a lesser offense or accept the court’s ruling and set him free. Tew did not respond to requests for comment. Duncan’s legal team declined to comment.

Louisiana has a long record of convicting and sentencing to death people later found to be innocent. In the past three decades, the state has exonerated 11 people facing execution, among the highest such numbers in the country, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.

Duncan, 56, has maintained his innocence for more than three decades, while prosecutors continued to insist that Duncan committed the murder and should be executed without delay.

Duncan was babysitting Haley Oliveaux, his girlfriend’s daughter, at the house they shared in West Monroe, Louisiana, on Dec. 18, 1993. He said he had left her alone in the bathtub while he washed dishes. At some point, he said he heard a loud noise from the bathroom. When he went to check on Haley, he found her floating face down in the water. She was pronounced dead a few hours later.

While Duncan claimed it was a tragic accident, authorities charged him with first-degree murder after Hayne and West examined the girl’s body and determined there was evidence she was sexually assaulted and intentionally drowned. After about two weeks of testimony in 1998, the jury found Duncan guilty and sentenced him to death.

Years later, Duncan’s post-conviction attorneys uncovered evidence that was not presented at trial that, they said, proves his innocence. This includes a jailhouse informant who wrote to prosecutors offering to share Duncan’s confession to the crime in what the defense claims was an exchange for leniency (the informant later recanted his trial testimony); past head injuries Haley suffered that might explain her death; and a video in which West can be seen grinding a cast of Duncan’s teeth into Haley’s body. West later claimed those bite marks, which the defense says the forensic dentist manufactured, were a match for Duncan’s teeth.

Hayne died in 2020. West did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

West has previously said he was simply using what he called a “direct comparison” technique, in which he presses a mold of a person’s teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks because it provides the most accurate results, according to a 2020 interview with Oxygen.com.

West said he no longer believed in bite mark analysis in a 2011 deposition in a different post-conviction appeal, saying, “I don’t believe it’s a system that’s reliable enough to be used in court” and admitted to making mistakes in previous cases. But he told The New Republic in a 2023 interview that his methods are valid because other people have used them.

In this week’s ruling, Sharp also noted the September testimony of Detective Chris Sasser, who investigated Haley’s death. Sasser said there was “no blood, no signs of struggle, no cleaning rags and no cleaning agents” in the bathroom or house where the alleged crime occurred. This undermined the state’s assertion that there was “massive blood loss,” the ruling said.

In addition, Sharp found that Duncan’s trial attorney, Louis Scott, provided ineffective counsel. Sharp pointed to a witness who testified that Scott failed to “investigate or present evidence that was available at the time of the trial,” that he did not “develop a coherent theory of defense,” and that he failed to disclose a conflict of interest.

Scott’s wife told Verite News and ProPublica that he has suffered significant health problems including memory and speech impairment and declined to comment on the judge’s ruling.

Duncan is among 55 people on death row in Louisiana, though until very recently he and the others were not in imminent danger of being executed as the state hadn’t put anyone to death since 2010 due to the unavailability of execution drugs. That changed with Landry’s 2023 election.

Landry has made clear his intention to carry out these death sentences as soon as possible, having recently approved the use of nitrogen gas, a controversial method allowed in only three other states.

This cleared the way for the state’s first execution in more than 15 years, as Jessie Hoffman was put to death on March 18 using nitrogen gas.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

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With a line of cars waiting behind them at the train station, the two women hugged tightly as they said goodbye at the end of a spring break that hadn’t turned out to be the relaxing vacation they’d imagined.

Their girls trip had transformed into endless conversations about security precautions as one of the friends, 30-year-old Turkish national Rümeysa Öztürk, grew increasingly worried she would become a target of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.

Öztürk, a former Fulbright scholar in a doctoral program at Tufts University, was stunned to find out in early March that she had been targeted by a pro-Israel group that highlighted an op-ed she co-wrote last year criticizing the school’s response to the war in Gaza.

Her concern deepened days later with the detention of former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident the government is trying to deport over his role in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus.

By the time of Öztürk’s spring break trip on March 15, she was consumed with anxiety, said her friend E., an Arab American academic on the East Coast who asked to withhold her name and other identifying details for security reasons.

During their reunion in E.’s hometown, the first time they’d been together since the summer, the friends looked up know-your-rights tutorials and discussed whether Öztürk should cut short her doctoral program. They spent their last day together filling out intake forms for legal aid groups — just in case.

Right up until their last minutes together at the train station, they wrestled with how cautious Öztürk should be when she returned to Massachusetts. Öztürk wondered if she should avoid communal dinners, a feature of Muslim social life during the holy month of Ramadan.

“I told her to keep going out, to be with her community. I wanted her to live her life,” E. recalled, her voice breaking.

“And then she got abducted in broad daylight.”

By now, much of the country has seen the footage of Oztürk’s capture.

Surveillance video from March 25 shows her walking to dinner in Somerville, Massachusetts, near the Tufts campus, chatting on the phone with her mother when she is swarmed by six masked plainclothes officers. Öztürk screams.

Within three minutes, she’s bundled into an unmarked car and whisked away, a jarring scene that showed the nation what President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign looks like on the street level: federal agents ambushing a Muslim woman who co-wrote an op-ed in a college newspaper.

The footage drew worldwide outrage and turned Öztürk into a powerful symbol of the Department of Homeland Security dragnet.

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To piece together what’s happened since then, ProPublica examined court filings and interviewed attorneys and Öztürk’s close friend, who regularly speaks to her in detention. What emerges is a more intimate picture of Öztürk and how a child development researcher charged with no crime ended up in a crowded cell in Louisiana. The interviews and court records also provide a glimpse into a sprawling, opaque apparatus designed to deport the maximum number of people with minimum accountability.

Her lawyers describe it as the story of a Trump-era rendition, a callback to the post-9/11 practice of federal agents grabbing Muslim suspects off the street and taking them to locations known for harsh conditions and shoddy oversight.

Öztürk is among nearly 1,000 students whose visas have been revoked, according to a tally by the Association of International Educators. And she is among several students and professors who have been detained.

Her detention was exceptional, immigration attorneys said, because it was caught on camera. What’s scariest, they say, is how fast the removals happen and how little is known about them.

Homeland Security spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

The video of Öztürk’s arrest surfaced because Boston-area activists had set up a hotline for locals to report interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The call that came in about Öztürk reported a “kidnapping,” said Fatema Ahmad of the Muslim Justice League, part of the advocacy network that obtained the footage.

“What broke me was her screaming. And knowing that the same thing had just happened to almost 400 people in the Boston area the week before,” she said, referring to a recent six-day ICE operation.

After her arrest, Öztürk was held by ICE incommunicado for nearly 24 hours, her attorneys said, during which time she suffered the first of four asthma attacks.

Only later, through court filings and conversations with Öztürk, her attorneys learned that in the course of a single night she was taken from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and then Vermont, where the next morning, she was loaded onto a plane and flown to an ICE outpost in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Her last stop was a detention center in Basile about an hour away, where she remains, one of two dozen women in a damp, mouse-infested cell built to hold 14, according to court filings.

ICE officials say in court documents they couldn’t find a bed for Öztürk in New England, adding that out-of-state transfers are “routinely conducted after arrest, due to operational necessity.”

Immigration attorneys say the late-night hopscotch was an ICE tactic to complicate jurisdiction and thwart legal attempts to stop Öztürk’s removal. Louisiana and Texas, they say, are favored destinations because the courts there are viewed as friendlier to the Trump administration’s MAGA agenda, issuing decisions limiting migrant rights.

“It was like a relay race, and she was the baton,” Öztürk’s attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said.

On March 4, two weeks before their spring break reunion, Öztürk texted her friend E. to say she’d been “doxxed” by Canary Mission, part of an array of shadowy, right-wing Jewish groups that are criticized for using cherry-picked statements and distorted context to portray even mild criticism of Israel as antisemitism or support for terrorism.

For more than a decade, hard-line pro-Israel groups have publicized the names of pro-Palestinian activists, academics and students, often with scant or dubious “evidence” to back allegations of anti-Jewish bigotry. The goal, civil liberties advocates say, is to silence protesters through campaigns that have cost targets jobs and led to death threats. On its website, Canary Mission said it is “motivated by a desire to combat” antisemitism on college campuses. It says it investigates individuals and groups “across the North American political spectrum, including the far-right, far-left and anti-Israel activists.”

The effort was stepped up during the wave of student protests that erupted in opposition to the war in Gaza.

Öztürk’s entry on the Canary Mission site, posted in February, claims she “engaged in anti-Israel activism in 2024,” citing the op-ed she co-wrote more than a year ago that accused Tufts of ignoring students’ calls to divest from companies with ties to Israel over human rights concerns.

“I can not believe how much time people have,” Öztürk texted her friend when she saw the post.

E. responded with an open-mouthed “shocked” emoji. The Canary Mission entry, she said, had unlocked “a whole other level of terror” for Öztürk.

“It was that feeling of having your privacy be so violated — for people to spend all this time and energy on one op-ed,” E. said.

The op-ed published in The Tufts Daily was signed by four authors, including Öztürk, and endorsed by more than 30 other unnamed students. The language echoed the statements of United Nations officials and international war crimes investigators about the death toll in Gaza, which according to health officials there has passed 50,000, with about a third of the casualties under 18.

Öztürk, an advocate for children in communities plagued by violence, was personally heartsick over images of burned and mangled Palestinian children. But she was not a prominent activist or a fixture at campus protests, her friends and attorneys say.

Öztürk’s attorneys, who are scheduled to appear Monday before a federal judge in Vermont, say the sole basis for revoking her visa appears to be the op-ed highlighted by Canary Mission.

Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer representing Öztürk, said pro-Israel groups are providing the administration with lists of targets for its deportation campaign against noncitizen student protesters. “The sequence of events,” he said, “is op-ed, doxxing, detention.”

Pro-Israel groups, including Canary Mission, have boasted about their influence on the Trump administration’s targeting of student protesters. Immigration officials insist that they make their own removal decisions based on a number of factors, including a hard line on criticism of Israel.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has revoked more than 300 student visas, including for Khalil and Öztürk, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permits the deportation of noncitizens who are deemed “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the United States.

“We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist who tears up our university campuses,” Rubio told a news conference last month in response to a question about Öztürk’s detention. “Every day I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”

A spokesperson said the State Department does not comment on ongoing litigation.

In a call with reporters on Thursday, attorney Marc Van Der Hout of Khalil’s legal team said the authority Rubio cites was intended for rare occasions involving high-level diplomatic matters, “not to be used to go after people for First Amendment-protected activity.”

Surrounded by masked officers on March 25, Öztürk had no idea who was seizing her or where she was being taken, according to a statement filed on Thursday in federal court. The operatives were dressed in civilian clothes, she wrote, so at first she worried they were vigilantes spurred by Canary Mission.

“I had never seen police approach and take someone away like this,” she wrote. “I thought they were people who had doxxed me and I was afraid for my safety.”

Öztürk’s statement details her harrowing night being shuttled across New England with little food after a day of fasting for Ramadan. She describes being shackled by her feet and stomach and then driven to different sites for meetings with unidentified men, some in uniform and some not. One group so unsettled her, Öztürk wrote, that she “was sure they were going to kill me.”

At another stop, described in the statement as an isolated parking lot, Öztürk repeatedly asked an officer if she was in physical danger.

“He seemed to feel guilty and said ‘we are not monsters,’” Öztürk wrote.

At the last stop in Vermont, Öztürk wrote, she arrived famished and with “a lot of motion sickness from all the driving.” Officers took her biometric data and a DNA sample.

She would stay there for the night, in a cell with just a hard bench and a toilet. Officers gained access to her cellphone, she wrote, including personal photos of her without her religious headscarf.

“During the night they came to my cell multiple times and asked me questions about wanting to apply for asylum and if I was a member of a terrorist organization,” Öztürk wrote. “I tried to be helpful and answer their questions but I was so tired and didn’t understand what was happening to me.”

Around 4 the next morning, she wrote, she was shackled again in preparation for a trip to the airport. She was told the destination was Louisiana. Her statement to the court recounts the parting words of one of her jailers: “I hope we treated you with respect.”

At nearly every stage of her detention, Öztürk, who takes daily preventative medication for asthma, experienced asthma attacks, which she says are triggered by fumes, mold or stress, court files say.

During one in Louisiana, Öztürk wrote, a nurse took her temperature and said, “You need to take that thing off your head,” before removing her hijab without asking. When Öztürk protested, the nurse told her, “This is for your health.”

By her fourth wheezing episode, Öztürk wrote, she didn’t bother to seek attention from her jailers in Louisiana: “I didn’t feel safe at the medical center.”

After the portrait Öztürk paints of ICE detention, her statement turns back to her old life, a reminder of how abruptly her world has shifted. From her cell in Louisiana, she described the plans she had in the coming months. Completing her dissertation. A conference in Minnesota. Students to mentor. A summer class to teach.

“I want to return to Tufts to resume all of my cherished work,” she concluded.

Öztürk and E. bonded in 2018 after meeting at a Muslim study group in New York, where they were both attending Columbia University.

They were in their 20s then, two bookish cat lovers who were serious about their studies and their faith. They went on nature walks and liked afternoon naps.

“Old ladies,” E. said with a laugh.

They remained close and took turns visiting after Öztürk left for Tufts and E. moved away from the city. Over the years, the pressures of grad school and distance had made their visits less frequent, E. said, so they’d been looking forward to their three-day spring break catch-up.

During the visit, E. said, the women broke their fast together and visited a mosque for late-night Ramadan prayers. They stopped by a children’s library Öztürk wanted to visit. They stayed up late talking, gaming out how to keep Öztürk safe from the Trump administration’s crackdown.

“She said, ‘I think this is going to be the last time I get to visit you,’” E. recalled. “I told her, ‘No, no, you’re going to be able to come again, don’t worry, and I’m going to come visit you.’ That all turned out to be wrong.”

The friends had kept in touch daily after parting at the train station. They exchanged mundane texts and voice notes about doing taxes and eating cookies. E. sent Öztürk a photo of the park where they had walked during their visit. “Rümeysa! The trees are starting to bloom again,” she wrote.

They last texted on March 25, a couple hours before Öztürk was detained on the way to dinner in Somerville.

E. didn’t find out what happened until the next morning, when she stumbled out of bed before dawn for the early meal Muslims eat before the daily Ramadan fast. Sipping her tea, E. scrolled through her phone and spotted a message that said, “Have you seen this?” alongside an alert about Öztürk’s arrest.

“It was like: ‘Is this real? Am I still asleep?’” she recalled.

E. said the idea of her gentle friend being swept into ICE custody still didn’t seem real until later that morning, when the video was released and she saw a familiar figure, in the same white jacket she’d worn on her visit.

“It was utterly nauseating to watch,” E. said. “So horrifying and so heartbreaking to see her have to be so violently taken that way.”

Two days after Öztürk’s transfer to Louisiana, E. received a call from a strange number that came up on her phone as “Prison/Jail.” It was Öztürk, in the first of what would become regular check-ins at random times of the day.

In interviews, E. showed ProPublica corroborating photos, text messages and voice notes of her interactions with her friend.

“She always starts with, ‘Is this a good time to talk?’ And I’m, like, ‘I’ve been waiting for this,’” E. said.

Some days, Öztürk sounds upbeat. Turkish diplomats, she told E., had delivered her a new hijab. Öztürk found a cookbook and noted a citrus salad recipe she might try someday. She cracked jokes about being too old to climb into a bunk bed every night.

In one call, Öztürk expressed relief that she’d filed her taxes before getting detained — a perfect example, E. said, of her overachieving friend’s wry sense of humor.

“She read the detainee handbook two times,” E. said. “She said, ‘I’m trying to be a good detainee.’”

Other calls are not as easy, E. said, adding that she didn’t want to divulge specifics out of respect for her friend’s privacy. In those harder talks, E. said, she wishes she could “be there to tell her it’ll be OK, give her a hug.”

Their conversations are sprinkled with reminders that Öztürk’s nightmare might not end soon. She asked for help canceling appointments and returning library books. She’s also in the process of requesting a single paperback, per detention regulations.

If approved, she wants E. to find her a guide for writing children’s literature, preferably with exercises she could do from her cell. E. said her heart ached when Öztürk asked her to make the book a long one.

The calls and tasks ease feelings of helplessness, E. said, an antidote for the guilt that sneaks up on her when she walks outside on a sunny day.

“How is it that we’re moving forward,” she said, “while my closest friend is rotting in this place?”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Hannah Allam.

At the end of the hearing, Mahmoud Khalil asked to address the court, saying: “I would like to quote what you said last time that there's nothing that's more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness. Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me are afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”

"Today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent. This is not over, and our fight continues,” said Marc van der Hout, founding partner of Van Der Hout, LLP. “If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes. We will continue working tirelessly until Mahmoud is free and rightfully returned home to his family and community."

Despite this ruling, Mr. Khalil’s federal habeas case, which is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, will continue. On Friday, Judge Michael E. Farbiarz ordered both the government and Mr. Khalil’s legal team to immediately report to his court after the immigration hearing for an update on what transpired.

At the federal court level, Mr. Khalil’s legal team will continue to seek bail, as well as a preliminary injunction (PI) that would immediately release him from custody and allow him to reunite with his family in New York while his immigration case proceeds. If granted, the PI would also block President Trump’s policy of arresting and detaining noncitizens who have engaged in First Amendment protected activity in support of Palestinian rights.

On March 8, the Trump administration and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) illegally arrested and detained Mr. Khalil in direct retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights at Columbia University. Shortly after, DHS transferred him 1,400 miles away to a Louisiana detention facility — ripping him away from his wife and legal counsel. His legal team is arguing that his arrest and continued detention violate his constitutional rights, including rights to free speech and due process, and that they go beyond the government’s legal authority.

Mr. Khalil is represented by Dratel & Lewis, the Center for Constitutional Rights, CLEAR, Van Der Hout LLP, Washington Square Legal Services, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the ACLU of New Jersey, and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The following are quotes from the rest of Mr. Khalil’s legal team:

“The fight to bring Mahmoud home is far from over,” said Noor Zafar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “We will continue undeterred to press for his release after this startling escalation of the Trump administration’s war on dissent. We will fiercely defend his and others’ right to speak freely about Palestine or any other issue without fear of detention and deportation.”

“This is egregious overreach by the US government,” said Amy Greer, associate attorney at Dratel & Lewis. “Every single person in this country has the right to speak out against issues that matter to them — and I fear that this decision will embolden the Trump administration to target other vulnerable people who are simply speaking out for Palestinian human rights and against an ongoing genocide. We have fought for Mahmoud’s release every single day since he was detained. We will continue to do so until he is home with his family.”

“Today’s ruling is a rush to judgement on baseless charges that the government presented no evidence to substantiate because no evidence exists. Our client, Mr. Khalil, has been unlawfully detained in direct retaliation of his advocacy in support of Palestinian rights, and as a result has been separated from Dr. Noor Abdalla, his wife, who is now nine months pregnant. This finding of removability is a dangerous departure from the fundamental freedoms at the bedrock of our nation that protect free speech under the First Amendment. We will continue to advocate for Mr. Khalil’s rightful release, and we are confident he will prevail,” said Amol Sinha, Executive Director of the ACLU-NJ.

“The determination today simply rubber stamped the Trump Administration’s efforts to punish speech that they disagree with and did not address the clear constitutional concerns raised by his arrest, detention, and the application of the foreign policy bar. But the fight to get Mahmoud home isn’t over. We will keep fighting to get Mahmoud back to his nine-month pregnant wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, and vindicate his rights with our habeas and preliminary injunction action in New Jersey,” said Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the NYCLU.

“Today, reading from a pre-written decision, an immigration judge rubber-stamped a shameful determination by Secretary of State Rubio stating that one’s beliefs can lead to deportation. We should all be deeply concerned,” said Diala Shamas, senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “We will continue to stand alongside Mahmoud in his fight to come home to Noor, and in his determination to keep speaking out for Palestinian freedom. This is just the beginning.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46. Image courtesy of the attorneys for Jessie Hoffman.

Three hours before he was to be murdered by the State of Louisiana, Jessie Hoffman greeted me with a strong handshake and an embrace. He stared deep into my eyes and thanked me for coming. We discussed his son, also named Jessie, and how proud he has made his dad.

Also visiting were three of the many lawyers who had been fighting for his life, Cecelia Trenticosta Kappel of the Loyola Center for Social Justice, Samantha Bosalavage Pourciau of the Promise of Justice Initiative, and Sarah Ottinger, who had been representing Jessie Hoffman for 19 years. I was there to witness the murder of Mr. Hoffman if Louisiana reversed its course and allowed one of the legal team to remain through the whole process.

Already in the room when we arrived was Rev. Reimoku Gregory Smith, a Buddhist priest Hoffman chose to accompany him. Jessie is a practicing Buddhist and has been a leader among those in prison for decades. Reverend Reimoku was in long black robes. He was serene and almost glowing in kindness.

We sat around a big wooden conference table that had the logo of the State of Louisiana carved into the middle of it. Uniformed officers from the Louisiana State Penitentiary sat in opposite ends of the room. There were two big pictures on the walls – one of Elijah on a flaming chariot and one of Daniel in the lion’s den.

The room in which Louisiana planned to murder Jessie Hoffman was steps away.

Jessie Hoffman is about six feet tall and muscular. He was wearing a black t-shirt that said Life Row in white letters on it – the name that its 50-plus occupants prefer to call what the outside world calls death row. He has been fasting for days. He mostly sits silently with his arms on the wooden table, staring intently at whoever was talking to him.

Jessie was holding his favorite book, THE HEART OF THE BUDDHA’S TEACHING: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master, author, poet and peacemaker who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Jessie asked Reverend Reimoku to read his favorite passage from the book to us. It was called the Four Immeasurable Minds: Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. He read and reflected as we took in these words together. Jessie occasionally closed his eyes.

Louisiana was scheduled to murder Jessie Hoffman by first immobilizing him by tying down his arms, hands, legs and torso on a crucifix-like platform. Then, once he was helpless to resist, they would cover his face with an industrial-grade respirator and pump his lungs full of poison high-grade nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas causes death by depriving the body of oxygen, essentially causing suffocation in a phenomenon known as hypoxia. This method is so horrible all but two states have stopped using nitrogen gas on animals declaring it inhumane. The United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights has condemned the use of nitrogen gas in executions saying its use could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment in violation of international human rights law.

Jessie Hoffman was to be murdered by Louisiana because he had as a teenager, after years of shocking physical, sexual and psychological abuse, committed a horrible murder in 1996.

Now the Louisiana Governor claimed it was necessary for the state to respond to this murder by itself murdering Jessie Hoffman to “prioritize victims over criminals.”

Yet the actual family members of the victim of Jessie’s murder were not asking Louisiana to murder him.

The victim’s sister-in-law specifically asked Louisiana not to murder Jessie Hoffman, saying “Executing Jessie Hoffman is not justice in my name, it is the opposite.”

The victim’s husband refused to attend the state execution and said he is now “indifferent to the death penalty vs life in prison without parole.” He also another reason for not attending was he was “just not really feeling like I need to watch another human being die.”

Years before, Jessie Hoffman wrote a statement apologizing to the victims. Louisiana refused to deliver it to the family.

Jessie and the victim’s sister-in-law tried to talk by zoom so Jessie could apologize to her directly but Louisiana would not allow it.

As our visit continued, another long-time lawyer arrived. Caroline Tillman, who has been working to save Jessie Hoffman from state murder for 22 years, came directly from federal court in New Orleans. Teams of lawyers tried to stop the state murder of Jessie Hoffman, filing in several state and federal courts. Only the U.S. Supreme Court had not been heard from yet.

More prayers were said. The letter from the sister-in-law asking that the state murder not go forward was read aloud. More prayers. More than 250 faith leaders had recently signed letters asking Louisiana not to revive the practice of state murder with nitrogen gas.

With less than an hour to go before the scheduled murder of Jessie Hoffman, the Warden came in and politely but firmly terminated the lawyers’ visit. He refused permission to allow any lawyer to stay and witness the murder of Jessie Hoffman. Only Reverend Reimoku was allowed to remain.

After the lawyers were escorted out, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the murder of Mr. Hoffman by a vote of 5-4, one vote short of the 5 votes needed for a stay.

The murder of Jessie Hoffman by Louisiana could now begin.

John Simmerman, a journalist with nola.com, was one of two media witnesses allowed to view the execution of Jessie Hoffman. He reports that at 6:21 the ultra-high-grade nitrogen was pumped into the immobilized Mr. Hoffman. The prison draped him in a blanket. His breathing became uneven. His chest rose. He made a jerking motion. His body shook. His fingers twitched. He pulled at the table. His hands clenched. His breathing slowed. His head moved inside the mask. He jerked slightly around 6:27 and stopped moving. Louisiana officials reported the poison gas was pumped into Jessie Hoffman for 19 minutes until he was pronounced dead. The last view of Jessie Hoffman with his face now uncovered showed “his head was tilted back, teeth exposed in a grimace.”

The murder of Jessie Hoffman by Louisiana was now complete.

Samantha Pourciau, who was with Jessie Hoffman on his final day on earth, said: “Tonight, while many in our state cannot afford groceries, the state used countless resources to kill one man. The governor cannot cloak this in fighting for victims, because today we learned that this is not, in fact, what this family wants. This is what the governor wants. This has been in service of no one, but the bloodlust of our state government.”

The post The Final Hours of Jessie Hoffman, Murdered by the State of Louisiana appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Bill Quigley.

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Attorney Scott Greene warned those present in a Louisiana courtroom last September that the video they were about to see was disturbing. Created as part of a murder investigation, the 1993 tape showed a dentist repeatedly grinding a dental mold of the suspect’s teeth into the face and arm of a dead toddler during a post-mortem examination.

Those marks, which prosecutors decades ago had told jurors came from the suspect, were critical evidence in convicting Jimmie Chris Duncan, who has spent the past 27 years on death row for the killing of his girlfriend’s daughter. They were also a fraud, Greene argued at the appeals hearing.

Nine other prisoners have walked free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence presented by Michael West, the dentist, or his pathologist partner, Dr. Steven Hayne, once stars of the Mississippi forensics field. Seven of those convictions had involved bite mark identification analysis, a discipline that has been called into question. And three of the freed men had been sentenced to die.

There is only one person who still awaits an execution date based on evidence produced by the pair: Duncan.

Since his 1998 conviction, Duncan has maintained his innocence. Now, with a tough-on-crime Republican governor in office, he faces the very real threat of being put to death as Louisiana is slated to resume executions after a 15-year pause, with the first scheduled for March 18.

Louisiana has a long record of convicting and sentencing to death people later found to be innocent. In the past three decades, the state has exonerated 11 people facing execution, among the highest such numbers in the country, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.

Prosecutorial misconduct such as withholding evidence accounted for about 60% of wrongful convictions in Louisiana, nearly twice the national average, according to the registry.

And yet, upon taking office last year, Gov. Jeff Landry, a staunch death penalty advocate, has attempted to expedite executions. Louisiana has not put anyone to death since 2010 because of the unavailability of execution drugs. Landry recently approved the use of nitrogen gas, a controversial method allowed in only three other states.

“For too long, Louisiana has failed to uphold the promises made to victims of our State’s most violent crimes,” Landry said in a February news release. “The time for broken promises has ended; we will carry out these sentences and justice will be dispensed.”

Louisiana prosecutors say they have no doubt Duncan is guilty and insist he be put to death without delay. In a Jan. 9 brief, they acknowledged questions surrounding the credibility of bite mark analysis but said there is no consensus on whether it is junk science. They also downplayed the importance of the evidence presented by the dentist, saying it was not needed to connect Duncan to the crime scene, despite his defense team’s argument that it was the only physical evidence linking Duncan to the child’s death.

This is the purest manifestation of the harm of junk science, bad lawyering and pro-prosecution bias that one can imagine.

Robert S. Tew, district attorney for Louisiana’s 4th Judicial District, and Michael Ruddick, the lead prosecutor in the case, declined through a spokesperson to be interviewed, citing the case’s ongoing nature. Neither answered follow-up questions about allegations of prosecutorial misconduct or of West manufacturing the bite marks.

In Duncan’s original trial, the video of the dentist’s post-mortem examination was never shown in court. Nor did prosecutors show it to their own expert testifying in the case. And yet, they used photographs of the bite mark evidence prepared by West even though they chose not to put him on the witness stand because he had been temporarily suspended by a professional board for a pattern of errors.

As defense expert Dr. Lowell Levine watched the video during last year’s hearing as part of Duncan’s post-conviction appeal, he recoiled.

“It’s a fraud, simply put,” Levine, former president of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, said from the witness stand.

The bite marks are not the only evidence in Duncan’s case that has been cast into doubt by the defense team. A jailhouse informant who claimed Duncan confessed to the crime has since recanted his testimony. And in what Duncan’s current attorneys described in a 2022 court filing as a “bizarre, one-sided” deal, prosecutors and Duncan’s previous defense team had agreed not to present evidence at his original trial that his current team says indicates the child could have died due to a seizure caused by prior head injuries.

In a January court filing, Ruddick dismissed all the new evidence presented by Duncan’s current defense team, accusing it of “throwing another handful of spaghetti on the wall to see if anything can stick.” He wrote that the video of West does not show what the defense claims and said the dentist was simply doing his job.

West did not respond to emailed requests for an interview or questions about the case that were hand-delivered to his Mississippi home.

In a 2023 interview with The New Republic, however, West said that while he believes Duncan is guilty, he does not believe he should be executed. “You can be 99.9999999%, but you will never be 100%,” he said, adding, “It is a lot easier to get you out of jail than it is to get you out of the cemetery.”

Duncan’s fate now rests in the hands of a judge, who is expected to issue a ruling on his appeal in the coming months. The court can either grant Duncan a new trial or decide that his original verdict stands. Duncan’s defense team would not grant Verite News and ProPublica an interview with him.

“This is the purest manifestation of the harm of junk science, bad lawyering and pro-prosecution bias that one can imagine,” said attorney Chris Fabricant with the Innocence Project in New York, who is part of Duncan’s legal team.

He said moving forward with Duncan’s execution would not amount to justice, as Landry purports; it would be murder.

On Dec. 18, 1993, Detective Chris Sasser pressed record on a tape deck as he sat across from Duncan at the West Monroe Police Department headquarters. Haley Oliveaux had been pronounced dead just three hours earlier. In a clipped Southern drawl, the 13-year veteran officer instructed Duncan to “tell us exactly what happened.”

The 25-year-old sniffled and breathed deeply, then spoke, his voice barely above a whisper: “I got up this morning and I fed the baby. …”

At the time of Haley’s death, Duncan was living with Haley’s mother, Allison Oliveaux, in West Monroe, a struggling town about 280 miles northwest of New Orleans. Duncan’s father, Bennie, described the couple’s relationship as strained but said his son adored Haley, even though he wasn’t her father. “If the baby got sick, he was the one carrying her to the doctor,” Bennie said.

On the morning Haley died, Oliveaux left for work around 8:30, Duncan said. He got the toddler out of bed, fed her oatmeal, then left her in the bathtub while he washed dishes. At some point, Duncan said, he heard a loud noise.

“I thought I heard her splashing in the tub. I thought she was just playing,” he told Sasser, his voice starting to quiver. “I went in there and she was face down in the tub.”

Duncan said he yanked the 23-month-old girl out of the bathwater and attempted CPR. She spit up oatmeal but didn’t regain consciousness. “I was shaking her, holding her and just shaking her as much as I could,” he told the detective.

He ran next door with Haley, screaming for help. His neighbors also tried CPR without success. Someone called 911. Paramedics arrived and failed to revive the girl.

“Nobody could wake her up,” Duncan said, sobbing uncontrollably as he recounted the scene to the detective.

Haley was taken to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later. Child welfare workers and a coroner examined her and noticed some scratches and a faded bruise on her face but no bite marks, according to recent court filings. Sasser said he didn’t see any bite marks either but noted the bruising and “extensive injuries to her anus” in legal filings.

The detective searched the couple’s home for any evidence of sexual assault but didn’t find a trace of blood or semen — not on Duncan, his clothing or any of the items within the house. Later that evening, Sasser arrested Duncan for negligent homicide, which carried a maximum sentence at the time of five years in Louisiana.

That charge would only stick for a few hours.

Shortly after Duncan’s arrest, law enforcement and prosecutors would send the girl’s body to a morgue 120 miles to the east in Jackson, Mississippi, where West and Hayne were awaiting its arrival.

At the time of Haley’s death, Hayne and West dominated the autopsy business in Mississippi and were making inroads into Louisiana. Hayne could turn autopsies around quickly, and his findings nearly always supported the working theory of law enforcement, implicating their main suspect in whatever crime they were investigating, defense attorneys in multiple cases said.

Hayne had found an ideal collaborator in West, one of the leading experts in forensic bite mark analysis, a relatively new science that claimed to be able to match bite marks on a victim with the teeth of the suspected biter.

On multiple occasions, Hayne claimed to be performing up to 90% of all autopsies in Mississippi and boasted that he completed 1,200 to 1,800 procedures in a single year. If true, that would far exceed the recommended annual maximum of 250 set by the National Association of Medical Examiners. When pathologists surpass that number, they risk engaging in shortcuts and making mistakes, according to the organization.

Hayne, who died in 2020, had a long, documented history of errors, according to news reports, court records and books written about the pair in the years after Duncan’s conviction. In one case, he testified that he removed a victim’s spleen when in fact it had already been removed prior to the man’s death. In another, he said he found in a female child a fully formed prostate gland, an organ that does not exist in girls.

Hayne, however, dismissed questions over his workload, saying he had a superhuman capacity for labor, according to the 2018 book “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist” by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington. “I work at a much more efficient level and much harder than most people,” Hayne said, according to court testimony from a 2003 murder trial outlined in the book. “I was blessed with that and cursed with that, but that’s what I carry with me.”

West held an equally high opinion of his own abilities. When a defense attorney in an unrelated case later asked how often he is wrong, the dentist replied that his error rate is “something less than my savior, Jesus Christ.”

In 1993, after receiving Haley’s body, Hayne performed what Duncan’s defense described in legal filings as a preliminary examination and noted what he believed to be bite marks on the body. He called Sasser that same night to report his findings, saying there was also evidence of sexual assault. Shortly after that call, the detective told the DA to upgrade Duncan’s charge from negligent homicide to first-degree murder, which can be punishable by death.

The next morning, West examined the girl’s body and, according to the video he recorded, appeared to manufacture the bite marks that confirmed Hayne’s findings.

West has said he was simply using what he called a “direct comparison” technique, in which he presses a mold of a person’s teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks because it provides the most accurate results, according to a 2020 interview with Oxygen.com.

At Duncan’s trial in 1998, Hayne took the stand. West didn’t.

By then, West was serving a one-year suspension from the American Board of Forensic Odontology for “overstating his credentials” and misidentifying tooth marks. So prosecutors brought in another bite mark expert, Dr. Neal Riesner, to testify — but they never showed him the West video. Instead, Riesner commented only on photographs taken from West’s examination, a move by prosecutors that Duncan’s current defense team called an “appalling failure.”

The prosecution had pushed for the West video to remain hidden, arguing to Judge Charles Joiner that the only reason the defense wanted to show it was so it could “drag Dr. West into the case” and “create ancillary issues for the jury to consider.”

Joiner agreed that the video was inadmissible after determining there was nothing on it that would point to Duncan’s innocence. Joiner did not explain his reasoning.

West, in the interview with The New Republic, disputed the merits of his suspension, saying his methods are valid because other people have used them. He said he chose not to testify because of Haley’s physical resemblance to his daughter, and it would have been too emotional for him.

When Hayne took the stand, he testified that Haley had suffered a savage attack in which she was bitten, sexually assaulted, then drowned to cover up the crime. It was later revealed that Hayne had misrepresented his forensics pathology credentials during the trial, according to the Innocence Project.

Haley’s mother did not respond to requests for comment. She had testified during the trial that she never saw Duncan physically or sexually abuse the child and said she told him to follow the doctor’s guidance not to leave Haley unattended in the tub.

After about two weeks of testimony and arguments, the jury found Duncan guilty and later sentenced him to death. Rape, the jury determined, was an aggravating factor that prompted them to recommend the death penalty, even though such charges were never brought. He was taken to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola while prosecutors continued to call upon Hayne and West to help them solve some of the worst crimes in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Cracks, however, continued to grow in the forensics team’s facade. And in a few years, it would completely shatter.

A decade into Duncan’s sentence, two men from Noxubee County in Mississippi walked out of prison after problems emerged with Hayne’s and West’s testimonies used to convict them.

Juries had sentenced Levon Brooks to life in prison and Kennedy Brewer to death after the testimonies connected them to the separate rapes and murders of two 3-year-old girls. In each instance, Hayne conducted an autopsy, during which he found what he characterized as human bite marks. He then brought in West, who confirmed the presence of those bite marks and, after pushing dental molds of suspects’ teeth into the victim’s bodies, connected the marks to the prime suspects identified by police.

Throughout their trials, Brooks and Brewer insisted they were innocent and offered alibis to clear their names.

Their exonerations in 2008 marked the first high-profile cases in which the testimonies of Hayne and West were found by the courts to be riddled with errors and, in some instances, completely fabricated.

In Brooks’ and Brewer’s cases, DNA evidence proved that the two girls were murdered by the same man, Justin Albert Johnson, who was later convicted. Forensic experts determined that the marks Hayne and West said were created by human teeth in the Brewer case were actually created by bugs and crawfish eating away at the girl’s corpse while it floated in a pond. In Brooks’ case, West and Hayne misidentified scrapes as bite marks, according to news reports at the time.

West told Oxygen.com that while he accepts that Johnson confessed to the killings, he doesn’t believe Johnson acted alone and still believes Brooks and Brewer were responsible for the bite marks on the two girls. Brooks died in 2018; Brewer declined to comment through his attorney.

A year after Brooks and Brewer were freed, the National Academy of Sciences issued a damning report on bite mark analysis in which it stated there is “no evidence of an existing scientific basis for identifying an individual to the exclusion of all others.” Other reports found that skin cannot accurately hold the form of teeth, that there is no proof teeth provide unique individual markers and that analysts often have trouble determining if a bite mark is in fact a bite mark and if the source is even human.

Since 1982, there have been 32 people in the United States who were convicted largely due to bite mark evidence and later exonerated, according to the Innocence Project.

Following the exonerations of Brooks and Brewer, civil rights attorneys began to dismantle many of Hayne and West’s most high-profile cases.

When I testified in this case, I believed in the uniqueness of human bite marks. I no longer believe that.

West even admitted that he no longer believed in bite mark analysis in a 2011 deposition that was part of the post-conviction appeal for Leigh Stubbs, who had been sentenced to 44 years in prison for assault. West had testified at her 2001 trial that he found bite marks on the victim’s hip, which he matched to a mold of Stubbs’ teeth. As in Duncan’s case, West is seen on a video using that mold to make bite marks on the victim, who was in a coma at the time, according to Stubbs’ attorney who saw the video. West has said pressing the dental mold against the victim’s flesh was part of his verification method.

Stubbs was exonerated in 2013 after more than a decade in prison.

“When I testified in this case, I believed in the uniqueness of human bite marks. I no longer believe that,” West said during a deposition when a defense attorney asked if he was still confident in his analysis of bite marks. “And if I was asked to testify in this case again, I would say I don’t believe it’s a system that’s reliable enough to be used in court.”

When pressed as to whether he made mistakes in previous cases, West said, “I made bite mark analysis that turned out to be wrong, yes.”

In 2021, the courts overturned Eddie Lee Howard’s murder conviction and death sentence after noting the absence of bite marks in the autopsy photos — and the presence of another man’s DNA on the murder weapon — despite West’s 1994 testimony connecting bite marks to Howard. Hayne had had the body of murder victim Georgia Kemp exhumed and unembalmed three days after her burial because he believed he might have missed several bite marks during her autopsy. West then examined the body and claimed to have found those bite marks.

Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James Kitchens said in his opinion about Howard’s case that West and his methodology have faced “overwhelming rejection by the forensics community,” and that the court “should not uphold a conviction and death sentence on the testimony of a proven unreliable witness, Dr. West.”

Hayne’s reputation had also been unraveling over the years. A Louisiana judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described Hayne as the “now discredited Mississippi coroner” who “lied about his qualifications as an expert and thus gave unreliable testimony about the cause of death” in a 2014 opinion about a different murder case.

All the while, Duncan, now 56, remained locked behind bars.

During that time, his defense team discovered more examples of what they characterized as prosecutorial misconduct.

Aside from the discredited bite mark analysis, the most damning testimony during Duncan’s trial had come from a jailhouse informant, Michael Cruse, who briefly shared a cell in the Ouachita Correctional Center with more than a dozen people, including Duncan, as he awaited trial.

According to Cruse, a distraught Duncan willingly provided graphic details about raping and killing Haley, insisted he blacked out at one point during the attack and claimed “the devil took over.”

What prosecutors did not reveal at the time, though, is that when Cruse initially wrote to them from his jail cell, he offered to share Duncan’s confession for “obvious” reasons. Cruse, who had been arrested for burglary and was facing up to 12 years in prison, then suggested if the DA helps him, he could return the favor. “If I can work this out perhaps I can help in other areas as well.”

After testifying in Duncan’s case, Cruse was given a three-year suspended sentence; prosecutors said in the January brief that his sentence was “not an out of the ordinary plea offer.”

The DA’s office never gave Duncan’s defense team a copy of Cruse’s letter in which he appeared to offer his assistance in exchange for leniency, something that could have been used to undermine his testimony. Duncan’s team, which only learned of the letter years after his conviction, described the transgression as a flagrant violation of a federal law requiring prosecutors to hand over all evidence that could help in their client’s defense.

Prosecutors, in their January filing defending Duncan’s conviction, pointed to a Louisiana Supreme Court rejection of Duncan’s 1999 appeal in which the court stated that even if the letter had been produced, it would not have affected the outcome of the trial.

In November 2022, more than 24 years after Duncan was convicted, his legal team tracked Cruse down and pressed him about the accuracy of his testimony. Cruse admitted to an investigator hired by the defense that Duncan “never said he was guilty” and spent the majority of this time in their jail cell with his “head down … mumbling and crying to himself,” according to Cruse’s statements in the court filings. The defense team also found another cellmate of Duncan’s, Michael Lucas, who said that Cruse was constantly harassing Duncan about the baby’s death, and that Duncan never confessed.

He “just cried over and over again saying he did not do it. He didn’t do it,” Lucas told the investigator, according to court documents filed by the defense.

Ruddick, the lead prosecutor, dismissed the new statements, saying in last year’s appeals hearing that Cruse, who could not be located to testify in 2024, had previously testified twice under oath that Duncan had confessed. Any statement given decades later is worthless hearsay, Ruddick said.

Verite News and ProPublica could not reach Cruse for comment through email or phone calls.

Allegations that Duncan had raped Haley were similarly problematic, according to court filings. Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist and an expert witness for the defense, said in court last September that Haley’s anal injuries were likely caused by hard stools, constipation or an infection, which can often mimic an assault.

“There’s absolutely no sexual assault,” Melinek said in court after reviewing Haley’s post-mortem exams.

Duncan’s defense team also uncovered evidence, not heard at the first trial, that provided a potential cause of Haley’s death. In the weeks prior to her drowning, Haley had suffered several head injuries, the worst happening when she attempted to climb a chest of drawers and the entire structure fell on her. Haley spent six days in the hospital during which a CT scan showed three skull fractures.

When she was discharged, doctors warned her family to not leave her unattended in a bathtub as she might suffer seizures, according to court filings. Haley spent most of the next two weeks with her maternal grandparents. She returned home to her mother and Duncan the night before she died.

None of that evidence, however, was presented at trial. Louis Scott, who represented Duncan at the time, struck a deal with prosecutors that neither side would raise the issue. Scott’s wife told Verite News and ProPublica that he is experiencing health challenges, including memory loss, but would relay a message to him; Scott has not responded.

In October 2023, Duncan’s current legal team flew to the DA’s office in Monroe to present to prosecutors all the additional evidence it had uncovered. Greene, one of the defense attorneys, said he wanted to give Tew, the DA, a chance to reconsider his position and avoid a miscarriage of justice before the new evidence was laid bare in court. But Tew did not show.

Instead, Ruddick sat patiently through the defense team’s hourlong PowerPoint presentation, asked a question or two and said very little, according to members of the team.

Greene offered to fly back at any time to meet with the DA to further discuss the case. “Ruddick said, ‘I’ll let you know,’” Greene recalled. “And then nothing happened.”

One year later, following the six-day appeals hearing last fall, the state filed its response, making clear what it thought of all the new evidence: “Defendant, Jimmie Duncan, is a murderer.”

Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

Now, a new industry is being developed in the waters that were once the most productive grounds in the nation for fish, shrimp, and oysters. 

A company called OnStream CO2 is developing the GeoDura hub, which it says could hold millions of tons of carbon dioxide captured from fossil fuel industries, including LNG terminals, a mile or more below the waters off Cameron Parish’s shores. It would be among the first of its kind in the United States. Currently, there are just a handful of projects in the world developing offshore carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS.

“These people are book smart, but when it comes to common sense, they have nothing,” said Travis Dardar about the project. Dardar is a Cameron-based fisher and founder of the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage, or FISH.

According to a report from the Center for International Environmental Law, in the best-case scenario, the injection of captured carbon may temporarily disrupt fisheries because of drilling and seismic testing. 

In the worst-case scenario, underwater carbon sequestration wells could fail and release the stored carbon, killing off the plants, fish, and even the people in boats in the waters above. Storing carbon also has potential global implications, if, as opponents claim, carbon capture and sequestration will allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain the status quo as one of the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gasses.

The federal government, which is supporting the GeoDura hub with a recently announced $26 million award, and geologists who have studied carbon storage say offshore sequestration projects make a lot of sense.

But as with other climate change mitigation efforts supported by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law — such as hydrogen and direct air capture — the effectiveness of offshore carbon storage is unclear. Worries and claims on both sides of the offshore carbon capture debate are mostly hypothetical, based on modeling and just a few existing offshore storage sites. 

Gulf offshore carbon storage pushed 

The geology of the Gulf of Mexico combined with the fossil fuel-heavy industries along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas make carbon capture and sequestration under the Gulf “the single best opportunity for developing a CCS industry in the United States that can effectively address national emission reduction strategies at the required scale,” University of Texas at Austin research scientist Tip Meckel told a congressional committee in 2022.

Acknowledging that potential, Congress directed federal agencies to develop regulations to permit carbon storage under federal offshore waters. Draft regulations, requested by November 2022, have yet to be issued. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told Floodlight it will issue its first draft of a proposed rule this year.

In the meantime, companies have focused on developing carbon storage in the state waters off Louisiana, stretching 3.5 miles from the shore, and Texas, which controls the waters for about 10 miles from the shoreline.

Meckel says there are 10 proposed projects in the two states, including GeoDura. Louisiana, unlike Texas, has the authority to permit carbon storage underground, including under state waters.

But the development of carbon storage in waters near the coast raises concerns about the higher number of abandoned, idle, or older oil and gas wells closer to shore that could allow stored carbon to leak out through existing wells. There are also questions about whether Louisiana would do a good job permitting and regulating carbon storage.

“I can’t say it cannot be done, but the history of this technology, the history of the lack of pollution monitoring in the Gulf and in Louisiana waters in particular, we are extremely skeptical,” said Scott Eustis, community science director for Healthy Gulf, a Louisiana-based community and environmental advocacy group.

Land grabs onshore and off

The concept of storing carbon under offshore waters was supercharged by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which increased tax credits for capturing and permanently storing carbon underground from $39 per ton to $85. The incentive spurred a rush of development in the United States, with about 125 new carbon capture, transport, or storage projects announced since 2022, according to the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit that focuses on solutions to the climate crisis.

The incentives also sparked a land grab in Louisiana and Texas, with companies competing to purchase rights for underground storage onshore, often acquiring multiple parcels from multiple landowners to have access to a single deep reservoir for carbon storage.

With offshore sites, though, a developer usually only has to deal with a single landowner, the state or federal government. 

In August 2023, Castex Carbon Solutions signed an agreement with Louisiana for the rights to store carbon underneath 24,000 acres off Cameron Parish, around Monkey Island, at an initial cost of $7.25 million. Additional millions will flow to the state when the project begins injecting carbon. Castex is one of the partners of the GeoDura hub, along with Carbonvert and Enbridge.

The OnStream CO2 collaboration says the hub will have the capacity to store 250 million metric tons of captured carbon, or the annual emissions from 58 million gas-powered cars. It has signed a contract with Commonwealth LNG in Cameron Parish to store the 9 million tons of carbon Commonwealth expects to capture each year from its terminal after it is operational.

Venture Global has signed similar, but less initially lucrative, contracts with the state to store captured carbon from its Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines LNG facilities under waters off Calcasieu Parish and Barataria Bay, respectively.

The carbon captured from an LNG terminal, which super chills and liquefies natural gas for transport, equals just about 8.8 percent of the carbon emissions created by the LNG industry, according to a lifecycle analysis published by Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth. Howarth’s study, which has been attacked by oil and gas companies and House Republicans, concluded that LNG is worse for the climate than burning coal.

Offshore CCS raises a litany of concerns

OnStream says its project will be operational in 2028. In addition to completing a geologic assessment of the site — funded in part by the Department of Energy grant — the company will need to build a pipeline to move captured carbon from the nearby industrial hubs of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Port Arthur, Texas. It will also need to obtain a permit to inject the carbon from the state of Louisiana.

Louisiana is the third state, and the first with a coastline, to receive permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to permit carbon sequestration wells. Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources, said the state will be examining the same things in offshore carbon sequestration projects as it does for the onshore projects.

“What our folks are looking for is confining layers,” he said. “Clay, shale, something real thick and non-permeable that’s not going to allow anything to bubble up past it. Whether you’re offshore, onshore, that geology below ground is what we’re looking at.” 

The state will also examine the construction of wells and pipes to move the carbon, he said, adding that the offshore wells also will have to be built to handle hurricanes and storm surges.

Another concern, acknowledged by both sides, is the possibility the injected carbon will come back out through abandoned, idle, or older wells. Such concentrated carbon could kill vegetation, sea life, and possibly even the fishers in the waters above.

Debra James, a spokesperson for OnStream, told Floodlight there are no existing wells directly above the storage site.

“Technical evaluations show that the CO2 will not interact with wellbores near the project area,” she said.

Environmental advocates have a litany of other concerns, including that drilling and the injection of carbon could cause seismic activity in the region, a hotspot of industry. Meckel told Floodlight that “we do not anticipate much induced seismicity.”

These advocates are also concerned the storage of carbon under or near coastal marshes could damage the thousands of acres of wetlands along the Louisiana coast, which are already disappearing at a rate of 25 to 35 square miles a year.

Louisiana “is spending millions of dollars to protect the coast in one area, and then another area, they’re permitting the wholesale destruction of it. That is just totally inconsistent,” said Anne Rolfes, director of the environmental group Louisiana Bucket Brigade.

Brian Lezina, chief of planning for the Louisiana Coastal Restoration Protection Authority, said it’s the responsibility of the state’s Department of Energy and Natural Resources to ensure carbon storage along the state shorelines is done correctly. He added that the coastal agency — which has a stalled $3 billion project to help rebuild wetlands in Barataria Bay — will be paying attention to the activity.

Technology largely untested 

There are just a handful of operating subsea carbon sequestration projects in the world, and none in the United States.

Two offshore carbon storage projects off Norway’s coast have been called a success. But in 2023, the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis published a study pointing out that even in those two projects — in what the institute called some of the most studied offshore waters — the storage of carbon yielded some unwelcome surprises.

In one of the fields, the carbon unexpectedly migrated out of where it was injected, though it has remained underground. Injection into a second field had to be halted when the reservoir reached capacity 15 years before anticipated.

The research “has revealed that storing carbon dioxide underground is not an exact science,” the report said. “It may carry even more risk and uncertainty than drilling for oil or gas, given the very limited practical, long-term experience of permanently keeping CO2 in the ground.”

Dardar hasn’t followed the offshore carbon debate closely. But the way he sees it, the presence of any more industry in his corner of Louisiana is “just no good, all the way around.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Developers eye Louisiana, Texas coasts for offshore carbon storage on Jan 5, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Pam Radtke, Floodlight.

“I’m still displaced,” said Stephanie Edwards, a mother of two whose home was destroyed during Hurricane Laura, which barreled through the state in late August of 2020, causing $17.5 billion in damage. In the aftermath, “I didn’t see anybody but regular people come down to help.” Speaking from behind the counter of the ExxonMobil gas station where she works as a cashier, Edwards told Grist that the Biden Administration had done little to improve the lives of people like her, who lost everything in recent hurricanes. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, she said, offered her just $2,400 in disaster relief funds — hardly enough for a month’s rent. (President Biden was sworn into office about five months after Laura.) Edwards ended up moving back in with her mother. Her disappointment with the government’s response was one of the reasons she decided that Donald Trump earned her vote.

“I just feel that Trump is a better option for us for the simple fact that he cares about the American people,” she said to the nods of her coworker, Sherri. “He cares about our environment. He cares about what’s going on in the United States.” 

Edwards said that she disagreed with Biden’s decision to “shut down the oil fields,” but that she was not opposed to his incentives for more green energy production. (Despite promises to limit oil and gas drilling on public lands, Biden has overseen a record boom in fossil fuel production).

The oil and gas industry is central to the economy of southwest Louisiana. Over the past decade, new pipelines have been built to carry natural gas from Texas through Lake Charles and down into Cameron Parish, where fossil fuel companies are scrambling, after a Louisiana judge blocked Biden’s pause on new permits for exporting natural gas, to erect liquified gas terminals to export American fuel abroad. Petrochemical companies like Sasol and Westlake Chemical are expanding their industrial operations across the Calcasieu River in the town of Westlake, already a maze of flare stacks and chemical storage tanks pressed up against the majority-Black community of Mossville. 

Speaking from the parking lot of Ray D. Molo Middle School after casting her vote, Erica Dantley told Grist that she was concerned about the possibility of future chemical plant explosions in the area. The rubber manufacturing facility near her house caused unpleasant odors sometimes, but it’s the new gas pipelines and the large petrochemical plants across the water in Westlake that she’s really worried about. “If they explode or leak, or whatever, that pollution will come this way,” she said, referring to the explosion at Biolab’s facility in 2020 and another at Westlake Chemical’s south plant in 2022. Both Dantley and her daughter, Kailynn, 18 and excited to be voting for the first time, told Grist that they believed a Harris administration would take more seriously the pollution risks borne by communities like theirs, and work to enforce the environmental regulations established over the past four years. 

“We need to keep the progress going,” Dantley said.

Like everyone else Grist interviewed, Carol Taylor’s life has been shaped by successive hurricane seasons. She recalled putting as much as she could fit in her Ford Ranger as Hurricane Rita closed in during the fall of 2005. Her house in Cameron Parish was badly damaged in the storm, and then bulldozed by the Army Corps of Engineers without her permission. Fifteen years later, after she’d moved to Lake Charles, she fared better through Hurricanes Laura and Delta, only needing a new roof for her house. Despite the outsized impact that natural disasters have had on her life, Taylor said that climate policy didn’t factor heavily in her voting decision, though “it probably should.” She was more concerned about women’s access to abortion, an issue that she and her adult children diverged on. 

Asked whether she supported a transition to renewable energy, which would wean the economy off of the stuff feeding the growth of Lake Charles’ economy, Taylor replied, “I just know that something has to change.”

She continued saying, “Even if everything goes green, it’s gonna take years for everything to finally get switched over, right? There has to be a happy medium in there somewhere.” Then she shrugged.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A stormy Election Day in southwest Louisiana on Nov 5, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Verite News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In February, a prosecutor from a rural area outside Baton Rouge asked members of Louisiana’s Senate judiciary committee to imagine a frightening scene: You are home with your wife at 4 a.m. when suddenly a 17-year-old with a gun appears. The teenager won’t hesitate, District Attorney Tony Clayton said. “He will kill you and your wife.”

According to Clayton, teenagers were terrorizing the state without fear of consequences. The only way to stop them was to prosecute all 17-year-olds in adult court, regardless of the offense, and lock them up in prison. Law enforcement officials from around the state made similar arguments. Legislators quickly passed a bill that lowered the age at which the justice system must treat defendants as adults from 18 to 17.

But according to a review of arrests in the five months since the law took effect, most of the 17-year-olds booked in three of the state’s largest parishes have not been accused of violent crimes. Verite News and ProPublica identified 203 17-year-olds who were arrested in Orleans, Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes between April and September. A total of 141, or 69%, were arrested for offenses that are not listed as violent crimes in Louisiana law, according to our analysis of jail rosters, court records and district attorney data.

Just 13% of the defendants — a little over two dozen — have been accused of the sort of violent crimes that lawmakers cited when arguing for the legislation, such as rape, armed robbery and murder. Prosecutors were able to move such cases to adult court even before the law was changed.

The larger group of lesser offenses includes damaging property, trespassing, theft under $1,000, disturbing the peace, marijuana possession, illegal carrying of weapons and burglary. They also include offenses that involve the use of force, such as simple battery, but those are not listed in state law as violent crimes either, and they can be prosecuted as misdemeanors depending on the circumstances.

In one case in New Orleans, a boy took a car belonging to his mother’s boyfriend without permission so he could check out flooding during Hurricane Francine last month, according to a police report. When the teen returned the car, the front bumper was damaged. The boyfriend called police and the teen was arrested for unauthorized use of a vehicle. In another case, a boy was charged with battery after he got into a fight with his brother about missing a school bus.

In July, a 17-year-old girl was charged with resisting arrest and interfering with a law enforcement investigation. She had shoved a police officer as he was taking her older sister into custody for a minor charge resulting from a fight with another girl. None of those defendants have had an opportunity to enter a plea so far; convictions could result in jail or prison time of up to two years.

In juvenile court, teenagers facing charges such as these could be sentenced to a detention facility, but the juvenile system is mandated to focus on rehabilitation and sentences are generally shorter than in adult court, juvenile justice advocates said. And in the juvenile system, only arrests for violent crimes and repeat offenses are public record. But because these 17-year-olds are in the adult system, they all have public arrest records that can prevent them from getting jobs or housing.

Rachel Gassert, the former policy director for the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, said there was one word to describe what she felt when Verite News and ProPublica shared their findings: “Despair.”

Eight years ago, Gassert and other criminal justice advocates convinced lawmakers to raise the age for adult prosecution from 17 to 18 years old, pointing to research that shows that the human brain does not fully develop until early adulthood and that youth are more likely to reoffend when they are prosecuted as adults. The law enacted this spring was the culmination of a two-year effort to reverse that.

“The whole push to repeal Raise the Age was entirely political and all about throwing children under the bus,” Gassert said. “And now we are seeing the tire treads on their backs.”

Gov. Jeff Landry’s office, Clayton and state Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, who sponsored the bill to roll back Raise the Age, did not respond to requests for comment. The Louisiana District Attorneys Association, which supported the bill, declined to comment.

The whole push to repeal Raise the Age was entirely political and all about throwing children under the bus. And now we are seeing the tire treads on their backs.

Louisiana is the only state to have passed and then fully reversed Raise the Age legislation. It’s one of four states, along with Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin, that automatically prosecute all 17-year-olds as adults. In other states, 17-year-olds can be prosecuted as adults only in special circumstances, such as when they are charged with a serious, violent crime like murder.

Landry and his Republican allies argued that Raise the Age and other liberal policies were responsible for a pandemic-era uptick in violent offenses committed by juveniles in Louisiana. They said juvenile courts, where a sentence can’t extend past a defendant’s 21st birthday, are too lenient.

Juvenile justice advocates argued that the law would cause teenagers to be prosecuted as adults for behaviors that are typical for immature adolescents. These 17-year-olds would face long-lasting consequences, including arrest records and prison time. And the harm would fall largely on Black children. Nearly 9 out of every 10 of the 17-year-olds arrested in Orleans and East Baton Rouge parishes are Black, Verite News and ProPublica found. (A similar figure couldn’t be calculated for Jefferson Parish because some court records weren’t available.)

Opponents of the law also pointed out that the data didn’t show a link between enacting the Raise the Age legislation and a surge in violent crime. In 2022, when then-Attorney General Landry and others first tried to repeal the law, crime data analyst Jeff Asher said in a legislative hearing that Louisiana’s increase in homicides during the pandemic was part of a national trend that began before Raise the Age was passed.

“It happened in red states. It happened in blue states. It happened in big cities, small towns, suburbs, metro parishes,” Asher told lawmakers. Starting in 2023, data has shown a significant drop in homicides in Louisiana and nationwide.

Conservative lawmakers dismissed Asher’s numbers and instead cited horrific crimes committed by teenagers, such as the brutal killing of 73-year-old Linda Frickey amid a surge in carjackings in New Orleans in 2022. In that incident, four teenagers between 15 and 17 years old stole Frickey’s SUV in broad daylight. One of them kicked, punched and pepper-sprayed her as he pulled her out of the vehicle, according to court testimony. Frickey, who had become tangled in her seat belt, was dragged alongside the vehicle. Landry argued that teenagers who commit such heinous crimes must be punished as adults.

Opponents said the Frickey case instead showed why the law wasn’t needed: District attorneys in Louisiana have long had the discretion to move cases involving the most serious crimes out of juvenile court, which is what Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams did. Three girls who took part in the carjacking pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were each sentenced to 20 years in prison; the 17-year-old who attacked Frickey and drove her car was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

After the attempt to repeal the Raise the Age law failed in 2022, lawmakers passed a bill in 2023. It was vetoed by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. “Housing seventeen year olds with adults is dangerous and reckless,” Edwards said in a written statement at the time. “They often come out as seasoned criminals after being victimized.”

This year, with Landry in lockstep with the Republican supermajority in the Legislature, the law sailed through. For Landry, who was elected on an anti-crime platform, the law’s passage fulfilled a campaign pledge. When the law took effect, he declared, “No more will 17-year-olds who commit home invasions, carjack, and rob the great people of our State be treated as children in court.”

Now these teenagers are treated as adults from arrest to sentencing. In New Orleans, that means that when a 17-year-old is arrested, police no longer alert their parents, a step that department policy requires for juveniles, according to a department spokesperson. It’s not clear if law enforcement agencies elsewhere in the state have made a similar change.

All 17-year-olds arrested in New Orleans are now booked into the Orleans Parish jail, where those charged with crimes not classified as violent have spent up to 15 days before being released pending trial. Though the jail separates teens from adults, it has been under a court-ordered reform plan since 2013 after the Department of Justice found routine use of excessive force by guards and rampant inmate-on-inmate violence. Federal monitors said in May that violence remains a significant problem, although they acknowledged conditions have improved somewhat. The sheriff has agreed with this assessment, blaming understaffing.

Most of the cases involving 17-year-olds in Orleans, Jefferson and East Baton Rouge parishes are pending, according to court records and officials in those offices. Several defendants have pleaded guilty. Prosecutors have declined to file charges in a handful of cases. Many defendants are first-time offenders who should be eligible for diversion programs in which charges will eventually be dropped if they abide by conditions set by the court, according to officials with the Orleans and Jefferson Parish district attorneys.

None of the DAs in Orleans, Jefferson or East Baton Rouge parishes took a position on the law, according to officials in those offices and news reports. Williams, the Orleans Parish DA, responded to Verite News and ProPublica’s findings by saying his office is holding “violent offenders accountable” while providing alternatives to prison for those teenagers “willing to heed discipline and make a real course correction.”

Margaret Hay, first assistant district attorney with Jefferson Parish, declined to comment on Verite and ProPublica’s findings except to say, “We’re constitutionally mandated to uphold and enforce the laws of the state of Louisiana.” East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore declined to comment.

Having a felony arrest or conviction on your record is like wearing a heavy yoke around your neck.

Even those who avoid prison face the long-term consequences of going through the adult court system. Background checks can reveal arrests and convictions, which could prevent them from obtaining a job, housing, professional licenses, loans, government assistance such as student aid or food stamps, or custody of their children.

“Having a felony arrest or conviction on your record,” said Aaron Clark-Rizzio, legal director for the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, “is like wearing a heavy yoke around your neck.”

Marsha Levick, chief legal officer with the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit law firm based in Philadelphia, said that what’s happening in Louisiana reminds her of the late 1990s, when states toughened punishments for juveniles after a noted criminologist warned of a generation of “super predators.” That theory was eventually debunked — but not before tens of thousands of children had been locked up and saddled with criminal records.

Mariam Elba contributed reporting and Jeff Frankl contributed research.

Do you have a story to share regarding a 17-year-old facing criminal charges in Louisiana? Contact Richard Webster at Rwebster@veritenews.org.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

It’s been just over four years since Hurricane Laura slammed into southwest Louisiana just shy of Category 5 status — the fiercest storm the state had seen in a century. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta, a Category 2, carved a near-identical gash through the Bayou State. That winter, a deadly freeze gripped the ravaged region. A few months later, spring floods dropped a foot and a half of rain on Lake Charles, the city that had already endured, at that point, three epochal disasters.

I traveled to Louisiana in July to report on the community’s recovery, and examine how the string of storms impacted its politics. Before I went, I watched a meeting of the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, the administrative and legislative body that oversees Lake Charles and the rest of Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish (pronounced cal-kuh-shoo). It was apparent how eager officials were to move on from talk of the disasters. An assessment presented at the gathering noted that “there is excitement among our leaders to make great strides in areas that do not involve hurricane recovery.” Minutes later, the jurors approved the use of the parish courthouse grounds for a food and music festival that its organizer promised would be the “go-to festival for the month of November for the state and the region.”

But when I visited Lake Charles and talked to residents there, I saw that, while the city is making progress recovering from the storms’ physical and economic damages, it’s still grappling with another legacy the storms left behind: Laura and Delta took the city and shook it like a snowglobe, picking people up and putting them down in new parts of town as they sought refuge from storm-battered homes and neighborhoods. Others left the city entirely, ending up in places like Houston and New Orleans. Lake Charles, the larger parish, the state, and even the federal government, however, don’t have uniform or effective ways of tracking where all these people have drifted.

That has long-lasting political implications for both the people who leave and those who stay. When a city or neighborhood loses citizens, it doesn’t just lose some of the social fabric that imbues a place with feeling. Where people end up dictates district lines, congressional representation, and how state and federal resources are distributed. So what happens when a state fails to capture the population-level impacts of natural disasters? How can cities account for storms that hollow out a generation of working-class families?

Lake Charles is one of many places across the country contending with these questions, whether their represented officials are willing to acknowledge it or not. Up until now, the invisible population trend lines being etched into Lake Charles have been a lot easier to ignore than scarred rooftops and abandoned buildings.

Read the full story, and see more pictures from my trip to Lake Charles, here.

“I’m not giving up. I ain’t got nowhere else to go.”

Lake Charles resident Edward Gallien Jr., 67, lives with his pit bull, Red, on Pear Street in northern Lake Charles. His house was destroyed by Hurricane Laura in 2020. Gallien, who inherited his property from his parents, is still holding out hope that help will come so he can rebuild. Read more here.

What we’re reading

Extreme heat sickens Harris, Trump rallygoers: An analysis from The Washington Post found that at least 78 Trump rally attendees were hospitalized with heat-related sickness over the past few months. And a Harris rally in Wisconsin in August was paused after an attendee “appeared to suffer from heatstroke,” the Post reported. The two candidates have vastly differing views on climate change, which is contributing to dangerously high temperatures across the U.S. and around the world.
Read more

The Atlantic wakes up: The National Hurricane Center is tracking two systems in the Atlantic, one potentially headed for the Caribbean and the other developing near Africa. September is the busiest month for hurricanes in the Atlantic hurricane season. The next named storm will be called Francine.
Read more

Tropical Storm Hone floods the Big Island: A strong tropical storm dropped 10 to 15 inches of rain on Hawai‘i’s Big Island last week, causing widespread flooding and temporarily knocking out power for 24,000 customers. Another storm, Hurricane Gilma, is headed for the Aloha State this week.
Read more

Schools in Michigan close due to extreme heat and power outages: Multiple districts in the state, including Detroit Public Schools Community District, closed or called a half-day during their first week of classes after extreme heat and inclement weather caused power outages. Outdated cooling systems in some schools couldn’t keep up with the high temperatures, which reached into the 90s.
Read more

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What back-to-back storms did to Lake Charles, Louisiana on Sep 3, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

The ruling, issued on August 22nd, makes permanent a preliminary injunction and represents a significant setback for civil rights and environmental justice in Louisiana. Although the ruling is limited to Louisiana, it may embolden other states to seek similar exceptions and create a chilling effect on civil rights enforcement by other federal agencies.

“Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities,” said Earthjustice Vice President for Healthy Communities Patrice Simms. “Louisiana’s residents, its environmental justice communities, deserve the same Title VI protections as the rest of the nation.”

The ruling comes as EPA unveiled new Title VI guidance to ensure that state and local government entities receiving federal funding put safeguards in place that prevent discrimination in their programs and activities. The guidance still applies in Louisiana but recognizes it does not apply to disparate and cumulative impacts. Title VI prohibits federal grants recipients from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin.

In January 2022, Earthjustice filed a complaint on behalf of St. John the Baptist Parish residents asking the EPA to investigate whether Louisiana agencies had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to protect Black communities from disproportionate environmental harm.

In May of 2023, Attorney General of Louisiana Jeff Landry (now governor) sued EPA to stop the federal government from investigating civil rights complaints by communities of color subjected to disproportionate harm. Nearly a month later, the EPA closed the years-long civil rights investigation in St. John — a historically Black community with some of the highest cancer rates from toxic air pollution in the country — without relief to its residents. Oral arguments in Louisiana’s lawsuit took place on January 9th and the Court issued a preliminary injunction in late January.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

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A development company abruptly halted plans for a sprawling grain export facility in Louisiana this week after a three-year campaign led by members of a Black community who said it would have ripped through rural neighborhoods, old plantation tracts and important historic sites. At the start of a meeting on Tuesday, Greenfield LLC announced that it was “ceasing all plans” to construct the $400 million, milelong development in the middle of the town of Wallace in St. John the Baptist Parish.

After a company spokesperson made the announcement in a small Wallace church, community members seated in the pews burst into jubilant cheers.

“It is an unbelievable victory, and it shows what happens when communities fight,” said Joy Banner, a Wallace resident who has led resistance to the facility as the co-founder, along with her sister Jo Banner, of a group called the Descendants Project. “The erasure of the Black communities didn’t work.”

The proposed Greenfield development, which would have been one of the country’s largest grain facilities, was the subject of a May 2022 ProPublica investigation that revealed how a whistleblower had issued a complaint to state authorities about the project — including evidence that consultants involved with it had buried her findings. An archaeological report she’d drafted on behalf of Greenfield — concluding that the development would harm Wallace and nearby historic sites including several plantations and an old cemetery — was gutted to exclude any mention of that harm.

The consulting firm that issued the report previously told ProPublica that it’s not uncommon for the firm to change drafts of reports after clients review them and that it “was not required by Greenfield or anyone else for that matter to make changes” the firm does not support. Greenfield did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about its consultants removing the findings from the report.

The report was part of a federal Army Corps of Engineers permitting process that requires developers to consider the impacts of their projects on communities and cultural and historic sites.

Several federal agencies raised concerns about the project. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which is the lead federal agency overseeing preservation policies, wrote in a June 2022 letter, prompted by ProPublica’s reporting, that the area around Wallace should be considered for protected historic designation. “The significance of an historic district located in or encompassing the community of Wallace would be inextricably linked to the community’s living, ongoing experience of the district and their sense of place in the larger landscape,” the letter to the Corps said.

Months later, the Corps rejected the archaeological report as “insufficient.” The agency concluded instead that the development would likely harm historic plantations, including the Whitney Plantation, a nationally recognized memorial to the enslaved, as well as nearby communities and historic burial grounds. The Corps ordered Greenfield to conduct a new study. But when Greenfield submitted the revised assessment, the Corps responded with a letter stating that “the report just doesn’t demonstrate adequate engagement” with the mostly Black communities impacted by development.

In May 2023, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the country’s leading preservation nonprofit, designated the 11-mile stretch of the Mississippi River around Wallace as one of the country’s most endangered historic places. The group called it “an intact cultural landscape in an area otherwise oversaturated with heavy industry.” Not long after, the National Park Service launched a yearlong process to consider designating the stretch of land as a national historic landmark district, which can help protect the area from development. That process is likely to conclude this summer. Last August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services chimed in with a letter of its own, urging the Corps to consider likely “environmental burdens and health inequities” that the grain facility could contribute to.

The area around the former plantation land where Greenfield planned its development is home not just to the Whitney Plantation museum and memorial but also another standing plantation, historic burial sites and communities whose residents trace their ancestry directly to people enslaved on the land. Wallace, where the Banners live, was founded by Black Civil War soldiers who fought against the Confederacy and by people who’d been enslaved nearby. The facility, a massive system of conveyors and 54 silos that would transport and store grain to be delivered around the world, would have been erected directly adjacent to Wallace homes.

Erin Edwards, the consultant-turned-whistleblower who drafted the initial cultural resources report, resigned from the consulting firm after her draft was radically edited.

“I wrote a report that brought up the challenges they would face building there, and the impacts it would have, and they completely ignored it,” Edwards told ProPublica this week. “But you cannot hide or deny that much history. And you cannot deny that there are people and communities who are connected to and love this place and want to save it.”

Greenfield said in a statement that the extended timeline of the Corps’ consultation process for the permit led to the company’s decision to terminate the project. “We did everything in our power to keep this project on track. The Army Corp of Engineers has chosen to repeatedly delay this project by catering to special interests,” Greenfield said in a statement. “Today, sadly, we are no closer to a resolution than we were when we began this process.”

The Corps said the process is necessary to ensure compliance with the law. “Greenfield Louisiana LLC has proposed a project in a setting with many cultural resources and adjacent to a community with Environmental Justice concerns,” the Corps said in a statement. “The potential impacts to these resources require specific efforts under applicable laws and regulations.”

Wallace lies in a stretch of communities along the Mississippi River in Louisiana often referred to as Cancer Alley because of the high concentration of pollution-emitting industrial sites. For generations, communities have fought harmful development projects but have usually lost, and one petrochemical plant or industrial facility after another has been erected.

Wallace has been an exception to this steady expansion. In 1992, a coalition of community and civil rights groups and environmental advocates fought off plans by the Taiwan-based plastic company Formosa to build a rayon plant on the same plot of land Greenfield later purchased. The plant, which the company said would be a boon to the local economy, was expected to produce dangerous levels of toxic industrial pollution.

Instead, for the next two decades, the land was used to grow sugar cane. Then, in 2021, Greenfield launched its plans to develop the land for industrial use. The company said it would provide hundreds of needed jobs, and it soon began pounding massive metal test beams into the fields around Wallace. Nearby residents claimed at the time that the developer was acting as if the project was a foregone conclusion.

“This community has had to fend off two major corporations over the course of two generations that would have wiped Wallace off the map,” said Pam Spees, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the Descendants Project. “That they have succeeded in spite of the massive challenges, power imbalances and the divide-and-conquer tactics used by these corporations and their local government counterparts is a testament to the resilience, dedication and love of the Banners and others who stood and fought for Wallace, and the brightest hopes of their ancestors who founded it.”

Joy Banner said the communities in her region would be served best by a responsible, community-driven tourism effort that would preserve and maintain memorial sites centered on the history of slavery and Black struggle. This year, the group announced that it had acquired the Woodland Plantation, across the river from Wallace. The plantation was the site of the 1811 German Coast uprising, in which hundreds of enslaved people, inspired in part by the Haitian Revolution, took up arms and planned to seize New Orleans as a free territory. U.S. officials and militias killed close to 100 of those involved in the uprising.

“We are in an area that’s layered with cultural and historical resources and with history that matters to us,” Banner said. “The narrative that there’s nothing here is over. What we made clear is that we already have value here.”

Greenfield has yet to formally withdraw its Corps permit application, and the Corps said it is waiting for that official notice before it considers the project dead. Greenfield still controls the property it purchased for $40 million, which St. John the Baptist Parish last year redesignated for industrial use. (The Descendants Project is suing the parish over that designation. Greenfield has intervened to defend it.)

Ultimately, Banner said, “our vision is that we get to sit together and envision our future, to determine what we want to do in our community, instead of having to settle for people telling us what we need.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Seth Freed Wessler.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Verite News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Four years before a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, prompting nationwide demonstrations, hundreds of people marched in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to protest officers’ killing of Alton Sterling in front of a convenience store. Law enforcement responded in force: Officers armed with rifles, body armor and gas masks pushed protesters back and forcibly arrested about 200 people. Some were injured.

A group of 13 protesters and two journalists filed suit, alleging their constitutional rights were violated when they were arrested. Eventually, the city agreed to pay them $1.17 million. Photographs and videos taken by protesters, witnesses and journalists were critical in contradicting officers’ claims that protesters were the aggressors, said William Most, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

On Thursday, a Louisiana law will go into effect that will make it a misdemeanor for anyone, including journalists, to be within 25 feet of a law enforcement officer if the officer orders them back. The two independent journalists who sued, whose photos were used to support allegations against the police, said they wouldn’t have been able to capture those images if the law had been on the books during the protests.

Karen Savage was working for a news site focused on juvenile justice issues on the second day of the demonstrations in July 2016 when she photographed officers putting a Black man in a chokehold as they detained him. Cherri Foytlin, who was working for a small newspaper and a community media project, said she was within 4 feet when she photographed officers violently dragging a Black man off private property and arresting him.

Foytlin and Savage said they are hesitant to cover protests in Louisiana now that they could face criminal charges if they’re too close to an officer. “I was thinking about how far exactly 25 feet is, and, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It’s going to be whatever the officer wants it to be,” Savage said. “And if it doesn’t get to court, it won’t matter because they will have accomplished what they wanted, which was to get the cameras away.”

On Wednesday, a coalition of media companies representing a couple dozen Louisiana news outlets, including Verite News, filed suit against Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, State Police Superintendent Robert Hodges and East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore III, alleging the law violates the First Amendment.

Police buffer laws, as they are commonly known, are relatively new; Louisiana is the fourth state to enact one. Although those states already prohibit interfering with police officers, supporters say buffer laws are necessary to protect police from distrustful, aggressive bystanders. And with advances in cellphone cameras, including zoom lenses, supporters say there’s no need to get close to officers in order to record their activities.

“There’s really nothing within a 25-feet span that someone couldn’t pick up on video,” Rep. Bryan Fontenot, R-Thibodaux, the sponsor of Louisiana’s bill and a former law enforcement officer, said during a legislative hearing this year. At the same time, he said, “that person can’t spit in my face when I’m making an arrest.” (He did not respond to a request for comment.)

Foytlin disagreed. “You can’t even get an officer’s badge number at 25 feet. So there’s no way to hold anyone accountable.”

She and Savage said police targeted them during the Baton Rouge protests because they were taking photos of protesters being slammed to the ground, dragged across the pavement, choked and zip-tied by law enforcement officers. Both journalists were charged with obstructing public rights of way and resisting arrest. Prosecutors did not pursue those charges.

The journalists and protesters sued the city of Baton Rouge, the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Louisiana State Police, claiming law enforcement officers had used excessive force when arresting them. The Sheriff’s Office was dismissed as a defendant because a judge concluded its deputies weren’t involved with those arrests. The State Police settled for an undisclosed amount in 2021. The suit against Baton Rouge went to trial in 2023; the city agreed to the million-dollar settlement the day before closing arguments.

Neither the Sheriff’s Office nor the Baton Rouge Police Department responded to requests for comment. The Louisiana State Police declined to comment on the lawsuit or protests.

Foytlin said she didn’t think the settlement would cause law enforcement agencies to change their tactics; now, she believes they’ll be emboldened by the buffer law to crack down more harshly on anyone trying to document officers’ actions.

“From what I saw in Baton Rouge, and what they were able to get away with, I have no doubt that in the future, the consequences of trying to use your free speech or to protest are going to be much harsher,” she said.

Given the inconsistent use of police body-worn cameras, said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, often the only way people can guard against false charges and prove that officers used excessive force is to film them in close proximity. “In the absence of video or audio evidence,” she said, “it’s very difficult to convince anyone that the story occurred in any way different other than what the police report.”

Such video was critical in a lawsuit Ahmed handled in which a woman sued two sheriff’s deputies over her arrest in St. Tammany Parish, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

Watch video ➜

The May 2020 incident started with an anonymous complaint about someone riding a motorcycle without a helmet in a Slidell neighborhood, according to the lawsuit. Deputies Ryan Moring and Kyle Hart showed up at Teliah Perkins’ home, writing in an incident report that they saw Perkins ride a motorcycle without a helmet. In Perkins’ lawsuit, she denied doing so.

The conversation quickly became heated. Perkins accused the deputies of harassing her because she is Black; the deputies wrote in the incident report that she was “irate” and verbally attacked them.

Perkins called for her son De’Shaun Johnson, then 14, and her nephew, then 15, to come outside and record what was happening, according to the deputies’ incident report and the videos. When they did, at least one of the deputies ordered them to go back on the porch, which was more than 25 feet away.

The boys ignored the deputies and continued to film from about 6 feet away. As Hart forced Perkins to the ground, Moring approached Johnson, shoving him and telling him to move back, according to Perkins’ lawsuit and her son’s video. When Perkins screamed that she was being choked, Moring stood in front of Johnson to block his view, he later admitted in his deposition. Moring then pointed his Taser at the boy.

“You can’t tase a child,” Johnson said, according to the lawsuit and the son’s video.

“Watch me,” Moring responded.

Perkins was arrested for resisting a police officer with force or violence, battery of a police officer, having no proof of insurance and failing to wear a helmet. She was found guilty only on the resisting charge; the others were dropped. She sued the deputies in federal court, claiming they had violated her and her son’s rights. An appeals court dismissed Perkins’ claims against the deputies, but her son’s claim against Moring went to trial. In May, a jury found that Moring had intentionally inflicted emotional distress on Johnson and awarded him $185,000, to be paid by the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Ahmed said she believes the jury was swayed by videos of the incident, which showed “with clear granularity exactly what was transpiring.”

Moring denied in court that he intentionally harmed Johnson and has filed a notice of appeal. The deputies’ lawyer didn’t comment for this story.

In an interview with Verite News and ProPublica, Perkins said she fears what could have happened had the new law been in effect. The boys could have been arrested when they refused to move back to the porch. And from there, she said, neither would have been able to see or hear what was happening to her.

Johnson, who is about to start his first year at Alabama State University, said the videos he and his cousin took that day are the only evidence of what actually happened. Without them, he said, no one would have believed a 14-year-old boy’s claim that a deputy had threatened to shock him with a Taser simply because he was recording with a cellphone.

There were no police buffer laws when Floyd was murdered on a Minneapolis street in 2020. Seventeen-year-old Darnella Frazier stood several feet away and recorded a video that showed Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck and back for more than nine minutes, causing Floyd to lose consciousness and die. The video was critical in securing Chauvin’s conviction for second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.

Floyd’s murder fueled protests across the country and efforts to rein in the police. New York City ended qualified immunity, a legal defense used to shield officers from civil liability. Many states restricted the types of force officers can use, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The video of Chauvin “really drew people’s attention to how powerful these recordings can be in inspiring protests and legislative action,” said Grayson Clary, a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “I think some legislators are now trying to claw back ground that they feel they lost.”

Arizona state Sen. John Kavanagh, a Republican from outside Phoenix who authored the first of these bills in 2022, wrote in an op-ed that police officers asked him to introduce it because “there are groups hostile to the police that follow them around to videotape police incidents, and they get dangerously close to potentially violent encounters.”

Kavanagh’s bill, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, prohibited people from filming police within 8 feet. But federal courts across the country have affirmed the right to film the police, and a federal judge struck down the law after a coalition of media outlets and associations sued the state.

Indiana was the next state to pass a similar law. It, like the two others enacted since, doesn’t mention filming and requires people to stay at least 25 feet from police. That’s based on a controversial theory, often cited to justify police shootings, that someone armed with a knife can cover 21 feet running toward an officer before the officer can fire their weapon.

Shortly after the law was enacted in April 2023, an independent journalist sued the city of South Bend after an officer pushed him 25 feet from a crime scene and another officer ordered him to move back another 25 feet. The journalist claimed in the lawsuit that it was impossible to observe the crime scene from that distance. The state denied in court that the journalist’s rights were violated.

In January, a federal judge dismissed the journalist’s suit, stating that officers have a right to perform their jobs “unimpeded.” The judge said 25 feet is a “modest distance … particularly in this day and age of sophisticated technology” and that “any effect on speech is minimal and incidental.” That case is under appeal.

A second lawsuit in Indiana, filed in December by a group of news organizations and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is pending. They are suing the state attorney general and the prosecutor and sheriff of Marion County, where Indianapolis is located, arguing that it is “essential for reporters to be within 25 feet of law enforcement in order to record them.” In a court filing, the defendants have argued that the law doesn’t infringe on reporters’ ability to record police activities.

Florida’s law went into effect in April. An early version of that bill specified that it did not apply to the act of peacefully recording, photographing or witnessing a first responder, which it called a “legitimate purpose.” That language was taken out of the bill before it was passed.

Rep. Angela Nixon, D-Jacksonville, proposed changing the bill’s name to “The I Don’t Want the World to See the Police Kill an Unarmed Innocent Man Like George Floyd Again, So I Want To Protect Bad Cops and Violate Free Speech Act.” Her amendment failed.

If these laws stand up to constitutional challenges, “we’re going to see more states go down this road,” said Clary of the Reporters Committee.

The effect of Louisiana’s law may be limited in New Orleans, where the police department has been under federal oversight since 2013 due to widespread abuses, including excessive use of force and racial discrimination. New Orleans Independent Police Monitor Stella Cziment said the law may violate a court-approved list of reforms, which states that police must allow people to “witness, observe, record, and/or comment” on officers’ actions, including arrests and uses of force. Another provision says officers cannot arrest anyone for being nearby or recording them except under certain conditions, including risks to the safety of officers or others.

In response to questions from Verite News and ProPublica, the New Orleans Police Department said it is revising its policies to account for the new law, and those policies could “restrict officers’ actions” more than the law does. The NOPD said the Department of Justice and a team of court-appointed monitors will review any changes; neither responded to requests for comment.

However, the Louisiana State Police, which recently sent a contingent of troopers to New Orleans under a directive from Gov. Jeff Landry, does not have to abide by the terms of the consent decree, according to a federal judge. As such, troopers are free to invoke the new law.

The State Police is being investigated by the Department of Justice following a 2021 Associated Press investigation that uncovered more than a dozen incidents over the past 10 years in which troopers beat Black men and sought to cover up their actions. The State Police didn’t respond to a request for comment on those incidents.

When asked how troopers are being trained to use the new law, State Police spokesperson Capt. Nick Manale said only that they undergo regular training on how to engage with the public. The State Police, Manale said, “strives to ensure a safe environment for the public and our public safety professionals during all interactions.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Verite News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Several months ago, in a lawsuit that was in its ninth year, a federal judge blasted the medical care at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Many inmates hoped it would be a watershed moment.

In her opinion, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick excoriated the state for its “callous and wanton disregard” for the health of those in its custody. “Rather than receiving medical ‘care,’ the inmates are instead subjected to cruel and unusual punishment,” Dick said in her November opinion. The “human cost,” she said, is “unspeakable.”

She then ordered the appointment of three independent monitors to devise and implement a plan to reform the system.

That plan, however, may never come to fruition. Before those monitors could even be chosen, the state appealed the ruling, invoking a federal law — the Prison Litigation Reform Act — that hobbled a similar lawsuit over Angola’s health care nearly 26 years ago. The current case could suffer a similar fate.

That class-action suit is now before the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a March hearing, two of the three judges who heard the case asked questions that appeared sympathetic to the state’s argument that Dick’s ruling violated provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

If the ruling is thrown out, it would close off the most viable path for inmates to force improvements to a medical system that Dick found to be in violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. And it would come as prison policy experts expect a number of new, tough-on-crime laws to increase the state’s prison population, further straining Angola’s medical system.

Because this lawsuit concerns one of the country’s largest prisons — and one with a long history of litigation over its conditions — inmate advocates are watching it closely. It is one of many class-action lawsuits across the country seeking to force state officials to improve conditions in their facilities. At some point, said Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, all of those suits will have to contend with the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

That’s by design. The federal law was passed to reduce the number of lawsuits filed by inmates, particularly class-action cases that resulted in sprawling, court-monitored reform efforts lasting a decade or more. Supporters of the law said it was needed to weed out frivolous suits that tied state officials up in court and invited judges to meddle in how prisons are run.

But the law “did considerable damage to the ability of courts to be a backstop for safe and constitutional prisons,” Schlanger said. Since the PLRA was passed about three decades ago, the number of lawsuits filed by inmates nationwide has dropped by nearly 40%, according to a 2021 report she wrote for the Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy organization; the percentage of inmates in prisons where courts are monitoring reforms dropped as well.

Not every lawsuit is doomed to failure, said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. In September, Fathi’s team successfully sued to remove up to 80 minors from a former death row unit at Angola. The ACLU also won a lawsuit requiring Arizona to improve medical care in its prisons.

Still, those victories are not the norm, Fathi said. “This law is unique in the world,” he said. “There is no other country that has established a separate and inferior legal system that applies exclusively to incarcerated people.”

Some of the earliest allegations regarding Angola’s failing health care system were included in a lawsuit largely concerned with other issues. In that 1971 case, inmates alleged unchecked violence and racial discrimination within the walls of the prison. They claimed that they were crammed into overcrowded dormitories, that they were subjected to rape and that the prison was overrun with weapons that resulted in more than 270 stabbings, 20 of them fatal, in less than three years, according to court documents.

As part of that case, a federal judge determined in 1975 that prison officials had failed to provide adequate health care, which amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The prison remained under court monitoring for more than a decade as officials addressed shortcomings.

Nearly 20 years later, that suit spurred another, focused solely on the prison’s medical care. In their 1992 complaint, inmates claimed that it was nearly impossible to obtain the bare minimum of care. They contended they were routinely disciplined for seeking treatment if medical staff determined that their complaints weren’t warranted; their lawyers contended that the fear of punishment caused them to delay seeking care. When requests for medical care were heeded, inmates were generally assessed by staff who had little or no medical training. Those staffers would decide if the complaint warranted an appointment with a doctor or nurse, which didn’t take place for weeks or even months, according to the lawsuit. The wait for surgery could be years.

The same year the suit was filed, a patient with AIDS appeared to be “in the process of dying” when staff mistakenly inserted a feeding tube into his lung instead of his stomach, according to a medical expert’s testimony for the plaintiffs and medical records introduced as evidence. The inmate’s breathing became labored and he started “coughing up large amounts of frothy liquid,” according to medical records. He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where he died several days later. The cause of death was AIDS, sepsis and aspiration pneumonia, which occurs when food or liquid is inhaled instead of air, according to medical experts.

The next year, another inmate was diagnosed with “persistent dislocation of the finger,” which was described in medical records as “black and red in color, with yellow drainage.” A physician at Angola warned that if the injury was left untreated, the bone could swell and require amputation. And yet, although the inmate was seen by medical staff at least 13 times, he never received the needed care, according to a plaintiffs’ court filing. Nearly a year after the inmate first sought help, his finger was amputated.

In court, the state denied that it was “deliberately indifferent” to the medical needs of the inmates — the standard under which medical care is deemed unconstitutional — and argued that Angola’s care was “constitutionally adequate.”

The state contended in a court filing that the patient whose finger was amputated was seen repeatedly by the prison’s medical staff and provided the necessary treatments, including antibiotics and wound care. The amputation wasn’t the result of a denial of care, the state argued, but was necessary to “promote complete healing” of a chronic condition. As for the AIDS patient, the state claimed that he received care that was “supportive, palliative and which attempted to prolong his life.” The state did, however, note an “unfortunate incident of a misplacement” of a feeding tube.

Verite News and ProPublica tried to contact several of the 11 named plaintiffs in that suit and reached one, Thad Tatum, who served 28 years for armed robbery and attempted murder. During a recent interview in his New Orleans home, Tatum shifted back and forth in the seat of a motorized scooter, straining to relieve the pressure in his back. He laid the blame for the loss of function in his legs and right hand on prison officials.

In 1988, Tatum was hospitalized for nearly five weeks after another inmate smashed an ice pick into his forehead and neck, damaging his spine. Shortly after the attack, doctors assured him that if his physical therapy continued at Angola, he would walk again, Tatum said. Neither happened, Tatum claimed in the lawsuit.

After he was sent back to Angola, the prison’s medical staff failed to provide him with physical therapy, Tatum alleged in court. He told Verite News and ProPublica that when he tried to work out on his own, by lifting weights or pacing the yard with the assistance of a walker, he was ordered to sit in his wheelchair and written up for disobedience and insubordination.

The lack of medical attention “is why I am still in this chair,” Tatum said. “Those people just don’t care.”

The state claimed in court that Tatum did receive physical therapy, and though he had “variable success” walking with a cane, he was never able to walk consistently. His subsequent paralysis was not caused “by lack of therapy but rather by the injury itself,” the state argued. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections did not respond to a request for comment on Tatum’s allegations that he was disciplined for working out on his own.

By suing the prison, Tatum said, he hoped to force change by exposing the horrors he and others endured. Initially it appeared that the strategy was working. After an evidentiary hearing in 1994, U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola instructed both sides to come to an agreement on how best to address the problems that the inmates had exposed.

But as negotiations dragged on, Congress passed the PLRA. The 1996 law came as the nation’s incarcerated population was exploding, along with the number of civil rights lawsuits filed by inmates over conditions. Both had tripled over the previous 15 years.

“Jailhouse lawyers with little else to do are tying our courts in knots with an endless flood of frivolous litigation,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in 1995 when he introduced the bill. “It is past time to slam shut the revolving door on the prison gate and to put the key safely out of reach of overzealous Federal courts.”

To do so, the PLRA instituted hurdles that inmates had to face before filing suit. If they cleared them, the law required judges to consider lesser interventions before they could order court-monitored reforms, typically in response to a class-action lawsuit. With little possibility of court intervention, many plaintiffs agreed to settlements that offered little in damages or reforms, according to three legal experts who specialize in the PLRA.

That’s how it played out in Louisiana.

On Sept. 21, 1998, inmates at Angola were given an advance copy of a proposed settlement between the state and the Department of Justice, which had intervened in the case on behalf of the inmates. Prison officials had agreed to make a host of improvements to the health care system. If they fixed the problems by the following February, the case would be dismissed with no further court oversight. If they didn’t, the lawsuit would move forward to a possible trial.

In addition to those stipulations, the settlement lauded prison officials for what the state and the Justice Department agreed were significant improvements in the delivery of medical care at Angola, including updated laboratory equipment, the addition of telemedicine and training for technicians who responded to inmates’ requests for medical care.

Two days later, several inmates fired off a scathing letter to the Department of Justice in which they said the list of improvements so far read like a “FANTASY.” Health care at the prison remained abysmal, they wrote, saying the treatment of chronically ill patients was “non-existent.” Raw sewage often leaked into Angola’s hospital and its kitchen, something they had been complaining about for years. “HOW COULD THIS PROBLEM STILL EXIST AFTER ALL THIS TIME?????” they asked.

They concluded by telling the Department of Justice that it had been fooled. Before its inspectors visited Angola, prison officials had time to “cover up and steer you away from the problems here,” inmates wrote. “The hospital has NOT been straightened up as claimed.”

The settlement was finalized in court the next day.

The plaintiffs’ medical expert, Dr. Michael Puisis, shared many of the inmates’ reservations. In a January 1999 report filed in court, a month before the deadline to determine if the state had made enough progress, he said it would take another year to fix Angola’s health care system.

The state’s medical expert, Dr. George Karam, initially agreed, telling the court he found Puisis’ “analysis and interpretations to be accurate.”

But Karam reversed his position 33 days later. In a report to Polozola, he noted that his employer, the Louisiana State University Medical School, was about to sign a three-year contract to provide health care services at the prison for $43,200 per month. This, he said, “created an additional comfort zone for me and has made me confident that we can achieve everyone’s stated goal of quality medical care” at Angola.

In March 1999, after less than six months of oversight, Polozola decided the state had done enough. He freed it from any further obligations and dismissed the case. The Justice Department did not object to the judge’s ruling.

The Justice Department declined interview requests for the attorneys who had been involved with the case and didn’t respond to questions about the settlement. Puisis declined an interview request. Karam did not respond to multiple requests for comment submitted to him and his office.

Attorney Keith Nordyke, who represented inmates in the lawsuit, said he understands why they were so angry; he remains disappointed himself. By the time of the settlement, he said, his role in the case was secondary to the Justice Department, so he didn’t have much of a say. Even so, he said, “with the PLRA right there, what leverage did I have?” When the law passed, he said, it felt like “the day of prison reform was coming to a close.”

One measure in the PLRA that has proven to be a significant obstacle for inmates was a requirement that they exhaust options within their prison’s grievance system before filing suit. In order to assert they had been beaten or raped by guards, or denied vital medical care, inmates first had to seek remedies from within the same system that they contended had harmed them. “It really is a case of the fox guarding the henhouse,” Fathi said.

Some corrections officials responded by making their grievance process more onerous: Illinois reduced the time inmates had to file complaints from six months to 60 days, according to an investigation by WBEZ and ProPublica. Other states threw out complaints “for tiny technical violations, like writing in the wrong color ink,” WBEZ and ProPublica reported.

That rule has caused cases to be thrown out even when inmates allege egregious abuse or misconduct. In 2003, more than a dozen female prisoners filed a lawsuit against the state of New York, claiming they had been subjected to “forcible rape, coerced sexual activity, oral and anal sodomy, and forced pregnancies,” according to Human Rights Watch. The state argued that the women hadn’t gone through the entire grievance process first, and the case was dismissed for that reason. An appeals court partially overturned the ruling because three inmates had exhausted their grievance options. The suit was eventually settled.

Thirteen years later, a guard at the Clarence N. Stevenson Unit, a state prison near the Texas Gulf Coast, slammed an inmate into a concrete floor, according to a federal lawsuit. The man lay in a coma in a hospital for two weeks, the Houston Chronicle reported. Texas had a 15-day deadline for inmates to file a grievance; the inmate, Candelario Hernandez, failed to meet it because he was unconscious.

A federal judge granted the state’s motion to dismiss the suit because Hernandez hadn’t gone through the grievance process. But because the state said in court that it would have considered a late grievance, the judge granted Hernandez two months to file one. After the state promptly rejected those grievances, the judge reversed his order to dismiss the case. The state’s denial was proof, he wrote, that the grievance process was a “dead end.” The suit is pending.

The current lawsuit over Angola’s medical care may be the latest to fall to the PLRA, even though Dick found that there was considerable evidence of failures. In a hearing, a plaintiffs’ lawyer said medical experts had found that 26 of 28 deaths at Angola had “serious medical errors and/or were preventable.” The lawyer said those experts had concluded that Angola’s delivery of medical care was among the worst they had ever reviewed. The state, however, argued that 21 deaths couldn’t have been prevented; it said most of those inmates had serious health problems and were treated properly, some refused treatment, and others had exacerbated their health problems by smoking.

Puisis, the plaintiffs’ medical expert in the 1992 lawsuit, is serving in the same role in the current case; he has found many of the same problems he identified in the 1990s. Dick noted this when she ruled for the plaintiffs in 2021: “Given the fact that many of the complaints in this lawsuit … are the same as those ‘settled’ in 1998, the Court finds that Defendants have been aware of these deficiencies in the delivery of medical care at LSP for decades,” she wrote.

But in the hearing before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this year, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill complained that Dick has never given Angola officials credit, “at any stage,” for the improvements they have made, which she said include the addition of air conditioning in several medical dorms. (Neither her office nor the Department of Corrections responded to questions about the two lawsuits.)

Murrill also rejected Dick’s conclusion that Angola’s medical care was inadequate, saying the state “never conceded there was a violation in the first place.” She argued that the judge’s decision to appoint monitors to oversee reforms infringed on the state’s ability to operate its prisons. “And the PLRA says, ‘Don’t do that,’” Murrill added.

The 5th Circuit could uphold or reverse Dick’s ruling, or it could send it back to her to rehear the case, which could include legal arguments over whether her ruling follows the PLRA.

Circuit Judge Edith Jones, who was appointed in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan, echoed the state’s arguments in the hearing, saying that Angola prison for too long has “been under a Damocles sword imposed by the federal courts.” If inmates got their way and independent monitors were appointed to oversee the prison’s medical care, she said, the state would have to “jump at every turn and do precisely what they say.”

One of the lawyers for the inmates, Lydia Wright of the Promise of Justice Initiative, said she disagreed with that characterization of Dick’s ruling given that the state has failed to fix these problems over three decades. “We’re not talking about anything fancy, or exotic or wild,” Wright said. “We’re talking about basic medical care.”

Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

“In its own way, recycling is a form of decolonization for tribal members,” Johnson said. “We have to decolonize our present to make a better future for tomorrow.“

The Coushatta Reservation, in southern Louisiana, is small, made up of about 300 tribal members, and rural — the nearest Walmart is 40 minutes away. Recycling hasn’t been popular in the area, but as the risks from climate change have grown, so has the tribe’s interest. In 2014, the tribe took action and started gathering materials from tribal offices and departments, created recycling competitions for the community, and started teaching kids about recycling. 

Recently, federal grant money has been made available to tribes to help start and grow recycling programs. Last fall, the Coushatta received $565,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency for its small operation. The funds helped repair a storage shed, build a facility for the community to use, and continue educational outreach. But it’s not enough to serve the area’s 3,000 residents of Native and non-Native recyclers for the long haul. 

Typically, small tribes don’t have the resources to run recycling programs because the operations have to be financially successful. Federal funding can offset heavy equipment costs and some labor, but educating people on how to recycle, coupled with long distances from processing facilities, make operation difficult. 

But that hasn’t deterred the Coushatta Tribe.

In 2021, the European Union banned single-use plastics like straws, bottles, cutlery, and shopping bags. Germany recycles 69 percent of its municipal waste thanks to laws that enforce recycling habits. South Korea enforces strict fees for violations of the nation’s recycling protocols and even offers rewards to report violators, resulting in a 60 percent recycling and composting rate. 

But those figures don’t truly illuminate the scale of the world’s recycling product. Around 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been manufactured since the 1950’s and researchers estimate that 91 percent of it isn’t recycled. In the United States, the Department of Energy finds that only 5 percent is recycled, while aluminum, used in packaging has a recycling rate of about 35 percent. The recycling rate for paper products, including books, mail, containers, and packaging, is about 68 percent.

There are no nationwide recycling laws in the U.S., leaving the task up to states, and only a handful of states take it seriously: Ten have “bottle bills,” which allow individuals to redeem empty containers for cash, while Maine, California, Colorado, and Oregon have passed laws that hold corporations and manufacturers accountable for wasteful packaging by requiring them to help pay for recycling efforts. In the 1960s, the U.S. recycling rate across all materials — including plastic, paper, and glass — was only 7 percent. Now, it’s 32 percent. The EPA aims to increase that number to 50 percent nationwide by 2030, but other than one law targeted at rural recycling moving through Congress, there are no overarching national recycling requirements to help make that happen. 

In 2021, Louisiana had a recycling rate of 2.9 percent, save for cities like New Orleans, where containers are available for free for residents to use to recycle everything from glass bottles to electronics to Mardi Gras beads. In rural areas, access to recycling facilities is scarce if it exists at all, leaving it up to local communities or tribal governments to provide it. There is little reliable data on how many tribes operate recycling programs.

“Tribal members see the state of the world presently, and they want to make a change,” said Skylar Bourque, who works on the tribe’s recycling program. “Ultimately, as a tribe, it’s up to us to give them the tools to do that.”

But the number one issue facing small programs is still funding. Cody Marshall, chief system optimization officer for The Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit, said that many rural communities and tribal nations across the country would be happy to recycle more if they had the funds to do so, but running a recycling program is more expensive than using the landfill that might be next door. 

“Many landfills are in rural areas and many of the processing sites that manage recyclables are in urban areas, and the driving costs alone can sometimes be what makes a recycling program unfeasible,” he said.

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The Recycling Partnership also provides grants for tribes and other communities to help with the cost of recycling. The EPA received 91 applications and selected 59 tribal recycling programs at various stages of development for this year, including one run by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma, which began its recycling program in 2010. Today, it collects nearly 50 metric tons of material a year — material that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill.

“Once you start small, you can get people on board with you,” said James Williams, director of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s Environmental Services. He is optimistic about the future of recycling in tribal communities. “Now I see blue bins all through the nation,” he said, referring to the recycling containers used by tribal citizens.

Williams’ department has cleaned up a dozen open dumps in the last two years, as well as two lagoons — an issue on tribal lands in Oklahoma and beyond. Illegal dumping can be a symptom of lack of resources due to waste management being historically underfunded. Those dumping on tribal land have also faced inadequate consequences. 

“We still have the issue of illegal dumping on rural roads,” he said, adding that his goal is to clean up as many as possible. “If you dump something, it’s going to hit a waterway.”

According to Williams, tribes in Oklahoma with recycling programs work together to address problems like long-distance transportation of materials and how to serve tribal communities in rural areas, as well as funding issues specific to tribes, like putting together grant applications and getting tribal governments to make recycling a priority. The Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma also partners with Durant, a nearby town. Durant couldn’t afford a recycling program of their own, so they directed recycling needs to the tribe. 

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This year’s EPA grant to the Muscogee program purchases a $225,000 semitruck, an $80,000 truck for cardboard boxes, and a $200,000 truck that shreds documents. Muscogee was also able to purchase a $70,000 horizontal compactor, which helps with squishing down materials to help store them, and two $5,000 trailers for hauling. Williams’ recycling program operates in conjunction with the Muscogee solid waste program, so they share some of their resources. 

Returns on recycled material aren’t high. In California, for instance, one ton of plastic can fetch $167, while aluminum can go for $1,230. Corrugated cardboard can also vary wildly from $20 to $210 a ton. Prices for all recycled materials fluctuate regularly, and unless you’re dealing in huge amounts, the business can be hard. Those who can’t sell their material might have to sit on it until they can find a buyer, or throw it away. 

Last year, Muscogee Creek made about $100,000 reselling the materials it collected, but the program cost $250,000 to run. The difference is made up by profits from the Muscogee Creek Nation’s casino, which helps keep the recycling program free for the 101,252 tribal members who live on the reservation. The profits also help non-Natives who want to recycle. 

The Coushatta Tribe serves 3,000 people, Native and non-Native, and they have been rejected by 12 different recycling brokers – individuals that act as intermediaries between operations and buyers – due to the distance materials would have to travel. 

Allie Johnson said she couldn’t find a broker that was close enough, or that was willing to travel to the Coushatta Tribe to pick up their recycling. “We either bite the cost,” she said, “or commute and have to pay extra in gas. It’s exhausting.”

Currently, the only place near them that’s buying recyclables is St. Landry Parish Recycling Center, which only pays $0.01 per pound of cardboard. A truck bed full of aluminum cans only yields $20 from the nearest center, 90 minutes away. That’s how much the tribe expects to make for now. 

Still, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana is not giving up.

With this new injection of federal money, they will eventually be able to store more materials, and hopefully, make money back on their communities’ recyclables. Much like the Muscogee Creek Nation, they see the recycling program as an amenity, but they still have hopes to turn it into a thriving business. 

In the meantime, the Coushatta keep up their educational programming, teaching children the value of taking care of the Earth, even when it’s hard. 

“It’s about maintaining the land,” Johnson said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Recycling isn’t easy. The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana is doing it anyway. on May 28, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Taylar Dawn Stagner.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WVUE-TV. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The city of Gretna, Louisiana, in the shadow of New Orleans, brings in more money through fines and related fees than some larger cities in the state. An investigation by WVUE-TV and ProPublica shows that much of that money comes from drivers who rack up multiple violations and hefty fines.

Defendants in Gretna’s mayor’s court, a unique justice system found only in Louisiana and Ohio, are charged with more violations — and face greater fines as a result — than those in seven other cities and towns we looked at. Many of those charges in Gretna are for nonmoving violations such as an expired license plate or vehicle inspection sticker.

And if a defendant misses a payment and doesn’t come to court to explain why, the court often adds a contempt charge, with an additional $150 fine. About half of Gretna’s cases over a three-year period included contempt charges.

A city representative said that officers charge people with violations only when they have probable cause, and that such fines deter motorists from breaking the law. A former New Orleans police chief, however, said cities can get people to follow the law without issuing lots of tickets.

For this story we obtained via a public records request a dataset of all charges filed in Gretna’s mayor’s court from 2020 through 2022. Nearly 21,000 cases were included in the data, most of which consisted of traffic violations.

We obtained similar data for seven other municipalities in southeastern Louisiana. These included six towns with mayor’s courts — Harahan, Kenner, Covington, Ponchatoula, Grand Isle and Westwego — as well as the city of New Orleans, which has traffic and municipal courts. For municipalities with mayor’s courts, we obtained data for the same time period; for New Orleans we obtained data for 2022.

We confirmed with municipalities that the data accounted for all court costs and fees as of the date they were provided. Fine amounts for cases that were open when the data was provided may have changed since.

We calculated the average fines and fees for all cases in each town. Gretna had the highest average amount levied: $457 per case. We found this was 67% higher than the average of all the other municipalities’ average per case, which was $273. We also calculated the number of violations per case, not including contempt charges; again, Gretna was the highest, with 2.4 violations per case, compared with an average of 1.4 across the other municipalities.

These figures include all cases, both open and closed, as well as a relatively small number of cases involving nontraffic violations. Fines are often reduced when people go to court, so we also analyzed fines for open and closed cases separately, as well as traffic cases alone. Across all those analyses, Gretna’s assessments per case and the number of violations remained above average compared with other towns.

In addition, we studied the most common violations in Gretna, finding that a large number were nonmoving violations. Nearly half of all violations (not including contempt of court) were for violations of law related to driver’s licenses, vehicle registration or insurance or inspection stickers.

Contempt of court was charged in about half of the cases in Gretna, which was more than other towns with comparable data. A few municipalities were excluded from this comparison because they did not list contempt as a separate charge.

We used audits on file with the state to compare how much Gretna collected in fines and forfeitures to other municipalities. Over several months last year, we reviewed annual audits for all 301 municipalities and two combined city-parish governments required to file reports with the state. A small number of audits did not include a line item for fines and forfeitures. Gretna had the highest revenue from fines and forfeitures of any town with a mayor’s court, according to our review, and the third highest of any municipality.

There is no official government definition of fines and forfeitures in those audits, but the terms generally cover penalties for breaking the law and associated fees. In some places, they could include collections outside court, such as library fines and traffic camera tickets. Gretna’s fines and forfeitures include revenue from traffic cameras, which don’t go through mayor’s court. But the city’s revenue from mayor’s court alone in fiscal year 2022 exceeded most cities and towns’ overall collections in fines and forfeitures, including some larger cities.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by .

“We promised to listen to folks that are suffering from pollution and act to protect them,” Regan said in a press release. “Today we deliver on that promise with strong final standards to slash pollution, reduce cancer risk, and ensure cleaner air for nearby communities.”

It marks the first time that federal regulations for chemical plants have been updated in decades. The EPA expects the rule to cut more than 6,200 tons of toxic emissions each year, and lead to reductions of more than 100 hazardous pollutants. Officials also estimated a 23,000 ton-per-year reduction in smog-forming volatile organic compounds, which create the brown-tinged air often found in industrialized areas. The announcement follows a move in March to crack down on emissions of ethylene oxide, a dangerous carcinogen, from facilities that sterilize medical equipment.

Some of the facilities subject to these rules, such as the Denka Performance Elastomers plant in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish, are more than half a century old. Regan visited St. John on a tour of pollution hotspots across the Deep South in November 2021, and promised residents that they would see a reduction in Denka’s emissions of chloroprene, a toxic compound that studies have linked to cancers of the liver, lung, and digestive system. But multiple avenues the agency took to tackle the plant’s pollution, including a civil rights complaint and an emergency legal motion, failed to cut the facility’s emissions. 

The new rule “shows that the agency was not willing to give up after trying to use other legal platforms to address the problem,” said Scott Throwe, a former EPA enforcement official and air pollution expert. 

The most important chemical that the rule seeks to reduce is ethylene oxide, a potent carcinogen that studies have linked to cancers of the breast and the lymph nodes. Plants emitting ethylene oxide came under greater scrutiny after the EPA published a study in 2016 finding the chemical to be 30 times more toxic to adults and 60 times more toxic to children than previously thought. Ethylene oxide pollution is particularly bad in the industrial suburbs of the Houston Metro Area and in Cancer Alley, the corridor full of oil refineries and chemical plants on the lower Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana. 

Once it’s in place, the rule is expected to reduce both ethylene oxide and chloroprene emissions from certain processes and equipment by nearly 80 percent. One provision seeks to improve the efficiency of flares, gas combustion devices that burn off excess chemicals. Recent research connected the practice of gas flaring to increased childhood asthma cases. The regulations will also require plant operators to install monitors around the perimeters of their sites to measure concentrations of a number of cancer-causing chemicals, including ethylene oxide and vinyl chloride. If the amount of any of these chemicals is above the agency’s “action level,” plant operators will be required to determine the cause and make repairs. In a fact sheet published alongside the final rule, the EPA noted that a similar monitoring provision in the regulations for petroleum refineries led to significant reductions in benzene levels around those facilities. 

Chemical companies subject to the rule will have two years to implement the new provisions. Officials estimated that the regulations will cost the chemical industry $1.8 billion over the next 14 years, the equivalent of $150 million per year. 

“Most of the facilities covered by the final rule are owned by large corporations,” the agency noted. “The cost of implementing the final rule is less than 1 percent of their annual national sales.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA’s first chemical plant rule in 20 years targets polluters in Louisiana and Texas on Apr 9, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

Louisiana’s far-right government has quietly obtained hundreds of pages of communications between the Environmental Protection Agency and journalists, legal advocates, and community groups focused on environmental justice. The rare use of public records law to target citizens is a new escalation in the state’s battle with the EPA over its examination of alleged civil rights violations in the heavily polluted region known as “Cancer Alley.”

Louisiana sued the EPA on December 19, alleging that the federal agency had failed to properly respond to the state’s sprawling Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request sent by former state attorney general Jeff Landry.

Court filings note that the public records case is related to another, ongoing lawsuit brought against the EPA by Landry, a staunch advocate forthe oil and gas industry who now serves as Louisiana’s governor. Shortly after Landry’s suit was filed, the EPA dropped its probe into the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s permitting practices, which advocates say disproportionately impact Black residents in Cancer Alley.

News that the state has sought to obtain such an array of communications as part of its efforts prompted allegations of intimidation from many of the Black residents who were targeted. It has also raised press freedom concerns for media organizations included in the request, described by FOIA experts as extremely unusual. 

“The Louisiana attorney general’s office protects industry more than they protect the people,” said Sharon Lavigne, a resident of St. James Parish who has long fought industrial proliferation in her community and whose emails were targeted in the request. “Maybe that’s why they got all of these emails, just to see what we’re doing and to see how they can stop us.” 

Members of Rise St. James, conduct a livestream video on property owned by Formosa on March 11, 2020, in St. James Parish, La.

Landry filed the request on June 29, 2023, just one day after the EPA announced it was dropping its Cancer Alley civil rights investigation. 

The request seeks all records since March 2021 regarding “environmental justice in Louisiana, the Industrial Corridor in Louisiana,” and “the area called Cancer Alley.” It lists six advocates by name, all of whom are Black, as well as the organizations Rise St. James, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, and several other community and law groups who have represented Cancer Alley residents.

Due to the expansive nature of the request, the EPA said it would take more than a year to locate and provide all the records. Louisiana then sued to compel the agency to move more quickly.

The Louisiana attorney general’s office declined to answer questions from The Guardian and The Intercept over why it had requested such information, but filings in its FOIA lawsuit accuse the EPA of “prodigiously leaking information to the press” and allowing environmental advocacy groups to hold undue influence on decisions. 

An environmental law group said the attorney general’s accusations of external influence were hypocritical, noting that Landry’s office previously hired petrochemical lawyers to represent the state in its negotiations with the EPA. Those same lawyers were simultaneously representing one of the companies at the center of the EPA’s civil rights investigation, the Taiwanese petrochemical giant Formosa.

Landry’s request specifically seeks records containing mention of Formosa, as well as the Japanese firm Denka. Both companies are at the heart of ongoing campaigns and litigation in the region. Lavigne’s group, Rise St James, has been instrumental in thus far stopping Formosa from building a massive, multibillion-dollar plastics plant in their parish. A Louisiana appeals court recently reinstated Formosa’s air permits, overturning a 2022 ruling.

The request also asks for emails with national and local media including MSNBC, the Washington Post, and The Advocate, specifying nine journalists by name.

“We’re concerned that the State of Louisiana is abusing [FOIA] law to prevent reporters from engaging in newsgathering on matters of public interest.”

The co-author of this article, The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland, was one of the named journalists. “We are deeply concerned by what appears to be an attempt to intimidate journalists and interfere with their ability to report on alarming matters of environmental injustice — in particular, the dangerous toxicity of air in predominantly Black areas of Louisiana,” said Guardian U.S. general counsel Kai Falkenberg. “FOIA is an essential tool for informing the public on the workings of government, but in this case, we’re concerned that the State of Louisiana is abusing that law to prevent reporters from engaging in newsgathering on matters of public interest to readers in Louisiana and around the world.” 

The EPA declined to answer questions from The Guardian and The Intercept, citing ongoing litigation, but it provided the 940 pages of documents already handed to the Louisiana Department of Justice. Further releases are scheduled for February 2.

The documents, many of which were heavily redacted, contain typical requests for comment from several journalists, internal EPA discussions over drafting and scheduling, and EPA exchanges with environmental lawyers and nonprofits, including a list of the attendees at a meeting of leading Cancer Alley advocates.

The Denka Performance Elastomer Plant in Reserve, La., on Sept. 23, 2022.

Public records law in the U.S. dictates that, with certain exemptions, communications by or with local, state, and federal employees must be made available to the public. The law is intended to preserve government transparency.

David Cuillier, director of the Freedom of Information Project, said that requests for communications between the government and citizens, including journalists, are not uncommon. But those requests are typically made by other journalists, law groups, or members of the public — not state governments. 

“It’s totally weird and rare for a government agency to request, one, records from another agency, and, two, all the communications about these advocates and citizens and journalists,” Cuillier said.

Bill Quigley, longtime director of Loyola University New Orleans’s Law Clinic, also noted that “it is not at all common for states to sue the federal government over FOIA disputes.”

In a previous survey, Cuillier and his colleague found that only about 2 percent of public records requests are made by another government agency. Cuillier argued it would be in the best interests of Louisiana’s Department of Justice to be transparent over the FOIA’s purpose. Otherwise, he said, it gives the appearance that the state is “spying on political opponents.”

An environmental group likewise said that the requests, while lawful, would have a chilling effect on local advocates’ efforts — including those not specifically named by the request. The group, which asked not to be named, suggested the records request is an attempt to shift the narrative, framing the EPA as suspect, rather than polluters themselves.

Robert Taylor, an 83-year-old lifelong resident of St. John Parish who leads a grassroots group fighting against pollution linked to Denka’s plant, said it was “frightening” and “horrible” to know the state government had targeted his emails. 

“It’s certainly intimidation. What other reason could there be for it?” Taylor said.

Louisiana’s lawsuit against the EPA’s Cancer Alley investigation is ongoing and expected to advance to the Supreme Court. In a recent hearing, Judge James D. Cain, appointed by former President Donald Trump, rejected the EPA’s motion to dismiss and appears ready to side with Louisiana, citing “the whims of the EPA and its overarching mandate.” Cain, who is also presiding over Louisiana’s FOIA lawsuit, issued a ruling on January 23 temporarily blocking the EPA from enforcing some aspects of civil rights law in Louisiana.

Troy Carter, Louisiana’s lone Democrat in Congress whose district includes the Cancer Alley region, urged the state government to drop both lawsuits against the EPA and its pursuit of records. 

“This would remove any need for these citizens’ private conversations with the government to be disclosed,” Carter said. “The First Amendment protects the right to free speech. The government should not have any appearance of targeting private individuals in a manner that could inhibit freedom.” 

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Delaney Nolan.

A report published on Thursday by Human Rights Watch sheds new light on the experiences of residents living near the region’s sprawling petrochemical complexes, and includes details of a first-of-its-kind analysis that found higher rates of poor birth outcomes among women living in south Louisiana. In the areas with the worst pollution, for instance, the report found that more than a quarter of babies are born with low birth weights, more than double the state average. 

The researchers put much of the blame on state regulators, who have repeatedly permitted plants in areas where the air is already choked with pollution and have failed to enforce federal standards. To that end, Human Rights Watch recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency initiate an investigation into whether the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality should be the agency administering the Clean Air Act in the state.

Human Rights Watch’s lead researcher on the report, Antonia Juhasz, told Grist that she hopes her team’s work will help to spur change at the state and federal levels. Headquartered in New York City, the organization is best known for its work documenting the cases of jailed activists, dictatorships, and humanitarian conditions in crisis zones around the world, not for its North America-based research. 

“We were hoping that we could provide additional research by applying Human Rights Watch’s unique model of going in and documenting harm in a very careful, interview-by-interview process that has been applied all around the world to human rights,” Juhasz said.

The study comes as the fossil fuel industry ramps up its build-out throughout the region, with at least 19 new petrochemical projects in the works, and as southern Louisiana comes under greater scrutiny. In 2022, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment David Boyd identified the area known as Cancer Alley as one of the 50 most polluted places on Earth. Boyd said these “sacrifice zones” represent “a stain upon the collective conscience of humanity.” 

Much of the new report is descriptive, painting a picture of giant industrial facilities belching out huge plumes of black smoke that drift over the homes, schools, and outdoor spaces where people live, work, and play. Juhasz interviewed 37 residents living in the nine parishes between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and found that severe respiratory conditions such as bronchitis and childhood asthma are common. 

“Residents said these ailments added stress to already at-risk pregnancies, resulted in children being rushed to emergency rooms and kept inside to avoid polluted air, missed days of work and school, sleepless nights due to wracking coughs, and the deaths of family members and friends,” the report reads.

It also details the results of a yet-to-be-published study finding rates of low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds) soared as high as 27 percent in census tracts with high levels of air pollution. By contrast, the national rate is 8.5 percent. (The analysis is currently under peer review for the publication Environmental Research: Health.) To complement this research, Juhasz interviewed people such as Ashley Gaignard, 46, a resident of Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish, which has the highest reported amount of toxic air pollution in the region, with more than 22 plants operating within its borders. All three of Gaignard’s children had low birth weights and two were premature. Her son Jason, 23, was born with an undeveloped lung. The condition contributed to severe lifelong asthma that has led to frequent emergency room visits and nebulizer treatments.

Juhasz said this research is important because birth outcomes are not often considered in studies of exposure to toxic air pollution. “Most women are unaware of this risk,” she said. “Most medical professionals are unaware of the risk. And so that information is not getting shared or acted upon.” 

The report lays out a list of recommendations to various state and federal agencies to improve conditions in Cancer Alley. In particular, Juhasz and her team suggested that the EPA initiate an investigation into whether it should withdraw the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s authority to administer the Clean Air Act in the state. In addition to weak enforcement protocols and a permitting process that repeatedly allows more industrial development in Black communities, the report notes, the state agency has adamantly denied claims that residents living near the region’s hulking chemical plants are getting sick from the pollution. 

A former EPA staffer and air pollution expert, Scott Throwe, said he doubts whether such an investigation would be fruitful, and he could not think of a time in his 30 years at the agency when one was conducted. But he agreed with the report’s argument that the federal government’s lack of action in Cancer Alley has been disappointing. At the start of his term in 2021, EPA Administrator Michael Regan promised to make the disproportionate pollution in Black neighborhoods across the country a priority for cleanup, and specifically visited Cancer Alley residents on a “toxic tour” of the South. More than three years later, Throwe said, not much has changed. 

“I was happy to see Mr. Reagan’s initial efforts and intentions, but unfortunately, I really think the follow-through has just been anemic,” he said. “I just don’t see the efforts to hold the states accountable.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Human Rights Watch blames Louisiana regulators for low birth weights in Cancer Alley on Jan 26, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

While disappointed, residents and advocates in the parish told Grist that they were prepared to keep the fight against Formosa going.  

“I know we’re gonna win this battle,” said Sharon Lavigne, the founder and executive director of the local advocacy group Rise St. James, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. She vowed to pursue the case in the state’s Supreme Court. “It might take us a little longer, but we are going to win.”

Formosa first announced plans to build its massive plastics manufacturing complex in St. James in 2018. The Sunshine Project would include 16 separate facilities spread across 2,400 acres, an area approximately the size of 80 football fields, and produce resins and polymers that can be used to manufacture products like single-use plastic bags and artificial turf. Then-Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, celebrated the company’s decision to build in St. James, proclaiming that the project would help create “a brighter economic future for Louisiana, one with an estimated 8,000 construction jobs at peak, even more permanent jobs upon completion, and a multibillion-dollar impact on earnings and business purchases for decades to come.”

Plastics manufacturing is a notoriously polluting enterprise that involves combining fossil fuel byproducts with chemicals to produce polymers. When the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality granted Formosa its air permits in 2019, it authorized the plant to release 13.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year, the equivalent of 3.5 coal-fired power plants. The agency also greenlit the release of more than 800 tons per year of toxic air pollution, including chemicals such as benzene and ethylene oxide, which studies have linked to various forms of cancer. 

The investigative newsroom ProPublica used a model developed by the Environmental Protection Agency to estimate the effect these emissions would have on communities in St. James Parish, and found that in the town of Convent on the river’s east bank, hundreds of residents’ exposure to cancer-causing chemicals could double. One mile east in the town of St. James, it could more than triple. The analysis noted that even without Formosa’s plant, residents in some parts of the parish were in the top 1 percentile nationwide in terms of their exposure to cancer-causing industrial air pollution. 

Beyond the toxic emissions, residents are wary of Formosa’s poor track record. The EPA has cited the company’s PVC manufacturing plant in Baton Rouge for “high priority” Clean Air Act violations for multiple years in a row. In Texas, the company was required to pay $50 million for illegally dumping plastic pellets and other pollutants into Lavaca Bay on the Gulf Coast. And in 2016, a Formosa plant in Vietnam dumped enough chemicals into the sea to cause a major fish die-off that devastated the livelihoods of 4 million fishermen.

A group of residents and advocacy groups represented by Earthjustice sued the Department of Environmental Quality in 2019, alleging that the agency had failed in its role as a public trustee by granting Formosa permission to pollute without accounting for the cumulative impact of the project’s emissions on residents of Cancer Alley. People living in and around St. James are exposed to pollution from a number of large industrial operations, including Occidental Chemical’s plant and Valero Energy’s asphalt terminal just up the river. The state agency argued in the appeals court that it had considered these emissions when granting Formosa its air permits, but advocates pointed out in their lawsuit that regulators had only examined toxic chemicals in isolation without computing the overall cancer risk from all the chemicals and facilities in the area. 

Even after last week’s court ruling, the odds may not be in Formosa’s favor. In 2021, the Army Corps of Engineers threw another wrench in the company’s plans when it ordered Formosa to conduct a full environmental review of the St. James project before it could receive permits to pollute the parish’s waters. Such a review can take years as it requires a thorough analysis of the public health, environmental, climate, and cultural impacts of a proposed enterprise. 

Anne Rolfes, a veteran environmental advocate and head of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told Grist that Formosa had yet to start that multiyear process. She also pointed to a recent report from the financial analysis firm S&P Global that warned of the possibility of difficult times ahead for Formosa on the basis of sluggish economic growth in the chemical industry. It’s another reason she’s hopeful that the company — and the state — will eventually give up on the megaproject before construction ever begins.  

“We are in Louisiana, a state dominated by the petrochemical industry,” Rolfes said. “If I got discouraged when we had setbacks from our government, I would have quit long ago.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A Louisiana court just revived plans for the country’s biggest plastics plant on Jan 23, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

So when the agency announced in the waning days of 2023 that it’s handing over permitting duties, known as “primacy,” to Louisiana regulators, elected officials and industry executives celebrated. Republican Governor-elect Jeff Landry, who previously said that carbon reduction policies are “extremely destructive on the economy,” called the decision a “significant milestone in our state’s economic development.” 

Even the local branch of Big Oil’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, hailed the move as a boon for growth and sustainability. “Today’s decision will empower the state to continue to be a leader in energy production, community engagement and environmental progress while boosting the local economy,” Gifford Briggs, API’s Gulf Coast regional director, reportedly told local news outlets. 

Environmentalists and many locals are not as enthusiastic. Though it holds the promise of reducing climate-warming emissions from highly polluting facilities, carbon removal is a nascent industry that some scientists warn could pose serious health risks to nearby communities. When a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide ruptured in Mississippi in February 2020, dozens of people were hospitalized after experiencing shortness of breath and passing out. Some residents were initially unable to drive their cars to the hospital because the high levels of carbon dioxide in the air prevented their engines from starting. 

And since the gas will be captured from industrial facilities, its transfer and storage will disproportionately occur in places already overburdened by air pollution. In Louisiana, the country’s third-poorest state, those communities are predominantly Black and low-income. Advocates worry that a state with a legacy of lax oversight of oil and gas companies is the wrong place to streamline permitting for more planned carbon removal projects than anywhere else in the country.

The carbon removal industry “just hasn’t been going on that long,” said James Yskamp, a senior attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice. “So we just think it’s a little bit of a mistake to hand over primacy to a state that there’s this big of a planned build-out for.”

The wells that would store carbon dioxide are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which requires businesses to prevent fluids and waste that they store underground from contaminating public water supplies. While the EPA is the default authority for issuing companies permits to operate these injection wells, the agency can choose to delegate the responsibility to states that prove to have implemented a permitting program of their own. To date, federal regulators have handed off what’s known as “primacy” to just two other states — North Dakota and Wyoming — and Earthjustice says that neither state has any operating wells that store carbon dioxide. 

Louisiana applied for permitting powers in September 2021, but it wasn’t until this past June that the EPA held a hearing on it. Even though the vast majority of the 45,000 comments submitted to the agency during the public comment period were in opposition to the state’s bid, EPA Administrator Michael Reagan signed over the permitting duties to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources on December 28. It’s a decision with sweeping implications for the carbon removal industry. Louisiana has more applications for carbon dioxide injection wells than any other state, with 22 of the 61 proposals pending with federal regulators. And as state officials have promised to speed up the permitting process for these wells, the Pelican State could become an important testing ground for the new technology.

Regan has said that provisions in its agreement with Louisiana will guarantee that the permitting is done right. “We’re building in monitoring and oversight measures to ensure that the state — regardless of who is in the governor’s office — complies” with federal law, Regan told the Associated Press in late December.

Environmental advocates aren’t so confident. In a 60-page letter submitted to the EPA in June, Earthjustice laid out a litany of problems with Louisiana’s permitting proposal, and argued that state regulators don’t have the expertise needed to approve and regulate carbon dioxide wells. The organization pointed to the EPA’s own research indicating that these wells are more sophisticated than other types of underground storage systems, since they create high-pressure conditions with the ability to crack subsurface rocks and cause dangerous leaks. Modeling exercises are necessary to understand the scope of these risks, but Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources has “no experience” conducting this type of study, according to Jane Patton, a New Orleans-based campaign manager for the Center for International Environmental Law.

In its letter, Earthjustice wrote that the state of Louisiana’s permitting program absolves businesses of responsibility for their well sites after 50 years, a provision that the organization says conflicts with federal regulations. A lack of scientific research into the long term impacts and efficacy of carbon storage make this half-century benchmark arbitrary, they argued. 

Carbon removal “hasn’t been proven to efficiently and effectively capture the carbon emissions, and it hasn’t been proven to permanently store the amount of carbon that we’re proposing to store here safely,” said Yskamp, the Earthjustice attorney. He argues that fossil fuel companies are piloting most of the state’s carbon removal projects as a way of “greenwashing” their pollution. 

Louisiana officials say the carbon removal industry will be a boon for the economy. In its latest annual report, the state’s economic development agency projected that the industry will create more than 2,300 new jobs in the state over the next year. But there are questions about how long those jobs will last. Patton told the Louisiana Illuminator, a nonprofit news outlet, that the lion’s share of these positions are temporary construction jobs that won’t benefit state residents in the long term. 

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Advocates are also concerned that carbon dioxide wells will pose public health risks in places where air pollution is already a problem. The Earthjustice letter pointed to numerous projects that would be built right next to predominantly Black neighborhoods, including Air Products’ proposed ammonium plant in Ascension Parish. The parish sits along the lower Mississippi River in the state’s main industrial corridor, a region known as “Cancer Alley” for the concentration of petrochemical plants there.

Regan has offered reassurances that people living near well sites will be protected, pointing to measures in the EPA’s agreement with Louisiana designed to shield vulnerable communities from the hazards associated with carbon storage. The concern is that the state will not honor these provisions, given its history of coziness with the oil and gas industry, and Landry’s recent lawsuit against the federal government for trying to enforce civil rights law in the state’s most polluted areas. 

“Communities across Louisiana are depending on these provisions to protect them from decades of environmental policy that put these very communities at risk from illness, pollution, and death,” wrote Bevery Wright, the founder and director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, in a statement. “Louisiana’s most vulnerable cannot be left exposed to an untested pollution control technology without accountability.”

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Oil-friendly Louisiana now has the power to approve carbon capture projects on Jan 9, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

This article was produced for Verite News by Richard A. Webster, who covered Jefferson Parish as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2021-22. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, has agreed to pay settlements to two families who accused its sheriff’s deputies of using excessive force against teenagers.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office agreed to contribute to a $1.25 million settlement with the family of Eric Parsa, a 16-year-old boy with severe autism who died nearly four years ago after deputies pinned him to the pavement and then sat on his back for more than nine minutes. The September settlement, the cost of which will be shared by the shopping center where the boy died, is one of the largest in the department’s history.

The Parsa settlement also requires that an outside expert develop a program to train JPSO deputies on how to deal with people with autism. Parsa’s parents, Donna Lou and Daren Parsa, told Verite News they hope it will prevent other families from enduring the same pain they have suffered.

JPSO also will pay an undisclosed sum to the family of Tre’mall McGee, who was shot in the shoulder by a deputy while he was facedown on the ground, about two months after Parsa’s death. The sheriff’s office was accused of concealing its role in the shooting of the 14-year-old from both the public and McGee’s mother for months. McGee’s attorney, Ron Haley, said neither he nor McGee’s mother, Tiffany, could discuss terms.

Both Parsa’s death and McGee’s shooting were covered as part of a yearlong investigation by ProPublica and WWNO/WRKF, which found that JPSO rarely upholds complaints against its deputies. Over a three-year period, from 2017 to mid-2020, JPSO’s internal affairs division upheld only one misconduct complaint against a deputy, according to the investigation by the news organizations. During that same time, the New Orleans Police Department upheld 247.

The sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment, but in a recent interview with WWL-TV, Sheriff Joe Lopinto said his deputies didn’t do anything wrong in the Parsa case and were not deserving of discipline. He has previously denied any wrongdoing in the McGee case as well.

“This is not a scenario where any of our deputies are trying to hurt a kid, trying to use force or even justified using deadly force,” he told WWL-TV about the Parsa case. “They’re encountering a situation that happens … and in the course, a death occurs.”

The two recent settlements have led the ACLU of Louisiana to renew its calls for federal prosecutors to investigate the sheriff’s office and put the agency under a consent decree. Relying on lawsuits filed by the victims of police brutality is not enough to force JPSO to reform its practices and stop violating the civil rights of people with disabilities and Black and Hispanic residents, said Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana.

“It cannot be the case that people continue to be killed, maimed and violated, and the only recourse that they have is yet another lawsuit that will be fought to the bones, and, if they’re lucky, settled,” Ahmed said.

Parsa died in January 2020 in the parking lot of the Westgate Shopping Center in Metairie. Surveillance footage shows the boy repeatedly slapping his own head, then slapping and wrestling with his father for several minutes before law enforcement was called.

A nearby business manager contacted a JPSO deputy who was working a security detail for the shopping center and informed him that a child with special needs was having a violent episode. In total, at least six deputies arrived in four patrol cars and two unmarked vehicles. They handcuffed and shackled the teen as deputies took turns sitting on his back, with one putting him in a chokehold. After nearly 10 minutes, deputies noticed Parsa had gone “limp” and urinated, according to the lawsuit.

“When I saw Eric’s dead body in the emergency room, I broke out into tears saying: ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’” said Daren Parsa, who told the business manager to call the police when his son began suffering a disability-related “meltdown.” “And I’m still sorry. I wish I’d known that when you say ‘yes to law enforcement being involved, there’s a risk of mortality.”

The coroner ruled the teen’s death an accident as a result of excited delirium, with “prone positioning” as a contributing factor.

Up to half of all people killed during encounters with police are disabled, according to a 2016 study by the Ruderman Family Foundation, a Boston-based philanthropic organization.

The inability of those with autism to effectively communicate their feelings can often cause them to express themselves and their frustrations through more negative behaviors, such as aggression and self-injuring, Lou, Parsa’s mother, said. This can lead to deadly results when they encounter police officers who haven’t been trained on how to appropriately handle people with developmental disabilities. “They’re not trying to be malicious. They’re really asking for help,” Lou said. “They’re in distress, and they don’t know how to express it.”

The sheriff’s office stated in court documents that the show of force that day was necessary to deal with a violent and out-of-control teenager, but Daren Parsa said there was minimal risk of danger. His son would often have meltdowns when he felt overwhelmed, but they would fade if he was given space to calm down. Lou said she tried to explain to the officers that one of her son’s triggers while he was in an excited state was being crowded by a lot of unfamiliar people.

“They said, ‘Let us do our job.’ And we all know the outcome of that,” Lou said, “It just doesn’t make sense. We assumed they were trained, that they knew what to do.”

“What’s heartbreaking is that he was calming down,” Daren Parsa said, “and we almost got him inside of the car, and then they showed up.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WVUE-TV. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The village of Fenton, outside the oil and gas town of Lake Charles, covers only about 20 blocks. There’s City Hall. The library. One gas station. A small public housing complex. A Dollar General. A grain elevator. A Baptist church. Drivers headed to east Texas from central Louisiana go right through town, passing it all in under a minute.

In many ways, Fenton is like other small towns in Louisiana. But it is remarkable in one way: This village of 226 people collected more money in a single year through fines and forfeitures, primarily traffic tickets, than almost any other municipality in Louisiana, according to audits.

In the year ending in June 2022, Fenton brought in $1.3 million that way.

The fines were collected through what’s known as a “mayor’s court”: a little-known type of small town court found only in Louisiana and Ohio. In Fenton, its primary function is processing the thousands of traffic tickets written annually by a few police officers. Here, the mayor is also the judge, appointing the prosecutor and, if drivers ask for a trial, deciding their guilt or innocence.

The mayor runs the village with revenue primarily made up of those fines. The bulk of the salaries of the people in the courtroom — everyone from the mayor to the clerk — comes from fines and fees collected by the court.

This arrangement is so ripe for conflict of interest that the fairness of mayor’s courts has been challenged several times. One case resulted in a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that curtailed the power of mayors who take in a lot of money through their court.

Fenton village attorney Mike Holmes, in an email to WVUE-TV and ProPublica, said the mayor presides over court in a “neutral, impartial manner” consistent with Louisiana law.

But the village’s court records suggest something else about how it handles some tickets: Case summaries include curious notes from village employees and police officers. Some say not to “fix” tickets or reduce charges for drivers who had a “bad attitude.” Others suggest that the police chief and others have had a hand in dismissing charges, although Holmes said tickets are dismissed only at his direction.

Getting clear answers to how Fenton operates its court, and how fairly, has been difficult. Over four visits, journalists from WVUE and ProPublica reviewed court files, town meeting minutes, municipal ordinances and body camera video. We asked for three and a half years of electronic case summaries. We tried, several times, to see the court in action and to meet with the mayor, eventually observing court once and speaking with the mayor for five minutes.

Village officials offered conflicting and confusing explanations for the mayor’s role, how and why tickets are reduced or dismissed, why the town asks the state to suspend so many drivers’ licenses and how often trials are held. Their description of how the town runs its court didn’t align with state Judicial College guidance or that U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Such irregularities demonstrate the problems inherent in this unique court system in place across Louisiana, said Joel Friedman, an emeritus professor at Tulane University in New Orleans who has taught procedural law for 46 years.

“The mayor who’s trying to raise money for the city is in charge of prosecuting these minor criminal offenses and getting fines brought back to the city,” he said. “There’s no accountability,” he added. “They can do whatever they want.”

A few people well-versed in mayor’s courts, including an attorney who was intrigued enough to write a book about them, said Fenton shouldn’t allow the mayor to preside over court.

Watch video ➜

Fenton is not unusual among small towns in Louisiana in administering justice through its mayor’s court.

Courts like this, which likely have been around since before Louisiana was a state, were carried over into the state’s modern judicial system when its constitution was updated in the 1970s, according to attorney Floyd Buras, who wrote that book on mayor’s courts. Now, they function as an informal way to handle minor offenses in about 250 municipalities, mostly small towns and villages.

Mayor’s courts operate in a gray area of Louisiana law. Like municipal courts, they handle violations of local ordinances. Municipal judges must hold a law degree and pass the bar; a mayor can preside over court without meeting any qualifications. Yet, like a municipal judge, a mayor can impose fines or sentence people to jail.

Mayor’s courts must ensure defendants have fair trials. But unlike other courts in the state, they aren’t subject to rules like the Code of Criminal Procedure that are supposed to ensure courts are run fairly and properly.

“They sort of operate in the shadow of the law,” said Eric Foley, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center, a law firm that litigates for civil rights in criminal justice.

Fenton’s court is the main reason the town’s revenue for the year ending in June 2022 was about five times as high as the average Louisiana municipality its size. This tiny village collected about as much through fines and forfeitures as Shreveport, the state’s third-largest city, with a population of 187,000. (The state provides no official definition of “fines and forfeitures,” but it generally refers to penalties for breaking the law and associated fees.)

The average municipality in the U.S. gets 1.7% of its revenue from fines and forfeitures, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that promotes equity. In Fenton, it’s 92.5%.

That’s the highest percentage of any municipality in Louisiana, according to a survey by WVUE and ProPublica of audits on file with the state.

It’s also one of the highest percentages in the whole country. In a frequently cited review of local government data by the news outlet Governing in 2019, Fenton ranked second-highest for its share of revenue that came from fines and forfeitures.

Governing said nearly 600 jurisdictions in the U.S., including 70 in Louisiana, collected at least 10% of general fund revenue through fines and forfeitures.

Advocates for the poor say a reliance on fines, which they call “taxation by citation,” distorts the role of police departments. “It’s almost impossible to generate that much of your revenue without doing pretty abusive things,” said Joanna Weiss, co-executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, which promotes what it calls equitable fees in the justice system.

Holmes, the attorney for Fenton, said fines make up an outsized share of its revenue because, like many other small towns, it doesn’t bring in much money from sales or property taxes. “While revenues fluctuate from year to year, Village of Fenton Police Department has long had an active traffic enforcement policy,” he wrote.

That enforcement is particularly active on the north side of town, where U.S. Route 165 shifts from a divided highway to a five-lane road. Just before drivers reach a welcome sign, the speed limit drops from 65 mph to 50. Police cruisers often wait nearby, in a stand of trees across from a small roadside cemetery.

That’s where Nikki Cross got her ticket last year. She was returning to Bridge City, Texas, about 70 miles away, to pick up her son after meeting a client north of Lake Charles for her sales job.

Cross said she braked when she saw the speed limit drop. She was ticketed for driving 61 mph in a 50 mph zone. “I told them I was slowing down at the time; I just didn’t slam on my brakes to get to the speed I needed to be at,” Cross said in a text message to WVUE and ProPublica.

Her fine: $210.00.

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Legally, there’s nothing improper about a town like Fenton collecting so much of its revenue through its mayor’s court. But when it does, court rulings say, the mayor shouldn’t both hold the town’s gavel and sign its paychecks.

In a 1972 case, a driver contesting two $50 traffic tickets in Monroeville, Ohio, argued that he had been denied a fair trial because the mayor who ruled against him was responsible for law enforcement and for producing revenue for the town. At the time, Monroeville generated 37% to 51% of its annual revenue from its mayor’s court, much less than Fenton.

The case, Ward v. Monroeville, went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 7-2 decision, Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote that the issue turned on “whether the Mayor can be regarded as an impartial judge.” He can’t, Brennan wrote, if he presides over court and also manages the town’s finances, and if the court generates a substantial part of the town’s revenue.

A week later, the Louisiana attorney general’s office followed up with an opinion instructing Louisiana towns with mayor's courts to assess whether they were in a similar situation as Monroeville.

Subsequent rulings have cited that Supreme Court opinion. In 1995, a federal judge in Ohio ruled that a mayor could be considered biased on the bench if just 10% of the town’s revenue came from its mayor’s court. In 2019, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court had a conflict of interest when setting bail bonds because the court collected a fee based on the amount of each bond.

A training video on mayor’s courts released this year by the Louisiana Judicial College, the educational arm of the state Supreme Court, addresses this conflict of interest. It advises mayors to appoint an attorney to preside over their court if it brings in more than 10% of the town’s revenue. Some towns, including many in the New Orleans area, have done that.

But we found at least nine other municipalities in the state where staff confirmed that the mayor presides over court even though collections make up anywhere from 18% to 79% of the town’s annual revenue.

Bobby King, the prosecutor for the mayor’s court in Walker, near Baton Rouge, led that Louisiana Judicial College video training. In an interview, he said he would advise Fenton, or any municipality in its position, to appoint a magistrate. “You can’t be fair and impartial,” he said, “if you’re wanting to spend money on a park and a big part of that money comes from fines and fees.”

Yet it was not easy to determine who presides over court in Fenton. In a phone call in June, Eddie Alfred Jr., who has been the village’s mayor since 2009, was eager to talk about its traffic ticketing system. But he said he doesn’t preside over court.

Instead, Alfred said, defendants talk to Holmes, the prosecutor. If someone pleads not guilty, Holmes shows the driver a video of their violation. After that, Alfred claimed, “not one person” has maintained their innocence since he has been mayor. If they did, he said, they would go to the district court in Jennings, the seat of Jefferson Davis Parish.

When we visited Fenton in September to observe court, “Judge Alfred,” as he is referred to in court records, donned a black judge’s robe, walked down the hall from the mayor’s office and sat at the bench. No one was waiting to have their cases heard. After Holmes noted for the record that several people had missed their court date, Alfred said, “Court is now adjourned.” Afterward, he refused to speak with us and went back to his office.

Holmes later confirmed that Alfred does preside over court; when asked about the mayor’s statement to the contrary, Holmes said it “must have resulted from misunderstanding or miscommunication.” Asked why the mayor serves as judge when the village collects so much money from the court, Holmes said, “He is authorized to do so by law.”

Four lawyers who spoke with us — the law professor, the author of the book on mayor’s courts, the civil rights attorney and the prosecutor who led the Judicial College training — said they believe Fenton is violating the Supreme Court ruling.

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“Even if you can’t point to the mayor actually being on the record saying, ‘I have to keep up these prosecutions to maintain this funding,’ the fact that the average person put in that mayor’s shoes might feel that temptation — that’s kind of enough,” Foley said.

Actually, Fenton’s mayor has said something quite similar.

In a recording made in September and obtained by WVUE and ProPublica, Alfred can be heard telling village employees that there could be layoffs due to financial problems.

“Our main income is traffic tickets, and they ain’t getting written,” he said, according to one person who was in the meeting and another village employee who identified the voice on the recording as the mayor’s. They asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “We need to write more traffic tickets.”

Holmes, who handled our inquiries, did not respond to our request for comment on that statement.

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Fenton’s court records paint a picture of a justice system in which some people are punished for how they act while others are rewarded for who they know.

We found a dozen court records that include notations from officers and village employees saying not to “help” people or “fix” their tickets because drivers were rude. On a ticket for driving 71 mph in a 50: “Refused phone number, driver was very disrespectful no help.” Fine: $305.

A ticket for 81 in a 50: “Very bad attitude. Do not fix.” Fine: $490.

Video from an officer’s body camera during one traffic stop shows a woman, stopped for driving 62 mph, asking the officer to show her the radar reading and to let her go with a warning.

“What else do you guys do around this town?” she asked the officer after he handed her a ticket.

“Protect and serve,” he responded.

Her file reads, “Bad attitude.” She was fined $215.

Holmes said notes about drivers’ behavior have nothing to do with how cases are decided. “A defendant is not punished for rude behavior during a traffic stop, but rather for objective, provable violations of law,” he told WVUE and ProPublica. Besides, he said, the vast majority of drivers decide to pay their tickets. (We spoke to several drivers with such notations in their files. Of those three, two said they didn’t contest their charges; the third said he couldn’t remember.)

Fourteen court files include notations saying a charge was dismissed after someone, often in law enforcement, had intervened. “Dismissed per Chief Alfred,” said the record for a ticket issued to someone who, according to the notation, knew a village employee.

Luther Alfred, the chief, said he sometimes gets requests to dismiss tickets and passes them on to the judge or prosecutor. Though he acknowledged that he has written “Dismiss” on paperwork and signed his name, he said he doesn’t dismiss charges himself and doesn’t have that authority.

Phillip Hattaway’s file for a speeding ticket he received in 2022 says, “Ivy Woods asked to dismiss per O’Quinn.” Woods is the sheriff of Jefferson Davis Parish, and Sgt. Vernon O’Quinn is Fenton’s police sergeant. In an interview, Hattaway said he contacted people he knew in law enforcement, asking for help. His ticket was dismissed. “It was short and sweet,” Hattaway said. “They just got it taken care of.”

O’Quinn said the department was “asked if we could provide any assistance,” and he “advised he didn’t have a problem with it and recommended to the prosecutor for dismissal.”

Asked why his name appears on court records, Woods said many people ask if he can get tickets reduced to nonmoving violations. “You’d be surprised how many tickets Fenton writes,” he said. “They’re pretty tough — they like their money.”

But he didn’t acknowledge calling in any favors, saying that the village “might be covering their butts, saying the sheriff asked.” Although he offered to elaborate later, he didn’t respond to subsequent phone calls.

In response to questions for this article, Holmes said, “Requests for consideration to amend or dismiss charges are received from myriad sources.” He didn’t answer a question about how the village decides which requests to act on.

We reached out to more than 100 drivers, including about 40 whose files said something about their behavior or why a ticket had been dismissed, and interviewed about 35. Several said they felt like they had been caught in a speed trap or said they had heard from others about Fenton’s reputation for traffic enforcement.

Fenton “most certainly does NOT operate a ‘speed trap,’” Holmes wrote to WVUE and ProPublica. Speed limits are well marked, police officers are stationed in the open, and tickets are rarely issued unless drivers are going more than 11 mph over the limit, he said.

Several drivers said they had been threatened with license suspensions or even arrest, both of which are allowed under state law.

When April Dugas called to ask for leniency on a ticket for driving 65 in a 50 mph zone, she said she was told Fenton issues warrants for unpaid tickets. “I was living in Texas in my car with no money for gas to go back,” said Dugas, who now lives in the central Louisiana city of Alexandria. “My grandma had to pay the ticket, so I wouldn’t have warrants out for my arrest.”

Holmes didn’t respond to a question about whether village employees threaten drivers with arrest if they don’t pay. He did say the village sometimes issues an arrest warrant to compel someone’s appearance in court, typically when they don’t show up for trial, but it’s “fairly rare.”

For those who miss court and don’t pay, the consequences can be severe. Fenton sent the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles about 750 requests to suspend driver’s licenses between 2018 and June, a number on par with much larger municipalities in the state.

Asked why Fenton does this, Holmes at first said state law requires municipalities to notify the state when someone doesn’t show up for court. He later acknowledged that’s not true and cited a two-year deadline under state law to request a suspension.

The village has asked the state to suspend some drivers’ licenses over a single unpaid speeding ticket, records show.

That’s what happened to Santina Griffin, a hairdresser in New Orleans who was stopped for driving 74 mph in a 50 mph zone on her way back from a funeral. She said she meant to ask the judge for leniency because she was lost at the time. But as a student and a single mom, she couldn’t make it back to Fenton for her court appearance.

She was surprised to hear the judge was also the mayor: “Sounds like a monopoly to me.”

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In a town the size of Fenton, visitors are conspicuous. We were especially so — four journalists toting notebooks and a video camera, driving around town, flying a drone overhead, watching police officers wait for speeders.

After checking out the town, we went to its small City Hall, where we encountered Luther Alfred, the police chief and uncle of the mayor, and O’Quinn, who came up to us to chat. We had been driving around recording video for a couple of hours by then, and they mentioned some places we had been. O’Quinn chuckled about a man who had warned us to keep our drone away from his house about 15 minutes earlier.

The people of Fenton care about three things, O’Quinn said: “Christ, family and the Fenton Police Department.”

We wanted to see how the court handled tickets written by that police department, but we saw the mayor handle cases just once in the four times we went to court.

Over the summer, Alfred had promised to talk to us when we came for the August court session. That was the first time we made the three-hour trek from New Orleans. But the mayor skipped our interview and canceled court without notice, surprising us and a few defendants waiting at City Hall.

When we went back in September, no defendants showed up. A court staffer later told us that few people come to court. Before the October hearing, we called ahead to arrange a time to review some files. A few days beforehand, court was canceled without explanation.

Last week, we gave it one last shot. This time, as our reporter pulled up to City Hall, she was surprised to see cars parked along the road. She took the only open spot, a patch of grass outside a utility building.

As a dozen defendants filtered in, Holmes, the prosecutor, fetched some chairs from the kitchen to accommodate them. He described what would happen. Tonight, he said, they were in what’s called a mayor’s court. This was an arraignment, where they would each enter a plea. He spent about 20 minutes describing their rights: You have the right to appeal to district court. You have the right not to incriminate yourself.

Holmes had told us that he offers plea deals to many drivers, and he did just that, telling them to meet him in the kitchen if they were interested.

Then he called the judge in. Alfred, wearing his judge’s robe, sat at a large wooden desk emblazoned with the village seal. Holmes called up each driver to answer to their charges before the judge. Most pleaded no contest, which means they didn’t admit guilt but accepted punishment.

When a driver wants to contest a ticket, Holmes had told us, the driver or a lawyer shows up in court, pleads not guilty and is told to return later. “A trial is conducted with all care to ensure each defendant receives due process and is treated fairly before the court,” he said.

That’s not what happened with one case that night. One man, facing a charge of failing to use his turn signal, insisted he was innocent. The mayor told him to wait so O’Quinn could find video of the stop and play it in court. The video was inconclusive, however, and the driver maintained his innocence. Holmes said if the officer were called to testify, he likely would say the driver had broken the law. But he suggested the charge be dropped, and the mayor agreed.

Under state law, mayor’s courts are required to keep a record of all trials, but we had been told there was none and that there hadn’t been a trial since at least 2018. Holmes had told us the mayor “is rarely called upon to pass judgment at trial.”

Afterward, our reporter went up to ask Holmes more questions. The mayor called her into the kitchen. He wanted to make sure she had noticed how lenient the court had been with defendants.

“We’re not without compassion,” Holmes said.

Alfred said he believes he’s a fair judge, despite all the money he collects through court. But, he said, we’d been asking a lot of questions. “Now,” he said, “we have to hire someone.”

That was the topic of discussion a week later, when the three members of the board of aldermen held their monthly meeting in the same kitchen where Holmes had arranged plea deals. “The mayor can’t be the judge,” Alfred said, “which to me does not make sense.“ A man named Hugh Cunningham, who presides over mayor’s court in a nearby town, stood up and described how he would run the court if hired.

Board members objected. “We have to pay somebody to be the judge when he was judging for nothing,” said one board member about Alfred.

For about 15 minutes, Holmes laid out why the town should appoint a magistrate: the Supreme Court ruling, attorney general’s opinions, the possible appearance of bias.

Under the law, Holmes said, it’s up to the mayor to appoint a magistrate; the board votes on that decision. It didn't take long for Alfred to make up his mind: “I think we should put it off because I think this court is fair.”

Louisiana law requires municipalities to turn in yearly financial reports to the state auditor. Over several months, we reviewed the most recent available annual audits for all 301 municipalities and two combined city-parish governments required to file audits with the state. We compared revenue from fines and forfeitures to overall governmental revenue.

There is no official government definition of fines and forfeitures in those audits, but the terms generally cover penalties for breaking the law and associated fees. In some places, they could include collections outside court, such as library fines and traffic camera tickets. Fenton’s attorney confirmed that its total is made up of fines and fees collected through mayor’s court for violations of municipal ordinance. A small number of municipalities’ audits did not include a line item for fines and forfeitures.

We compared all municipalities, regardless of whether they had a mayor’s court. (There is no official list of municipalities in Louisiana with mayor’s courts, but the state Supreme Court said there are about 250.) Of all the municipalities we reviewed, Fenton’s share of total revenue from fines and forfeitures was the highest.

Do you have a story to share about a mayor’s court in Louisiana? Contact Lee Zurik at lee.zurik@gray.tv or 504-483-1544.

Joel Jacobs of ProPublica reviewed the data analysis.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Samantha Sunne, Dannah Sauer and Lee Zurik, WVUE-TV.

This article was produced for Verite News by Richard A. Webster, who covered Jefferson Parish as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2021-22. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In September, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a ruling that appeared to be a major blow to criminal justice reformers seeking to shrink the state’s bloated prison population.

The 4-3 ruling struck down a law that empowered prosecutors to revisit and reduce excessive sentences through post-conviction plea agreements with defense attorneys. The law, which passed the state Legislature unanimously in 2021 and had the backing of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, was meant to create a formal process to release prisoners serving decadeslong sentences, in many cases for relatively minor crimes, handed down under the state’s habitual offender, or “three strikes,” law.

Verite News and ProPublica recently featured the story of Markus Lanieux, who might have been helped by that law. Lanieux was convicted in 2009 of aggravated flight from an officer, a crime that typically carried a two-year sentence. But two previous drug felonies allowed the Jefferson Parish district attorney to try Lanieux as a habitual offender, which resulted in a sentence of life without parole. If Lanieux had been originally convicted under current habitual offender sentencing laws, the most he could have gotten was four years.

The Supreme Court’s ruling came as the result of a legal challenge filed last year by Louisiana’s conservative attorney general, Jeff Landry, who claimed the law encroached on and usurped the exclusive power of the governor to grant clemency or pardons. Landry intervened in the case of William Lee, whose life sentence had been reduced using the now-overturned law.

His legal challenge was seen as part of a growing backlash across the country against prosecutors who have pushed to end mass incarceration, and it caused many district attorneys in Louisiana to temporarily drop negotiations to reduce excessive sentences while the case was pending.

Immediately after the court announced its decision, Landry, who is running for governor on a tough-on-crime platform, hailed it as a victory for public safety.

“This unconstitutional legislation resulted in some rapists and murderers receiving ‘get out of jail free’ cards,” Landry said. “That recklessness ends now.”

In a dissenting opinion, state Supreme Court Chief Justice John Weimer criticized Landry’s challenge and warned that the majority’s decision could “have the disastrous effect of undermining, and further limiting, the post-conviction relief procedure that has operated to correct the evils of the past.”

“The post-conviction legislation at issue here was unanimously enacted by the legislature, the people’s representatives, and signed into law by the governor,” Weimer wrote. “Its obvious purpose is to insure justice is done and to act as a counter balance or check on the renegade practices and prejudices of the past.”

News of the ruling quickly spread throughout the state’s prisons, said attorney Nick Trenticosta, who argued on behalf of the law before the Supreme Court and visited several inmates at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel the following week.

“It’s on every prisoner’s mind,” he said. “My clients are now in distress.”

Trenticosta, however, was in the prison to tell them not to worry, that far from dealing a death blow to post-conviction resentencing efforts, the attorney general might have inadvertently given them new life.

In their decision, the justices said the new law was unconstitutional because it didn’t require prosecutors or judges to identify a specific legal problem with a prisoner’s sentence before granting relief. The ability to adjust a sentence without a specific legal basis, they said, amounted to an “act of grace,” like a pardon, which is considered the domain of the governor.

If the decision had stopped there, it could have been extremely damaging, Trenticosta said. But the justices went on to uphold the “absolute discretion” of prosecutors to provide such post-conviction relief, emphasizing it was the duty of prosecutors to “see that no innocent man suffers.”

According to Trenticosta, the decision affirmed, for the first time explicitly, the right of prosecutors and defense attorneys to cooperatively reach post-conviction deals. Three other defense attorneys with extensive experience in post-conviction deals generally agreed with Trenticosta’s analysis of the ruling’s language, though one of them was concerned about its real-world consequences.

Before the passage of the 2021 reform law, it was common practice for defense attorneys and prosecutors to meet informally to discuss the reduction of someone’s sentence. If both sides came to an agreement, they would take the plea deal to a judge to authorize, which avoided costly and timely litigation. There wasn’t, however, a court- or Legislature-approved structure to this process, which caused concern among some judges, Colin Reingold with a New Orleans-based criminal justice reform group called the Promise of Justice Initiative and three other defense attorneys told Verite News.

While one court where these deals happened frequently might have been comfortable authorizing them, others in places where such deals were rare might have balked. This resulted in an unequal administration of justice across the state, said the defense attorneys.

In its ruling, the court spelled out the eight grounds on which district attorneys could reduce someone’s sentence through post-conviction plea agreements. Some of those are fairly narrow, including whether the sentence amounted to double jeopardy or the requirement that DNA testing provides “clear and convincing evidence” of innocence. Others are more general and create a wider lane through which an attorney could argue for someone’s freedom, such as proof that “the conviction was obtained in violation of the constitution of the United States or the state of Louisiana.”

Importantly, the justices added, when defense attorneys assert one of those grounds in seeking a sentence reduction, prosecutors have no obligation to demand evidence.

“If a defendant seeks post-conviction relief pursuant to one of these grounds, a district attorney is not required by this decision to oppose the application.”

Jee Park, executive director of the Innocence Project New Orleans, said she worries that the ruling could create obstacles to negotiating lesser terms, possibly driving judges to demand more evidence than previously required to prove a reduction in sentence is legally necessary.

But she agreed that it wasn’t the end of post-conviction relief. “It’s not fine, but it will be OK,” Park said. “There are definitely still claims available to attack unjust and excessive sentences.”

For people like Lanieux, this comes as welcome news. Lanieux’s attorney, Amy Myers, was in negotiations with the Jefferson Parish district attorney to reduce his sentence under the now-overturned law when Landry filed his challenge. The district attorney, like many prosecutors across the state, temporarily halted those negotiations pending a decision.

Myers said the ruling reaffirmed arguments she had previously been making: that Lanieux’s sentence is unconstitutional because he had an ineffective lawyer, and that his sentence is cruel and unusual. Both are included in the eight grounds listed by the court.

“Markus has always had good legal issues,” Myers said. “If we have a district attorney who is willing to consider the merits of those legal issues, we can resolve Markus’ case.”

In an emailed statement, the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Lanieux, said it was “not inclined to further comment as to Mr. Lanieux’s case at this time.”

During his 14 years of incarceration, the Iberville Parish native lost his mother in 2020 to COVID-19 and his sister last year to unknown causes. And on Sept. 7, the day before the news organizations published a story on his life sentence, Lanieux’s son was found dead in his cell at the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport. Evidence relating to his death was inadvertently given to a funeral home, Verite News reported.

Lee, the prisoner whose case was the subject of Landry’s challenge, also maintains hope following the court’s decision, said his attorney, Trenticosta. When the Supreme Court ruled in the attorney general’s favor, St. Tammany Parish prosecutors reinstated Lee’s life sentence. Warren Montgomery, the district attorney for St. Tammany and Washington parishes, was not available to comment because of medical reasons, according to his office.

Despite the setback, Trenticosta expects to restart negotiations with the district attorney under the parameters established by the court. He said Lee’s case could fit under a number of them, including ineffective counsel, the unconstitutional withholding of evidence or a claim of innocence based on new evidence.

“Warren Montgomery believed that the new evidence shook the integrity of the conviction, and I don’t think anything has changed,” he said. “I fully predict that Mr. Lee will come home in the near future.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

A string of lawsuits lays out allegations of death, violence, negligence and unwarranted arrests, stops and searches against Rapides Parish law enforcement in recent years. Plaintiffs point fingers at leadership for permitting a climate of misconduct.

A Louisiana Illuminator review of federal and state court records since 2020 found multiple complaints against the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Mark Wood, his deputies and prison guards, not all of which are covered here. Police officers from Alexandria and Pineville are also defendants in the lawsuits as is the Rapides Parish Police Jury.

Lauren Bonds, executive director of National Police Accountability Project, said it’s not just the frequency of the suits that jumps out at her but the severity and the range of issues they cover. How the sheriff’s office runs its jails is the focus of many of the court cases as well as questionable patrol practices, SWAT team dispatches and use of informants.

“It’s not like there’s this discrete problem that some repairs here or there could fix,” Bonds said. “It really does seem like it’s a problem of leadership and oversight and supervision more generally. The complaints are touching all the different work of the sheriff’s department.”

Plaintiffs in the 13 lawsuits reviewed for this report range in age from 1 to 80 years old. They are Black and white, rich and poor, male and female, locals and travelers.

Court filings describe the plaintiffs as victims of wrongful death, excessive force, rape, suicide, overdoses, mental trauma, medical neglect, beatings and unlawful seizure of property. Three men filing separate lawsuits claim they were roughed up by law enforcement officers after they had already been placed in handcuffs. One was punched in the face so forcefully he had contusions, broken teeth and feared his jaw was fractured.

For Tyler Croxton, who claims he was punched in the face while handcuffed during a May 2023 arrest, something else was damaged — his trust in law enforcement.

“Mentally, I’m scared to drive through Rapides,” the 23-year-old pipefitter told the Illuminator. To get to work in northern Louisiana from his home in Allen Parish, he must pass through Rapides.

“I’m scared they’re going to pull me over and whoop my ass again,” Croxton said.

“I don’t know under what circumstances what it would take for someone to believe it’s OK that they’re struck, beat, hit while in handcuffs. They’re not a threat. Why are you doing that?” said attorney Alan Pesnell, who’s representing Croxton and other plaintiffs who’ve sued Rapides law enforcement.

Croxton’s federal lawsuit — filed in August against the RPSO, Wood and the deputy allegedly involved — is still in its early stages.

RPSO Chief of Staff Tommy Carnline declined to comment, citing department policy on pending litigation that involves the sheriff’s office.

4 deaths at parish jail attributed to alleged gross oversight

News reports have detailed the deaths of three people held at Rapides Parish Detention Center since July 2020 that have prompted lawsuits. Alleged details of a fourth person who died at the facility were made public in a federal lawsuit filed in May.

Court records say the May 2022 beating death of Andrew Myles in a holding cell came at the hands of another incarcerated person who corrections officers knew was mentally unstable and violent. Myles had been arrested for minor property crimes. Earlier in the day Markese Harrell was apprehended on charges that included second-degree battery, according to the court complaint.

When he was arrested, the suit recounts how Harrell’s family called multiple departments and “stressed to the RPSO deputies and nurse that Harrell could not be placed in a cell with other inmates under any circumstances.” He was initially placed in solitary confinement but later moved into a holding cell with 11 other men, including Myles, and was not constrained, the lawsuit alleges.

“Myles was asleep on the floor in the holding cell when Harrell proceeded to stomp on Myles’ head 48 times and punched him multiple times for approximately two minutes,” the complaint reads. “Other inmates in the holding cell immediately called for help, but RPSO deputies failed to respond until it was too late.”

Harrell’s second-degree murder trial is on next month’s court docket.

The mother of Myles’ child is suing the sheriff’s office, Wood and prison staff. A status conference in the case took place last month.

The other jail deaths at the Rapides Parish Detention Center include a suicide in which the parents of Jasmine Anderson claim a guard provided their daughter with the means to take her life. Anderson had been arrested for the 2019 murder of her 5-year-old child. Her parents’ case continues in state court.

Last year, the mother of Jason Marler filed a lawsuit that alleges the jail’s guards and medical staff helped smuggle illegal drugs inside or were aware it was happening. Marler died in custody in August 2021 after ingesting fentanyl, all while under video surveillance that was unmonitored, according to court records.

Exavier Cortez James of Alexandria, who was also imprisoned at the time, allegedly brought drugs into the jail and was later arrested for Marler’s death and two other nonfatal overdoses at the facility. James’ jury trial on a second-degree murder charge is set for next July.

In August 2024, a jury trial is scheduled in a lawsuit over the death of Rose Marie Taylor at Rapides Parish Detention Center after father-and-son defendants, Alexandria police officers Brian and Matthew Frost, who’d been traveling in separate vehicles, came into the parking lot where Taylor was talking with her girlfriend. The officers blocked her girlfriend’s car and confronted the couple.

The suit says Matthew Frost “approached the open, driver’s side door of the vehicle and mistakenly referred to Plaintiff RM Taylor as a man.” Taylor was allegedly handcuffed and forcefully thrown on the hood of a police cruiser. The lawsuit accuses the officers of denying medical care on Taylor’s behalf at a local hospital for injuries that led to her death at the jail, which the coroner ruled a homicide.

The Alexandria Police Department declined to comment on the Taylor lawsuit.

A federal case filed in July 2022 against the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office involves an 80-year-old Pineville man. Court records say William Huddleston arrived at his son’s financial planning firm on July 14, 2021, to go over some paperwork. Having gotten there a few minutes early, he parked across the street from his son’s business and was soon swarmed by officers from the Alexandria Police Department and three RPSO deputies, according to his lawsuit.

Before they approached Huddleston, they didn’t run his license plate or notice the elderly man did not fit the description of the two young men they were looking for in a vehicle that bore no resemblance to his, the court complaint states.

The lawsuit indicates police ordered Huddleston out of his vehicle and asked him if he had weapons. He did not, but officers, one with a pistol pointed at Huddleston, surrounded him and violently placed him in handcuffs.

Police then searched Huddleston’s vehicle unlawfully, the complaint asserts. When they realized their mistake, they uncuffed him and left the scene, leaving Huddleston injured with broken bones in his shoulder and a torn rotator cuff, according to court documents.

Huddleston is suing the Alexandria Police Department, RPSO, Wood and the Rapides Parish Police Jury; none offered comment on the lawsuit. He is pressing for compensatory and punitive damages in a jury trial scheduled for July 2024.

Deputies raid the wrong house, illegally search it

In September 2021, deputies from the RPSO joined officers from the Pineville Police Department in a drug bust in Pineville, according to a separate lawsuit.

Instead of going to the house where suspected drug dealers were thought to be selling fentanyl and methamphetamines, the eight law enforcement personnel charged into the house next door, guns drawn and screaming at the residents and their visitors to “get down” and “shut up,” the court complaint states.

There they found the dwelling’s tenant, Deiastria Jackson, her 1-year-old child, a friend’s 13-year-old, a blind man, and another man identified in court records as J.M.

As the children wailed, officers put cuffs on everyone except for Jackson and her baby, according to the court filing. When J.M. tried to tell the officers Donte Harrison is blind, an officer pointed a gun at J.M. and punched him, though he was already cuffed.

The suit further claims when RPSO and Pineville police realized they were in the wrong house, they illegally searched it anyway. They left with an apology and a promise to repair the damage they caused to the furnishings, but the lawsuit claims that never happened.

Jackson and the mother of the 13-year-old sued RPSO and Sheriff Wood for, among other things, “practices exhibiting deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of citizens” and for not disciplining their deputies after the incident.

The lawsuit, which also named the City of Pineville and the Pineville Police Department, has been settled for an undisclosed amount.

The Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office declined to share details of the settlement. The Pineville Police Department and the plaintiffs’ attorney, Jermaine Harris, did not respond to requests to comment on the case.

Traveler, driver detained for possession of Excedrin

Two men from New York filed a federal lawsuit in July against the RPSO based on their treatment at the hands of deputies.

On July 3, 2022, Mark Goldstein was traveling on Interstate 49 in Alexandria with his driver, Thomas Larkai, according to their court complaint. Goldstein had hired Larkai to help him move furniture from his recently sold Lake Tahoe vacation home to his new place in West Palm Beach, Florida. Along the way, they planned to drop a few pieces off in Alabama where Goldstein owns a Gulf Coast hotel.

Based on a hunch and nothing more, according to the lawsuit, RPSO Deputy Justin Johnson enlisted the help of his colleagues in the Rapides Area Drug Enforcement (RADE) task force. They coordinated a plan to stop Goldstein and Larkai, who they assumed, according to a deputy’s statement quoted in the suit, to be a “drug king” and his “mule.”

Johnson followed the New York men for miles, without his emergency lights on to give other agents time to get in position for what they hoped would be a big bust, according to court records. When Larkia saw Johnson’s lights go on in his sideview mirror and pulled over, he was accused of fleeing, though he hadn’t known the deputy had been following him. The lawsuit said Larkai was painfully restrained in handcuffs that were too tight.

A search of Larkai’s possessions, without a warrant or his permission, yielded a couple of tablets of Excedrin, an over-the-counter analgesic that deputies thought was Vicodin, a controlled substance, according to the lawsuit. Tests at the Rapides Area Drug Enforcement (RADE) lab confirmed the capsules were not Vicodin, yet Larkai was charged anyway with possession of a Schedule III controlled dangerous substance, the complaint says.

The lawsuit says an illegal search of Goldstein’s suitcase yielded three THC-laced gummies. Goldstein, 68, explained he took them for arthritis pain and had a medical card for them back home. Although medical cannabis products are legal in Louisiana, the state doesn’t reciprocally recognize medical cards from other states.

Goldstein and Larkai were separated and interrogated for two and a half hours, their lawsuit states. Their van was searched for drugs and stolen furniture. A drug-sniffing K-9 was used in the search but only after the Excedrin was found. Even after finding no illegal contraband, the men were taken to Rapides Detention Center and booked, though the district attorney subsequently dismissed all charges.

Their suit hones in on Wood for establishing and implementing RADE in 2020 for the purpose of targeting individuals based on race and vehicle type even if there is no probable cause. It also seeks to hold him accountable for an underdeveloped policy on “arrests, searches and seizure,” which they say is unconstitutional because it offers insufficient guidance.

What the lawsuit says was a frightening experience and a huge hassle became something far worse for Goldstein. During his jail booking, Goldstein reportedly felt weak and was checked by the nurse. His blood pressure was 188/95, a rate doctors consider an emergency. The court complaint says Goldstein asked for water and food, explaining he was lightheaded and dizzy probably from hypoglycemia. He also wanted to make a phone call.

He was offered nothing, taken to a room, strip-searched and then placed in a holding cell where, the lawsuit says, he continued to let guards know he needed medical attention. None was given, and hours later the men were released.

They then checked into an Alexandria hotel where Goldstein soon collapsed, according to the lawsuit. He was taken by ambulance to Rapides Regional Medical Center, where it was determined he had experienced a stroke, and placed in the ICU. Medical staff told him if he hadn’t gotten there when he did, he might have died.

Goldstein claims he suffers depression because he may never fully recover his speech, which is now slurred, and has memory loss and decreased motor function.

The lawsuit from Goldstein and Larkai cites 11 others filed against the RPSO between 2014 and 2022 for similar disregard of medical needs. It also claims Wood must know department policies and practices currently in place are inadequate but continues them anyway. The men seek a jury trial and do not ask for a specific damage sum in their court filing, but one sufficient to compensate them for all they have suffered.

Local attorney carries plaintiff heavy caseload

Alexandria attorney Alan Pesnell said he does not have a specialty practice in civil rights and doesn’t handle many of those cases. Yet somehow, he is representing two plaintiffs suing RPSO and Wood in federal court, another in state court, and is co-counsel on a case in state court that alleges an RPSO informant was raped twice while wearing a wire for Rapides Area Drug Enforcement.

The monitors entrusted with the informant’s safety weren’t paying attention to the wire, and though she’d been in the house with the dealer for an unusually long time, the decision was made “to let it play out,” the lawsuit says.

“Those Defendants had no regard whatsoever for Petitioner,” Pesnell wrote in the petition for damages.

Pesnell said he was hearing about handcuffed men being hit so regularly that it had come to seem almost routine. One of his clients, Croxton, was allegedly beaten by Jerry Don Rollins, an off-duty deputy who followed him as he drove to his cousin’s house to pick him up to attend their grandmother’s funeral, court records say.

There Rollins began screaming at Croxton about speeding, threatened him with jail, and beat him after Croxton said he wanted a lawyer, according to the lawsuit. The incident was filmed by Rollins’ wife, Melissa, who is also a deputy with RPSO, and was also off duty.

Rollins handed Croxton a summons and then released him after asking that Croxton not sue him, according to the lawsuit. Wood is part of the lawsuit because Pesnell said it’s likely policies that involve off-duty officers have been violated.

“I’ve taken these cases because I don’t think what’s happened to these people is right,” he said. “I don’t think the sheriff has addressed these things properly.”

The sheriff, Rollins, his wife and a Glenmora Police Department officer who the lawsuit claims Rollins called to the scene but did not intervene are defendants in the case. Court records do not list attorneys for the defendants yet.

The RPSO would not disclose if Rollins’ work status has changed since the alleged incident.

Pesnell said plaintiffs with complaints against the sheriff’s office don’t have a large pool of attorneys from which to choose. Local attorneys are either scared of the sheriff and deputies or have personal relationships with them, making it awkward, he explained, and some plaintiffs’ cases aren’t significant enough to attract a civil rights specialist from Baton Rouge or New Orleans.

“At the end of the day, you would think that with all these lawsuits that are out there, you’d have to address this issue,” Pesnell said.

‘I always thought that cops were protectors’

Another lawsuit Pesnell has filed is on behalf of Ashley White, who had her phone seized by RPSO this past April after breaking up with her former boyfriend, Charles Thomas Nash. In an interview, White says Nash frequently mentioned the fact that his uncle is former Rapides Sheriff William Earl Hilton.

It was Hilton who first hired Wood, the current sheriff, as a corrections officer decades ago and was his boss throughout most of Wood’s RPSO career. Hilton endorsed Wood as his replacement during the 2019 sheriff’s race.

White was living with Nash when he filed an eviction order against her after she made a formal complaint against him with the RPSO in a matter not disclosed in the lawsuit. White declined to elaborate in her interview.

The terms of the eviction order giving White only 24 hours to get out of their home were unlawful, Pesnell said, but didn’t bother her much because she planned to leave with her four children as soon as possible anyway.

But when White went to collect her family’s belongings, the constable there to maintain the peace told her she couldn’t leave, and “that the deputies had said to hold her there,” according to White.

White told the Illuminator that 10 deputies came to the scene that night and blocked her car.

“I’m on the phone with Alan, telling him that this man’s telling me I can’t leave, and they yanked my phone out of my hand,” White said.

“I was on the phone with her,” Pesnell said, “and [deputies] snatched that phone right out of her hands.”

Pesnell said the RPSO admitted it did not have a warrant for the phone “and said they didn’t need one.” Sheriff Wood returned a call to Pesnell and confirmed that, saying holding White’s phone “was being done in support of her claim,” the lawyer said.

As White was being held, Pesnell said he called the judge on duty who explained to him she had not seen a warrant for deputies to search or seize White’s phone. Deputies obtained a warrant from a different judge after the incident, according to Pesnell.

“But they had refused to let her leave, which means she was under arrest — for no crime,” he said. “And they’d seized the phone without a warrant. All for evidence they already had, so they were obviously doing something else. It just was an uncomfortable scene.”

Police never did return White’s phone but did return its memory card, which Pesnell said he locked in a safety deposit box.

Hilton did not respond to the Illuminator’s request for an interview. His nephew, Nash, did not respond to a text message, and his phone would not accept voicemail.

“Are those political concerns [about the ex-boyfriend’s family ties] realities? I don’t know, but I don’t know that they’re not either,” Pesnell said.

The experience has changed White, she said, but not for the better.

“I always thought that cops were protectors,” White said, “but now I’m scared of them.”

This was first published by the Louisiana Illuminator.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Frances Madeson – Greg LaRose.

• News

Deadline Approaches for Louisiana’s Governor to Commute Death Row Sentences

Louisiana residents should speak out before Gov. Edwards leaves office in January 2024.

Urgent 09.20.23 By Alicia Maule

Death Row building at the Louisiana State Penitentiary Friday, Sept. 18, 2009 in Angola, La. (AP Photo/Judi Bottoni )

An Exoneree’s Story of Survival at Angola Prison

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The post Deadline Approaches for Louisiana’s Governor to Commute Death Row Sentences appeared first on Innocence Project.

This content originally appeared on Innocence Project and was authored by Alicia Maule.

This article was produced for Verite News by Richard A. Webster, who covered Jefferson Parish as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2021-22. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Markus Lanieux thought his prayers had been answered when, in the summer of 2021, his attorney informed him that she had struck a tentative deal with the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office that would secure his freedom after 12 years in prison.

The 46-year-old son of a sugarcane farmer had been dreaming of this day since he stood in court in stunned silence as the judge sentenced him to life without parole for a crime that ordinarily carried a maximum sentence of two years.

Lanieux, who had been arrested for aggravated flight from an officer, was prosecuted under Louisiana's controversial habitual offender law, sometimes known as a “three strikes and you're out” rule. The statute allows district attorneys to significantly enhance sentences, often by decades, for people with previous felony convictions.

The goal is to protect the public from unrepentant, violent criminals, but critics contend prosecutors have abused the law by targeting Black men. Louisiana’s population is 33% Black, but 79% of those convicted in the state as habitual offenders are Black, according to a report last year from the Public Welfare Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Lanieux, who is Black, didn’t fit the profile of a violent repeat offender. He had been convicted for two drug possession felonies in the late 1990s, for which he received probation. But those, combined with the flight charge, were enough for prosecutors to apply the habitual offender statute.

"I ain’t never thought a two-year sentence would turn into life,” said Lanieux, who sat for 10 Zoom interviews with Verite News and ProPublica over six months from the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel. “They just throw you away for any little thing.”

“They just throw you away for any little thing.”

As Lanieux started to serve his sentence in 2009, the world outside was beginning to change. Swayed by evidence that mass incarceration was costly and failed to improve public safety, Louisiana passed a series of laws in 2017 designed to reform its criminal justice system.

Four years later, the state Legislature approved another reform bill, one that empowers prosecutors to revisit and reduce sentences that are considered excessive by today’s standards. After it passed, an attorney for Lanieux entered into negotiations with the DA’s office to reduce his sentence and allow him, one day, to walk out of prison.

Lanieux thought his nightmare was finally over. The first thing he wanted to do when he got out, he said, was visit the grave of his mother, who died of COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.

Watch video ➜

That’s when Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, who is considered the front-runner in this fall's gubernatorial election, stepped in, filing a legal challenge to the law.

It is seen as part of a growing backlash across the country against prosecutors who have pushed for an end to mass incarceration. Former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Landry, vowed to go after “Marxist” district attorneys who he said have allowed U.S. cities to be turned into “hellholes.” Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis echoed his political rival, boasting in August of his efforts to remove local prosecutors he accused of failing to uphold the law.

Landry, a former police officer and sheriff's deputy and an Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, has blasted the 2017 reforms as a “disaster.”

“We have incompetent mayors, and these woke district attorneys want to play a dangerous game of catch and release with criminals,” Landry said last year. “As governor we are just not going to put up with that.”

Landry’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Landry’s case is now before the Louisiana Supreme Court, with a decision expected in the coming months. Even if he loses, defense attorneys fear that his very public opposition to the law, and the likelihood he will win the governorship, will have a chilling effect on resentencing efforts going forward. Many prosecutors across the state have already dropped discussions with defense attorneys and their clients to reduce excessive sentences while Landry’s case is pending, said attorney Nick Trenticosta, who defended the resentencing law before the Supreme Court.

This includes the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office. Shortly after Landry filed his challenge, the DA abandoned all plea deal negotiations, leaving Lanieux, once again, facing a life behind bars.

Lanieux always loved to drive. His dream, he said, was to one day become a cross-country truck driver.

“To get on the road and go,” he said during a recent video interview from prison.

On the night of Nov. 11, 2008, Lanieux took three hits of ecstasy as he got behind the wheel of his maroon Buick Regal. He was 31 and had spent the majority of his life surrounded by drugs, both using and dealing.

As he cruised through the neighborhoods of Kenner, the largest city in Jefferson Parish, at about 12:30 a.m., he rolled through a stop sign at an intersection in a thinly populated stretch of warehouses that dead-ends at a railroad track. That happened to be where Officer Gregory Smith was positioned. Smith turned on his lights and sirens and pulled up behind the Buick, but Lanieux refused to stop, according to the police report.

Instead, he took off his seat belt and hit the gas.

He weaved through the streets of the residential community, exceeding 95 mph at times as he attempted to lose Smith over the course of the 1.5-mile chase. In his trial testimony, Smith said he became nervous as Lanieux approached an apartment complex where people were known to gather outside late into the night. But Lanieux slowed down as he passed the building, took a right, then hit a dead end.

At that point, he jumped out of the car and tried to escape on foot, but he tripped and Smith arrested him. Lanieux was booked into the Jefferson Parish jail and charged with, among other offenses, aggravated flight from an officer in which human life is endangered, which is a felony and considered a crime of violence in Louisiana. This would prove significant: Given Lanieux’s prior convictions, a crime of violence on his rap sheet allowed prosecutors to secure a life sentence against him as a third-time habitual offender.

Lanieux has repeatedly expressed remorse for his actions that night. “I’m so glad I didn’t hurt nobody running from the police,” he said in one interview earlier this year. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I killed somebody.”

Despite allegations by the district attorney’s office that Lanieux is a violent person, he insisted he is not, a claim his family and friends supported in 10 affidavits provided for the court. They described Lanieux as a kind, quiet person, the glue that held a troubled family together despite his struggles with a significant learning disability.

“He was the one calming us down when we were fighting, telling us to remember that we are a family,” said his sister Cherlyn Lanieux. “Markus took on a lot of responsibility as a young kid.”

When Lanieux was small, the family lived on the former site of the Myrtle Grove Plantation in Plaquemine, a rural town of fewer than 6,000 people just south of Baton Rouge. Their father, Gordon, worked in the sugarcane fields while their mother, Mary, raised the 12 children, six boys and six girls.

Lanieux doesn’t remember much about that period, but his older siblings have painted a dark portrait of their family life.

His brother Marvin said it wasn’t uncommon to come home from school to find the electricity and water shut off and their furniture tossed on the sidewalk for failure to pay rent. Their father, he said, would often spend whatever money he made on alcohol and drugs. And when he was high or drunk, he’d turn mean, Marvin said. Gordon, who has passed away, would discipline the children using extension cords and beat their mother nearly every day, leaving her face battered and bones broken. (Multiple family members and friends shared similar accounts.)

Marvin draws a straight line from the trauma of those early years to the siblings’ struggles with mental health and addiction issues, and subsequent stints in prison.

“A lot of us aren’t doing too good in our heads,” Marvin said from his home on the west bank of the Mississippi River, just across from central New Orleans.

To survive, Marvin, like the other children, learned how to be a “ghost child,” he said, so quiet and unassuming he wouldn’t draw the attention of their father. Eventually, the abuse became so extreme that their mother left, packing up the children and moving to the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.

The peace and stability she long sought, however, never came. One by one, her children were sucked into the streets of their new home. At 12, Markus Lanieux dropped out of school. By 14 he was smoking marijuana, and by 16 he was using and selling cocaine to help support their family.

“I know I was doing wrong selling drugs … but I was trying to make it the best way I know how,” he said. “If I can take that back, man, I’d love to stay in school. But it was hard growing up.”

In September of 1996, Lanieux was arrested for the first time as an adult, at the age of 19. He pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine in New Orleans and was given three years’ probation.

Four months later, he was arrested again on the same charge in Jefferson Parish. This time, the police didn’t find him either in possession of drugs or attempting to sell them, according to a report from the Kenner Police Department. Instead, his cousin was found selling crack out of a trailer rented by Lanieux, who wasn’t home at the time.

But since Lanieux’s name was on the lease, he was charged with possession with intent to distribute 16.2 grams of crack cocaine. Lanieux said he pleaded guilty only because he couldn’t afford bail or a lawyer and wanted to get out of jail. And since he was again given three years’ probation, he thought everything was going to be OK.

Eleven years later, those two charges would set the table for a life sentence.

As Lanieux sat in the Jefferson Parish jail awaiting trial, he called his family to let them know he had been arrested. The family had gotten calls like this from him and his siblings before. He told them not to worry or try to bail him out. All he did was run from the cops, he said. He’d serve a few years and be home before they knew it.

The district attorney’s office, however, had other ideas. Prosecutors intended to use his two prior drug possession convictions as leverage to secure a guilty plea, said Lanieux’s attorney Amy Myers, who took him on as a client in 2021. This was not unusual, as Jefferson Parish was known for its strict and unyielding approach to public safety.

Just a few years prior to Lanieux’s arrest, the district attorney’s office attracted national attention when several of its prosecutors wore ties to court emblazoned with images of nooses and the Grim Reaper, and for putting more people on death row than any other parish. To celebrate each lethal injection, assistant district attorneys handed out “plaques decorated with hypodermic needles,” according to a New York TImes story.

The use of the habitual offender statute has also been common practice in Jefferson Parish. As of 2021, Jefferson Parish represented 9.4% of the state population but accounted for 23% of Louisiana prisoners serving sentences as habitual offenders, second only to New Orleans, according to the Public Welfare Foundation report from last year.

The DA’s case file on Lanieux, which might have provided insight into the office’s thinking and strategy at the time, has been destroyed in accordance with its records retention policy. But the district attorney’s office did provide a statement in which it explained that prosecutors approached Lanieux’s court-appointed trial attorney, Calvin Fleming, with an offer: If his client pleaded guilty, they would try him as a two-time habitual offender and seek between 10 and 15 years. Myers said that offer also came with an implied threat: If he rejected the offer, they could charge him as a third-time offender, which came with a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

Lanieux said he didn’t know any of this at the time.

“I ain’t know nothing about the law,” Lanieux said. “The lawyer wouldn’t really guide me the right way.” (In a motion he later filed seeking to have his sentence vacated, he claimed Fleming failed to effectively communicate the DA’s plea offer during the critical stages of the proceedings, and then allowed it to expire. Lanieux failed to meet a filing deadline for the motion, which was then denied by a district court judge.)

All Lanieux understood, he said, was that the DA wanted him to plead guilty and serve 15 years for a crime that carried a maximum sentence of two. Not only didn’t the proposal make sense, Lanieux said, it was an offer he couldn’t accept. His mother was severely ill, struggling with cancer, among other diseases. He feared if he took the 15 years, she would die before his release. That wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

Unlike the vast majority of defendants who are offered similar deals, Lanieux rejected the DA’s offer and took his chances at trial.

Efforts to contact Fleming by phone and email and through social media were unsuccessful.

At first, the gamble appeared to pay off. A jury found Lanieux guilty, after which the court sentenced him to two years. He was satisfied with the sentence and prepared to serve his time. But that third conviction allowed prosecutors to apply the habitual offender rule, and they immediately announced their intention to do so. Two months into his sentence, Lanieux said, he was taken from his cell at the Lasalle Correctional Center, four hours away in northern Louisiana, and shipped back to the 24th Judicial District Court in Jefferson Parish where he was originally sentenced.

The July 10 hearing took no more than 30 minutes, Lanieux said. His attorney didn’t call any of his family members to speak to his character, the impact of his troubled childhood or his struggles with addiction, which might have persuaded the judge to lessen his sentence.

Before Lanieux could grasp what was happening, the court tossed out the original two-year sentence and gave him life without parole.

The district attorney’s office, in its emailed statement, contradicted the family’s assertion that Lanieux was not violent. In fact, the statement said, it was his “violent criminal history” that factored into its decision to “file a triple bill that resulted in his receiving life in prison.”

The same year Lanieux was arrested for running from the police, he was picked up on an aggravated-battery charge after being accused of beating a man with a baseball bat. Lanieux denied any involvement and described the victim, who has since passed away, as a close friend. The DA did not pursue that case, a decision prosecutors said they made because they had already secured a life sentence against Lanieux.

The other offenses alluded to by the DA included two misdemeanor simple-battery citations in 2000, one of which was dismissed and the other Lanieux pleaded guilty to, and an arrest three years later for aggravated battery and second-degree kidnapping. The alleged victim in each case was Sheletha LeBranch, the mother of Lanieux’s two children.

LeBranch said she doesn’t remember either simple-battery incident. As for the third, in which prosecutors claim Lanieux hit her with a car and then drove off with their child and “a child she had with another man,” she said it never happened, that Lanieux didn’t hit her or attempt to kidnap the children. Further, she told the DA she didn’t want to press charges.

The district attorney didn’t charge Lanieux with kidnapping and eventually dropped the aggravated-battery charge.

In November 2021, LeBranch provided an affidavit to Lanieux’s attorney, which was also given to the DA, in which she described Lanieux as a “good man and a good father. Markus helped everybody. He is the heart of the family.”

When asked in a recent interview if she wants Lanieux released from prison, LeBranch said, “Most definitely.”

Lanieux spent most of the next 13 years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola, where the vast majority of lifers serve their time. He worked in the fields of the old slave plantation, picking tomatoes and okra and shucking corn as guards on horseback watched over him. The first time he was thrown into segregation, he said, was for eating a strawberry without permission.

The Department of Corrections said its records indicate that Lanieux was written up for disciplinary infractions on 10 occasions during his 14 years of incarceration, but none that refer to “eating a strawberry without permission.”

The prison, infamous for its wanton violence, lived up to that reputation, Lanieux said. He said he saw stabbings nearly every week, and drugs, including methamphetamine, were everywhere. All it would take was one look at the wrong guy on the wrong drug, and your life could be over, Lanieux said.

Lanieux said he tried to keep to himself as much as possible, like he and his siblings did as children. Slowly, he recalled, he adapted to the rhythm of life within the facility. The years crawled by until, eventually, time came to a standstill.

But during the first decade of his incarceration, the tough-on-crime approach of the 1980s and ’90s that resulted in his life sentence was falling out of favor.

In 2017, the Louisiana Legislature passed a package of 10 prison reform bills. In part it hoped to rein in costs: Incarcerating a person in Louisiana under the age of 50, for example, costs at least $24,615 per year, according to the Department of Corrections. For people over 50, the annual cost triples.

And in part those reforms were addressing the general consensus that the state’s approach to incarceration was not working. Along with Massachusetts, Louisiana has the highest percentage of people in its prisons serving life without the possibility of parole: 14%, according to a 2021 report by the Sentencing Project. Of those, 73% in Louisiana are Black, compared with the national average of 57%.

Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said at the time that he was signing the bills “because a broken justice system leads to more crime, not less. Today we begin building the system we want rather than continue to settle for the system we have."

If Lanieux had been convicted under the new rules, the most he could be sentenced to is four years, Myers said. None of these reforms, however, were made retroactive. So he continued to languish in prison.

Lanieux’s sister in-law Jeanine Domino was feeling desperate. With nowhere to turn, she wrote to Edwards, pleading with him to grant Lanieux a pardon. She told the governor she was worried about Lanieux’s daughter Markesha and son Markus Jr. growing up without a father, and also about his mother, whose health was declining.

“Even though no one but GOD can determine her life span, my desire is that he is released to spend some quality time with her,” Domino wrote.

It was a futile effort. Under state law, under most circumstances, prisoners sentenced to life have to serve at least 15 years before they can be considered for a reduction of their sentence. Lanieux had only been in prison for 11 years.

Edwards didn’t respond to the letter. About two months later, Lanieux’s mother died from COVID-19. Her death, he said, was the lowest point of his time in prison.

“I still break down from losing my moma,” Lanieux wrote to Myers recently. “I have never thought about sucide before. But it has been tImes when I have ask my father to take me away from the world and all the struggle I have been thru.”

Around the country, though, new reforms have targeted habitual offender statutes — reforms that could help people like Lanieux. California passed the first of these prosecutor-initiated resentencing laws in 2019, followed by Washington, Oregon, Illinois and Minnesota.

According to For the People, an Oakland, California-based criminal justice reform group that has led the charge in promoting these laws, some 800 people across the country have had their sentences reduced since states began adopting them.

In Louisiana, the Innocence Project New Orleans and the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office also proposed a resentencing law for the state. Jee Park, executive director of the Innocence Project New Orleans, said the group worked hand in hand with Steve Wimberly, who at the time headed the DA’s conviction integrity unit. She recalled him saying that mistakes might have been made in some of these old cases by judges, prosecutors or witnesses, and it was up to them to rectify those mistakes when appropriate.

Wimberly, who has since retired, declined to comment on Lanieux’s case or the resentencing law, which lawmakers unanimously passed in May 2021. The reform even had the support of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, a powerful lobbying group that typically pushes back against any legislation seen as soft on crime. It too declined to comment.

Less than a month after the law was enacted, Myers called Wimberly, asking if the district attorney might consider a reduction in Lanieux’s sentence. They met on Aug. 26, 2021, and talked for almost two hours, discussing Lanieux’s troubled upbringing and the fact that when he rejected the plea offer, he hadn’t understood the consequences of a guilty verdict at trial.

Myers also put his continued confinement in stark financial terms.

“If Mr. Lanieux lives to be just 60 years old, releasing him now could save the state more than $393,849.60,” she remembered saying. Lanieux was 44 at the time.

But mostly, she focused on the extreme nature of his sentence given the crimes for which he was convicted.

Myers said she came out of the meeting thinking there was a real possibility that Lanieux’s sentence would be reduced. Over the course of their negotiations, which lasted 10 months, Myers said Wimberly told her Lanieux’s case was at the “top of their list.”

“He thought the outcome was a harsh one and he saw Markus’ life sentence as deserving of reconsideration,” Myers said.

On Jan. 19, 2022, Myers drafted a proposed plea deal and sent it to Wimberly, who said he would take it to DA Paul Connick to discuss the possibility of a new sentence.

“I was absolutely hopeful, and at that time, it didn’t even feel like hope, it felt like a done deal,” she said.

It wasn’t. Lanieux’s deal would soon fall apart due to an eight-page legal filing in a different case in another parish, where Louisiana’s attorney general, preparing to run for governor on a public safety platform, saw an opportunity to push back against the state’s new sentencing reforms.

In October 2021, prosecutors in St. Tammany Parish — about an hour away from the Jefferson Parish courthouse — had worked out an agreement under the resentencing law with William Lee, who was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life for the 2003 death of Audra Bland. At trial, Lee claimed that Bland died from a fall while drunk. By 2022, he had new evidence that could bolster that claim: An analysis of her brain showed evidence that Bland had multiple sclerosis.

St. Tammany prosecutors were ready to give Lee a deal. Warren Montgomery, the district attorney for St. Tammany and Washington parishes, agreed to reduce Lee’s conviction to manslaughter and his life sentence to 35 years. Montgomery cited the new law.

But in March 2022, Landry intervened in the case. In his motion to vacate, Landry claimed the resentencing law encroached on and subverted the clemency powers of the governor.

As a result, Landry contends, the new law is unconstitutional and must be struck down.

And with that, the Jefferson Parish DA dropped negotiations to reduce Lanieux’s sentence, telling Myers that the office wouldn’t take any further action as long as the attorney general’s challenge was pending.

“I think a lot of people would look at this and think he has certainly paid his debt,” said John Maki, director of the Task Force on Long Sentences for the Council on Criminal Justice, a bipartisan working group based in Washington, D.C. “A case like this is precisely what is leading states across the country to rethink these long sentences.”

In an emailed statement, the district attorney’s office said that “no decisions were made” regarding a potential reduction in Lanieux’s sentence and that it would continue to review such requests on a case-by-case basis if Landry’s challenge is rejected.

Emily Maw, chief of the Civil Rights Division with the Orleans Parish District Attorney, said the fate of people such as Lanieux should not be intertwined with the fate of Louisiana’s new resentencing law. For generations, prosecutors throughout Louisiana have revisited and reduced sentences with the knowledge of the victims and approval of the courts. Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams has done so in more than 300 cases by, in part, having the defendant plead to a lesser offense or removing the habitual offender enhancement altogether.

The new law simply formalized an age-old practice, she said, which should continue regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Landry’s challenge to the resentencing law was rejected last year by a district judge, who found that it did not violate the separation of powers. Landry appealed his decision to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in May and is expected to issue a ruling this fall.

There were others serving long sentences also affected by Landry’s challenge. Colin Reingold and Erica Navalance with the Promise of Justice Initiative were also in preliminary negotiations with Wimberly to reduce the sentence of their client, a diagnosed schizophrenic who had been arrested in 2005 for stealing an empty wallet and a watch. The man, Marvin Robinson, was found guilty of simple burglary and sentenced to 11 years. Because he had two priors — armed robbery in 1985 and first-degree robbery in 1996 — he was resentenced as a third-time habitual offender and given life without parole.

“A case like this is precisely what is leading states across the country to rethink these long sentences.”

Like Lanieux, Robinson was represented at trial by Fleming, whom he also accused of providing ineffective assistance of counsel. Lower courts denied the claim, which is now being appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Five years into Robinson’s sentence, his only son died. He was allowed to attend the funeral in handcuffs and shackles. Since Robinson was unable to lift his hands, Navalance said, family members had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

Upon Landry’s challenge, the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office ended discussions to reduce Robinson’s sentence as well, his attorneys said. The DA said those discussions “concluded independent of the AG’s challenge.”

“I've been lulled into this idea that Louisiana is turning the corner on second chances,” said Marcus Kondkar, associate professor and chair of the department of sociology at Loyola University, who has produced extensive studies on those serving life terms. “But I think we may be about to enter a really dark period with the departure of Gov. Edwards from office.”

After the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office dropped negotiations to reduce Lanieux’s sentence in the summer of 2022, his life began to unravel even more.

In September of that same year, his sister Lakeisha died at the age of 39 from unknown causes. Two months later, his brother Reginald, who is serving a 10-year sentence, was placed on suicide watch at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, just a few miles from Plaquemine, where he grew up.

Terrified of losing yet another sibling, Lanieux requested and was granted a transfer from Angola to Hunt. “He’s the baby boy. I’m trying to help him get by,” he said of his brother.

Watch video ➜

Lanieux learned in February that Reginald had attempted to kill himself. Another inmate told him he had “cut himself all up.” It was all too much to take. The death of his mother more than two years earlier, followed by his sister, and now his brother’s attempted suicide, on top of a life sentence that seemed unlikely to change.

In a moment of weakness, Lanieux said, he grabbed for the only escape he could find, ending years of sobriety. A prison guard found him in his cell “rocking back and forth, and falling out of his bed not able to speak,” according to his disciplinary report. When the guards attempted to restrain Lanieux, they said, he kicked and hit them.

Lanieux was sentenced to 90 days in segregation. The conditions he described were harsh. He said he went without a blanket, bath towel or deodorant for weeks. He also said he was only allowed out of his cell for a few minutes a day to take a shower and had access to the phone sporadically. At one point, he said, his toilet clogged and raw sewage filled his cell. The prison staff didn’t give him bleach or anything to clean it up.

Worse, he said, was that the other inmates had figured out how to get out of their handcuffs, increasing the threat of violence.

“I ain’t never thought this place would be like this,” he said in an interview. “If anything happened to me, I want y’all to know.”

The Department of Corrections said there is “nothing in his disciplinary report” that indicates that staff removed blankets, towels or deodorant. It also said the report doesn’t indicate “any issue with plumbing. However, if a toilet malfunctions and overflows, it is immediately cleaned up.”

Throughout the 10 interviews with Verite News and ProPublica, Lanieux was courteous and calm, never raising his voice or becoming outwardly angry when discussing his case. He smiled and laughed often.

There were times, though — such as when he flashed back to that moment in court when the judge announced his life sentence — that despair took over. During these moments, his voice fell to just above a whisper, his speech slowed to a drawl, and he would often trail off before finishing his thought.

“I’ve lost a lot,” he said. “Not being able to see my kids growing up. I missed their whole life.”

After serving 76 days in the prison’s disciplinary wing, including 58 in segregation, Lanieux was placed back into the general population. When he sat for the last interview on Aug. 17, he appeared tired and depressed.

“Something gotta be done,” he said. “Something gotta be done.”

After about an hour, a prison guard knocked on the door to let Lanieux know it was time to go back to his cell.

“Time go by fast,” he said softly. “Time to go.”

He stood up, said thank you, and then the feed went dark.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

“It looks like West Texas,” Strain told Grist, the surprise evident in his voice. 

These dry conditions have helped to ignite a spate of wildfires across the state. In an average year, wildfires burn roughly 8,000 acres in Louisiana; fires in August alone have set alight more than 60,000. The worst of them, the Tiger Island Fire, currently burning near the southwest border with Texas, has taken out 30,000 acres so far, and is being called the largest wildfire that Louisiana has seen in 80 years. Two towns near that fire have been evacuated, and Strain announced a state-wide burn ban as his agency and the state Fire Marshal’s office have struggled to respond to a kind of natural disaster uncommon in the swampy state, one of the country’s wettest. 

The fires follow a summer of record breaking heat and dryness across Louisiana. Shreveport in northwest Louisiana had its second warmest summer on record, New Orleans had its second driest. According to Danielle Manning, a lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service New Orleans/Baton Rouge forecast office, the city of Alexandria in Central Louisiana had its warmest summer on record by a large margin — by nearly two full degrees — and a nearby fire led the police to close roads over the weekend. 

Manning traced the unusually hot and dry conditions to late May, when a system of high pressure air parked over the state and stuck around since. Some places haven’t seen rain since the spring. 

“It’s not unusual to be underneath high pressure [air] at times during the summer but for it to be as persistent as it was this summer is extremely unusual,” Manning said, adding that the frequency of extreme conditions like these are expected to increase in a warming climate. 

The drought, in combination with record breaking heat, has sucked many of Louisiana’s characteristic bayous dry. Stock ponds that farmers have relied on for generations to water their cattle are empty. The detritus left from  hurricanes in recent years have made these conditions even riper for wildfires — fallen timber from Hurricane Laura, Delta, and Ida lay across approximately one million acres of the state, according to Strain. In such conditions, wildfires start easily, Manning said. A single lighting strike or trailer chains dragging along a highway could set one off. 

Officials that Grist spoke to said that they plan to request help from the state to fight future wildfires, in case this summer’s conditions turn out not to be an anomaly. Strain hopes to expand his fire fighting force by 50 personnel and to obtain additional fire-fighting equipment like bulldozers and air tankers. Ashley Rodrigue, a spokesperson in the state Fire Marshal’s office, said that while her agency has never dealt with wildfires of this magnitude before, the experience of working in a disaster prone state has helped to mobilize quickly. 

“You can think of it like football — the game is the same,” Rodrigue said. “But the play calling based on where you’re at in the game is what changes, and in this instance, the play is for wildfires.”

Nonetheless, there have been some challenges.: When a fire department is depleted of energy or equipment, the Fire Marshal’s office is supposed to step in and support them by finding additional resources. One of the things that they’re finding, Roderigue said, is that some fire departments don’t always know what to ask for, because they haven’t dealt with anything of this scale before. 

The National Climate Prediction Center has forecasted a 50 to 60 percent chance that conditions across Louisiana return to normal by mid-September. The Tiger Island Fire doubled in size over the weekend, but in a visit to the town of DeRidder on Tuesday, Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said that recent rain has slowed the blaze. That fire was 50 percent contained as of Tuesday. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Even the bayous of Louisiana are now threatened by wildfires on Aug 31, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

Deep in the wooded hills above Satartia, Mississippi, on an evening after weeks of rain, a patch of soaked ground collapsed.

That was all it took.

With a tremendous roar, the two-foot-wide Delhi pipeline ruptured, blowing a 40-foot crater into the side of a slope. A cool fog drifted downhill from the blast site and rolled across the highway into the tiny town.

Jerry Briggs, fire coordinator for neighboring Warren County, was quickly on the scene. He assumed the pipe was spewing natural gas; such pipelines crisscross the region. But as his team rushed to help the victims, what they saw didn’t make sense.

People were acting like “zombies,” dazed and walking in circles or gazing back blankly as responders yelled for them to evacuate. Others convulsed, drooling, as panic-stricken family members called 911.

In the end, 49 people were hospitalized. Some still have symptoms and struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

It wasn’t until about an hour after the February 2020 explosion that the pipeline operator, Denbury Inc., informed first responders what the pipeline carried: highly compressed carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is nontoxic, but it can be dangerous in dense concentrations. As the plume spread through town, it had displaced oxygen, causing mass asphyxiation.

As the plume spread through town, it had displaced oxygen, causing mass asphyxiation.

Now the specter of the Satartia leak looms large for the 130,000 residents of Ascension Parish, Louisiana, as they brace for a tremendous buildout of similar carbon pipelines. After President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law last year, developers are sprinting for billions of dollars of federal tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS: a process in which industrial plants capture a portion of the carbon dioxide emitted from their smokestacks and then inject it deep underground for storage.

CCS technology has never worked as intended at commercial scale, but that hasn’t slowed the carbon capture boom, particularly in Louisiana, now home to roughly a third of the country’s planned CCS projects. Of those, about a third will be built in Ascension Parish, including what would be the world’s largest. Air Products, a Pennsylvania-based industrial gases and chemical company, is investing $4.5 billion to capture millions of tons of highly compressed carbon dioxide from an ammonia plant in Darrow, Louisiana, pipe it about 35 miles east, and inject it underneath Lake Maurepas.

The project has been met with widespread resistance from Ascension Parish residents and sparked alarm from pipeline safety experts, who say that development has rushed ahead of federal regulations, posing major health risks for front-line communities. And while proponents of CCS have framed the technology as part of the solution to the climate crisis, critics caution that it is a way for corporations to greenwash their image and receive taxpayer funds, all while continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels.

The battle currently playing out in Ascension Parish is a microcosm of issues only set to intensify as an increasing number of legislators embrace carbon capture’s unproven promises.

“We’re already facing devastating climate impacts,” said Jane Patton, a senior campaigner with the Center for International Environmental Law. “What we are facing if we give into the myth and the distraction of carbon capture and storage is more devastation and catastrophe.”

Kaitlyn Joshua, an Ascension Parish, Louisiana, resident and organizer with Earthworks.

Photo: Delaney Nolan

“A Precious Resource”

In an effort to help other first responders prepare for the influx of carbon pipelines, Briggs visited Ascension Parish in April. Kaitlyn Joshua, an Ascension Parish resident whose father-in-law is himself a former Ascension Parish fire chief, had organized a meeting between Briggs and several local fire chiefs. Joshua also organizes for environmental and racial justice with Earthworks, a nonprofit that advocates for clean energy transitions and opposes the Air Products CCS project.

As one of the only fire chiefs in the country with firsthand experience responding to a CO2 pipeline leak, Briggs has critical knowledge absent from most standard safety training.

He anticipated sharing recommendations based on his experience with the Satartia blast, including the purchase of certain equipment, like gas meters that measure CO2.

But shortly before the meeting, Ascension Parish Safety Director James LeBlanc canceled it.

”We don’t use Parish-owned volunteer fire departments for political functions,” LeBlanc wrote in an email to The Intercept. He did not respond to questions about why he categorized the public safety meeting as political.

Briggs was taken aback by local officials’ resistance. “My role is training and education,” he said in a phone interview. “I’m not coming to bash a pipeline. I’m coming to educate your fire department on what we encountered.” He said such public safety sessions between different fire stations are common, and he’s never encountered similar interference.

Jerry Briggs, fire coordinator for Warren County, Mississippi, speaks in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a group of Ascension Parish, Louisiana, residents and organizers who oppose the Air Products project.

Photo: Delaney Nolan

The meeting was eventually held at Joshua’s father-in-law’s restaurant, where just one chief attended. The chief who did attend, Briggs recalled, expressed appreciation for his counsel — his station didn’t own a gas meter that could detect CO2.

Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, expressed alarm that public safety officials would brush off Briggs’s efforts, given the risks and hazards particular to carbon pipelines and their current underregulation.

“That is the opposite of what we should be doing,” Caram stressed. “Those first responders in Satartia, they’re not activists. They are heroes. … That is a precious resource, to have that direct experience.”

Mark Harrell, director of the office of homeland security and emergency preparedness in neighboring Livingston Parish, said their emergency responders are holding off on seeking safety training and preparation until Air Products has finalized the specifics of their plans. His office has been in contact with Air Products, he said, and he plans to ask the company to donate any necessary equipment.

“Once we begin preparing for operations, Air Products will work closely with applicable emergency response agencies to help ensure proper training and implementation,” Air Products spokesperson Arthur George wrote in an email to The Intercept.

Most pipelines run through rural areas, where fire stations receive less funding and are frequently short staffed or all volunteer. It’s not uncommon for budget-strapped stations in rural regions to depend on chemical industry donations to be sufficiently equipped.

Industry and government are tightly intertwined in Ascension Parish, where officials have said the chemical industry comprises “almost half” of the budget. Air Products has been granted tens of millions of dollars in tax exemptions for the Ascension Parish plant, as well as a grant of up to $5 million from the state.

One video from the Ascension Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit primarily funded by public appropriations, purports to highlight the oil and gas industry’s “commitment to sustainability.” It features LeBlanc alongside Ascension Parish Council Chair Chase Melancon, who tells viewers that the chemical industry goes “above and beyond to preserve our paradise.” The video cites a 71 percent reduction in emissions in the state; industrial greenhouse gas emissions have actually increased over the last two decades.

Melancon is himself an employee of OxyChem, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, which is building a CCS hub in Livingston Parish. According to 2022 financial disclosure filings, Melancon received an annual salary of more than $100,000 as a production supervisor at OxyChem’s Ascension Parish plant — at least five times his councilmember salary.

Relying on the chemical industry for accurate information and adequate safety preparations is a risky game, as evidenced by the events of the Satartia leak. A Department of Transportation investigation found that Denbury’s failure to inform first responders about the “nature of the unique safety risks of the CO2 pipeline” hindered the emergency response, leaving first responders to “guess the nature of the risk.”

In a 2021 statement to HuffPost, a Denbury spokesperson wrote, “Denbury has cooperated fully with all federal, state, and local agencies who responded to the incident. The federal agency charged with regulating the pipeline continues its review and investigation of the incident, and Denbury continues to cooperate fully with their efforts.” This April, after concluding the investigation, the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued the second-largest fine in the agency’s history against Denbury, noting that Denbury’s most critical shortcoming was the failure to train, advise, or notify emergency responders.

The Department of Transportation report stressed the need to ensure emergency responders are briefed on best practices in the event another CO2 release occurs — just as Briggs aimed to do.

Briggs stressed that his sole concern was public safety. He isn’t a “treehugger,” he said, nor an environmental activist. “I’m an activist for human life.”

Volunteers use boats to plant marshgrass around the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area to prevent erosion and protect surrounding communities from storm surges. Air Products’ CCS project would entail piping CO2 through the preserve for storage beneath the lake.

Photo: Delaney Nolan

“Tickled to Death”

Public officials have strong financial incentives for bulldozing forward with CCS projects in Louisiana, where chemical companies are investing a staggering $80 billion in pending projects, almost a third of the state’s gross domestic product.

The Air Products CCS project in particular has been met with broad public opposition, and several bills aimed at stopping or slowing CCS projects were introduced in Louisiana’s spring legislative session.

“They said, ‘We’re going to sell the second-largest lake in Louisiana over a Zoom call.’”

During a hearing over one of the bills, a resident pointed out that the one public hearing for the Air Products project was held over Zoom just weeks after 2021’s devastating Hurricane Ida, when many residents were still displaced. Caleb Atwell of the Lake Maurepas Preservation Society testified, “They said, ‘We’re going to sell the second-largest lake in Louisiana over a Zoom call.’”

Some of the bills aimed to simply slow the pace of the project and uncover more public information: One, for example, would’ve required an environmental impact statement before using the Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area to sequester carbon. Another would’ve required that parishes hold a local referendum in order to approve CCS projects.

Industry groups met the opposition with an enormous lobbying campaign. Air Products alone hired 25 lobbyists, paying up to $625,000 for the eight-week legislative session.

None of the bills passed.

In June, the Environmental Protection Agency held hearings regarding Louisiana’s application to take over regulatory authority for carbon injection wells, which would allow the state to approve companies’ CCS permit applications much faster. During the session, Ascension Parish resident Ashley Gaignard expressed concern over one private equity firm’s plans to develop carbon storage in her hometown of Donaldsonville, Louisiana, which is predominantly Black and rural. By using the area as a testing ground for CCS tech, she said, “we’re going back to the sharecropper days” of treating Black communities as disposable.

Ascension Parish sits in the infamous corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as “Cancer Alley,” the largest hotspot of cancer-causing air in the country. The Air Products plant is being built on the site of a former plantation, raising concerns that it will disrupt the graves of enslaved people, whose descendants still live in Ascension Parish.

“Air Products conducted an extensive archaeological survey and historical research,” wrote George, the company spokesperson. “Air Products understands it has a moral duty to investigate and protect key cultural resource sites, and it fully intends to do so.”

Without legal protection, residents have little power to stop projects going up in their own backyard. In 2009, Louisiana quietly ratified model legislation proposed by the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission that allows private land to be seized for CCS infrastructure via eminent domain. A 2023 bill that would’ve revoked this authority failed to pass.

During a May legislative committee meeting, Louisiana state Rep. R. Dewith Carrier said he was “tickled to death” about the influx of CCS projects. “I trust these people. … I believe in Occidental Chemical,” he continued. “I’m sure it’s been studied over and over.”

OxyChem is eyeing his small parish of Allen for a $21.5 million carbon sequestration hub.

Two empty tanks of hydrochloric acid sit covered in weeds on the Air Products site near the Orange Grove Cemetery in Louisiana.

Photo: Delaney Nolan

A Larger Casualty Event?

As CCS projects appear poised to surge across the country, environmental justice advocates allege greenwashing, while experts ring alarm bells over public safety.

Patton, of the Center for International Environmental Law, characterized the development as “a huge onslaught of new projects.”

“Carbon capture is a technology that, while expensive, would allow these companies to continue to pollute,” she said.

Patton added that CCS does not remove other greenhouse gasses, like methane, from emissions, and every CCS effort to date has captured significantly less CO2 than projected. A 2020 legislative audit showed that companies have received hundreds of millions oftaxpayer dollars based on the amount of carbon they have told the IRS they’re sequestering — even when those companies simultaneously report different sequestration amounts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

David Schlissel, a director with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said he is “extremely skeptical about the ability of these projects to capture enough CO2 over the years to make a big dent.”

One study found that projects that produce hydrogen with CCS, like the Air Products venture, emit 20 percent more greenhouse gases than coal.

One study found that projects that produce hydrogen with CCS, like the Air Products venture, emit 20 percent more greenhouse gases than coal.

George said the study’s underlying assumptions were “flawed,” and the new facility will achieve its projected capture rate of 95 percent. This is frequently touted as the capture rate for CCS, but it hasn’t been reliably achieved at scale. Air Products’ previous foray into carbon capture — a demo project built with government funding — achieved an average onsite carbon capture rate of just 36 percent.

Additionally, Caram, of the Pipeline Safety Trust, and other experts warn that development is outpacing federal pipeline regulations, partly because there has been very little CO2 pipeline infrastructure before now.

For example, the steel used in natural gas pipelines is not strong enough to safely transport liquid CO2, posing an increased risk of violent rupture if companies repurpose the pipelines for CCS projects — as at least one company in Ascension Parish plans to do.

“I see the potential with a CO2 pipeline of a larger casualty event that you really don’t see with hydrocarbon pipelines,” Caram said.

At the state level, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources is tasked with establishing safety requirements and approving pipelines. But skeptics point out that the department already fails to keep up with monitoring and plugging thousands of abandoned oil wells across the state and worry they aren’t prepared for this unprecedented buildout.

Air Products is currently conducting tests to determine whether Lake Maurepas is suitable for carbon sequestration; officials from a neighboring parish say this testing has already caused a groundwater well to implode. Earlier this month, Air Products installed a large drilling rig on the lake. If the company proceeds with the permitting process, the project would be the first time carbon is permanently sequestered under a shallow body of water. According to Alex Kolker, a coastal geologist at Louisiana University’s Marine Consortium, the project runs the risk of contaminating aquifers, as sequestered CO2 could leach toxic metals out of the surrounding rocks and into the drinking water.

Those metals could include things like copper, strontium, and “sometimes even radioactive elements like uranium,” explained Kolker. Last month, a study revealed serious issues at two Norway hubs previously touted as success stories for underwater carbon sequestration.

Kolker also worries that natural shifts in the ground could cause Louisiana’s pipelines to rupture, as was the case in Satartia. “We’re still at the very infancy of studying the issue of geohazard risks associated with CCS,” he warned.

Despite these concerns, an oil-backed study from Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative has proposed a 68,000 mile network of CO2 pipelines spidering across the country. The nationwide infrastructure, referenced in the White House’s net-zero strategy plan, would rely on industrial, four-foot-wide pipelines — double the size of the pipe responsible for the Satartia blast.

Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline regulatory adviser who has testified before Congress, voiced grave concerns about these plans.

“Folks, we’re getting ahead of the curve here,” he told The Intercept. “I understand we want to save the world, but, Jesus. Do you have any idea what a rupture force is for something that big? It’d be huge. You’re going to be doing body counts.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Delaney Nolan.

To combat this, Louisiana officials broke ground Thursday on an ambitious, $2.92 billion project to divert sediment from the Mississippi River into the basin, mimicking the natural processes of the river’s flow in an attempt to save the state’s disappearing coast. The initiative is the first step in Louisiana’s $50 billion Coastal Master Plan, funded in part by a lawsuit settlement from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Though many laud the project, some worry it will harm existing wildlife in the basin, while taking a very long time to do its work.

The main event for the mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project will be “punching a hole in the levee” that prevents the Mississippi River from regularly overflowing its banks and changing course, said Bren Haase, the chair of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. The project involves installing a complex gate structure through the Mississippi River’s levee, allowing some water to flow into a channel, which will then empty out over the basin and wash into the sea, carrying mud, silt, and clay with it to create new land. It’ll take five years to build. Over 50 years, the diversion project should add 21 square miles of land to the basin, according to Haase. 

Supporters note the project will help restore a degraded ecosystem to some of its former glory. “There are large areas of open water where the marsh has just eroded and sunk away,” said Natalie Snider, associate vice president for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Resilient Coasts and Watersheds program.

Read Next

‘There’s no alternative’: Louisiana’s ambitious plan to stay above water

Zoya Teirstein

Engineers factored sea-level rise projections of up to two and a half feet into the project’s design. But some scientists warn that sea-level rise is ultimately a wild card. There’s no knowing exactly how much, how or quickly, oceans will go up in the coming decades — and at some point, funding will likely run out for updates. For all the acres gained, they said, many will still be lost over time to the ravages of climate change. 

“It’s mitigation, not restoration,” said Rex Caffey, an associate professor of wetlands and coastal resources at Louisiana State University. “Slowing down the bleed.” 

The project has also been met with outcry from some of the people who make their living from the region’s fisheries. Louisiana has the most biorich fisheries  of any state, and some say the influx of freshwater from the project will decimate saltwater-loving stock in the basin, like oysters and shrimp.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Louisiana breaks ground on experimental project to rebuild lost wetlands on Aug 10, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

For the Dardars, relocating would mean a lot more than simply packing up and moving. “It’s a lot to ask somebody to move whenever you don’t know the whole story about how we live, what we eat, and our connection to the land,” said Theresa Dardar. 

In this original Grist mini-doc, the Dardars are trying to restore and fortify their land. But without adequate support from the state government, they’re now working to rally community members and volunteers to protect Pointe-aux-Chenes against the rising water.

Read Next

As Louisiana’s coast disappears, its historic communities are disappearing too

Jake Bittle

Additional funding for this story was provided by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Erosion and sea-level rise are coming for their Louisiana home. They’re staying anyway. on Jun 1, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Duy Linh Tu.

Demanding an end to fossil fuel financing amid a worsening planetary emergency, climate and environmental justice campaigners on Monday staged coordinated protests in three cities against a trio of the biggest U.S. banks a day ahead of their annual shareholder meetings.

Each of the demonstrations—which targeted the Charlotte, New York, and San Francisco headquarters of Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo, respectively—featured a delegation from Louisiana and Texas communities adversely affected by liquefied natural gas projects financed by the three banks.

In Charlotte, protesters held a "die-in" in memory of people who have perished in famines, fires, and floods linked to climate change. New York activists held an overnight sit-in, while in San Francisco demonstrators blocked the building's entrance and staged a street theater performance.

"Our aim is to disrupt the banks as much as we can today to give them a glimpse of the destruction people are experiencing because of climate change," explained Alice Hu of New York Communities for Change, which organized the Citibank sit-in. "Banks like Citi like to say verbally that they are funding the energy transition but in reality it's business as usual: pumping money into harmful emissions that are linked to extreme weather events."

The three banks' annual shareholder meetings will be held virtually on Tuesday. Shareholder activists plan to introduce several resolutions demanding the banks avoid any future fossil fuel financing.

A report published earlier this month by a coalition of green groups revealed that JPMorgan Chase ($434.2 billion), Citibank ($332.9 billion), Wells Fargo ($318.2 billion), and Bank of America ($281.2 billion) have been the world's biggest fossil fuel financiers since the Paris climate agreement took effect in 2016. Those four banks alone accounted for 28% of all identified fossil fuel financing in 2022, according to the report.

"As people of faith and spirit, we call on banks to stop funding projects that are financially unfeasible and morally wrong," said Rev. Amy Brooks Paradise of GreenFaith, which organized the Charlotte protest.

"Oil pipeline projects displace people, destroy water, Earth, and air, and contribute to planet-wide suffering," she continued. "It's been two years since banks like Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America made claims of wanting to help address the climate crisis. While some banks are making changes with one hand, with the other they continue funding new and expanding current fossil fuel projects, and are still backing oil, gas, and coal developers."

"Quite simply, the world is rapidly running out of time," Brooks Paradise added. "We need our banks to act swiftly and with integrity to stop all funding that fuels climate disasters."

Roishetta Ozane, founder of the environmental justice group Vessel Project of Louisiana, said at the New York protest: "In southwest Louisiana, we feel like we are the dumping ground for harmful methane gas and chemical projects. We have been made into a sacrifice."

"I have six kids and I worry constantly about their futures knowing what is being pumped into the air and knowing how climate change is already affecting our community through flooding," Ozane added. "Bank of America, Citi, and Wells Fargo are funding this crisis and this must stop."

Monday's demonstrations follow last month's protest by Third Act, a group of U.S. elders demanding that banks "stop funding climate chaos."

Across the Atlantic on Monday, The Big One, a major climate protest that featured an Earth Day die-inoutside the U.K. Parliament, wrapped up with a vow by lead organizer Extinction Rebellion to return to mass civil disobedience due to the government's failure to commit to ending the fossil fuel era.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

WVUE Fox8 News photojournalist Steven A. Wolfram told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker he was repeatedly attacked by a man while reporting on shooting deaths in Slidell, Louisiana, on March 29, 2023.

Wolfram said he and WVUE reporter Olivia Vidal were filming outside a home where police had discovered what appeared to be a murder-suicide following a standoff with SWAT officers. Vidal told the Tracker two other news crews were at the scene, and that family members had made it clear they did not want to speak to the press and didn’t want anyone approaching the house. By approximately 8 a.m. the other news crews had left the scene.

Vidal told the Tracker that when preparing for the 9 a.m. live broadcast, she asked Wolfram to keep an eye out, as something felt off. When they completed the report, Wolfram left the station’s camera and live unit set up on a tripod and he and Vidal returned to their vehicle.

“This young man starts marching toward the camera,” Wolfram said. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve been doing it in some of the toughest neighborhoods in New Orleans. I wasn’t expecting it, and I think that was my first mistake.”

Wolfram said he got out of the car and tried to deescalate the situation and explain why they were there, but the man grabbed the tripod, camera and live unit and threw it on the ground. Though Wolfram was able to soften the blow, a piece of the wireless microphone broke.

While he was turned away, the man struck Wolfram in the side of the head.

“My first thought was, ‘I can’t believe that didn’t knock me out,’” Wolfram said. “I was stunned but was able to retreat back to the car. He starts banging on the window. We told him, ‘We’re calling the cops! We’re calling the cops!’”

Vidal said the man came around to the passenger side where she was sitting, attempted to open the door and continued pounding on the glass.

Three individuals pulled the attacker away, providing an opportunity for Wolfram to retrieve the equipment and load it into the vehicle. When Wolfram attempted to photograph the man to show police, the man once again charged the photojournalist.

Wolfram said the man missed making contact and fell, then got up to charge him again. That’s when he grabbed the man by the collar and tried to restrain him on the ground. The other individuals intervened again and separated the man from the photojournalist.

Wolfram said he drove the vehicle around the corner to distance the pair of journalists from the situation while waiting for the police. The man broke away from the group restraining him and ran to a nearby car, Wolfram said, where he reached into the glove box.

“At that point we got the hell out of there,” Wolfram said. “This guy wanted to hurt me if not kill me, and I saw him go run for a weapon.”

Vidal told the Tracker three officers and an ambulance met the journalists in the parking lot of a nearby restaurant. Wolfram sought medical care after speaking with sheriff’s deputies about the incident, and reported minor injuries.

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed that a summons was issued in connection with the incident for simple assault and criminal damage.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

“It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Larry said.

The preliminary draft permit, which the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality issued last week, allows Clean Harbors to continue the open burning and open detonation of materials for at least another eight months. The facility disposes of outdated munitions from several military bases, including the shuttered National Guard training site at Camp Minden, and old fireworks from Disney World.

Larry and her neighbors in the small enclave of mostly Black residents just outside of Colfax known as The Rock have reported a deep slate of medical issues, ranging from asthma and allergies to cancer. Many of their illnesses are on the list of presumptive conditions the Department of Defense provided to veterans exposed to burn pit victims.

Larry’s 15-year-old grandnephew is afflicted with what North Carolina State University researcher  Jennifer Richmond-Bryant told the family is likely chemical-related acne caused by several harsh compounds found in the burn pit waste streams. The boy’s pediatrician couldn’t explain it, Larry said.

Just recently, after her grandson’s teacher noticed he was blinking frequently and staring fixedly, the third grader was evaluated by a neurologist for seizures. Richmond-Bryant told the family both conditions are associated with the neurotoxins and hazardous gasses in the air they breathe, Larry said.

“The people in The Rock are not dumb,” she said. “We do not accept a permit that allows Clean Harbors Colfax to continue to poison our kids. Would you?”

‘The devil is in the details’

Experts in science and environmental law say the contained disposal system Clean Harbors is seeking a permit  to build won’t necessarily reduce the harmful emissions. They have reviewed the draft permit and question whether the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) has the best interests of The Rock’s residents and other Clean Harbor neighbors in mind.

LSU-Shreveport chemistry professor Brian Salvatore has been a longtime vocal opponent of the disposal facility, which has operated for 21 years in Central Louisiana. He told the Illuminator the LDEQ’s cover letter on the draft is not reflective of the permit’s true stance on open burning.

“The devil is in the details,” Salvatore said.

He highlighted multiple excerpts from the permit that say the operation of the proposed closed burn system would be “supplemental” to the continued open burning of some waste streams.

In an email to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional director, Salvatore said the exemptions Clean Harbors is seeking from federal emissions enforcement should instead be requirements from the EPA for the company to use available technology to accomplish the clean destruction of 100% of Clean Harbors Colfax’s hazardous chemical waste stream.

Clean Harbors should not be granted exemptions if it willingly chooses not to invest in such equipment, he added.

Colfax resident Terry Brown, a former state lawmaker, also opposes the permit for expansion. His wife has battled breast cancer, leukemia and thyroid issues. Restrictions in the LDEQ draft permit are, at best, a case of far too little, far too late, he said.

“The technology has been around for 10 years. Why didn’t LDEQ make the company install it seven years ago when they started blowing up the munitions from Camp Minden?” Brown asked.

‘It’s not a huge improvement’

There is a discrepancy over how long open burning will continue at Clean Harbors between the draft permit and the cover letter from LDEQ that accompanies it. Both the letter and the permit say that open burning will end 180 days after Clean Harbors accepts the permit. But unlike the cover letter, the permit says contained burning will be “supplemental” to ongoing open burning, and that open burning will continue until the new contained burn facility is up and running.

The draft permit also doesn’t mention potential exceptions Clean Harbors could seek that would allow burning to continue indefinitely.

LDEQ spokesman Gregory Langley did not respond to the Illuminator’s questions regarding the discrepancies.

As with the Illuminator’s previous reporting on Clean Harbors, there has been no response to calls and messages to the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts about the Colfax facility.

Wilma Subra of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, who has been advising Clean Harbor neighbors on the science of contamination, said the draft permit frightens her.

She said the LDEQ would have ideally placed limits on Clean Harbors’ emissions as it transitions from open burning and open detonation (OB/OD) site to a closed process. But Subra pointed to a passage in the draft permit that states “current emissions and OB/OD configuration will remain effective until start up [of the contained system].”

“I’m scared they’ll keep open burning for a long, long time because of the time it will take the company to order, construct and shake down a contained burn system.”

Subra is also extremely concerned about the proposed emission levels of the closed system.

“A contained burn system is supposed to have very few emissions,” she said. “But when you look at what the difference is, it’s not a huge improvement. And in some cases, it’s higher after than before.”

Half of the limits of LDEQ’s six “criteria pollutants” are higher in the draft permit, including the allowable limit for volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

“Those are the toxic chemical compounds that you would try to avoid being able to be released into the air. The levels don’t seem appropriate for a closed burn system,” Subra said.

Slawo Lomnicki, an associate professor at LSU and lead researcher for its Superfund Center, is an expert in incineration. He told the Illuminator via email the draft permit offers little information on anticipated emissions from the closed system.

“Details of emissions of the new system is dependent on the operation and air pollution control devices used. There is no sufficient detail on that in the permit,” Lomnicki wrote.

Subra is also concerned about the lack of proposed smokestack emissions monitoring.

“It could be pushing out smoke like open burning, and there’s no way of monitoring it as it happens, and there’s no alarm going off that says, ‘You’re out of compliance, do something immediately!’”

Subra wants to know why LDEQ isn’t requiring Clean Harbors to stop accepting hazardous waste in the meantime.

“They’re going to be bringing in tons of waste. The limit is on what they burn, not on what they can receive, and I can see when it’s coming close to time [for the contained burning], they’re going to be taking large quantities of waste in because they know they’ll be able to open burn it,” she said.

‘It’s really bad news for these people’

Larry and other neighbors of Clean Harbors joined the Coalition for a Clean and Healthy Environment after its formation in 2015 to fight the open burning. They have been crying out for legislative or administrative relief since the group’s inception.

Coalition members have two primary measures for assessing the proposed LDEQ permit: How quickly the open burn/open detonation operation can be shut down, and how can Clean Harbors be required to drastically reduce overall toxic emissions.

Five generations of Larry’s family live in The Rock. Several relatives have asthma, allergies, skin damage and hair loss.

“We will not stand for it, and whoever agreed to the permit needs to go back and reevaluate it. [Gov. John Bel] Edwards needs to close them down permanently and move them out of our community.”

Pathologist Dr. Stephen Norman of Alexandria has treated several residents who live near Clean Harbors and attributes many of their pulmonary disorders to the facility.

He expressed disgust at the prospect LDEQ would negotiate a permit with the company that would allow another eight months or more of open burning.

“Sadly, we’ve come to expect this kind of thing in Louisiana, which is at the bottom of every good list and is just not taking care of its citizens – especially the Black citizens. It’s criminal the way the state is giving the company license to do this.”

“If the open burning continues, they won’t get better because this stuff is not dose dependent. Any amount is going to cause damage,” he added. “It’s really bad news for these people.”

Brenda Vallee, founder of the coalition, told the Illuminator its members will review the draft permit closely and submit public comments with the hope of improving it. The end of the comment period is May 1.

Some coalition members say Clean Harbors’ cleanup of environmental damage already caused to Central Louisiana’s water, soil, air and wildlife should be a prerequisite for their continued operations.

Coalition member John Munsen Jr. of Colfax said he submitted complaints to the LDEQ the day before the draft permit was released about heavy smoke from Clean Harbors.

“I asked why they never sent out an inspector after one of our members complained about seeing the black plumes traveling from Clean Harbors Colfax onto her property, which legally they’re supposed to do, and the [LDEQ} lawyer acknowledged they’re supposed to do that,” Munsen said. “And then I asked why they’re dragging their feet when they threaten to penalize the company but never follow through.”

Munsen said the lawyer promised to call him back the following week with an explanation.

Salvatore is calling for even more direct interaction with state regulators and hopes the coalition will soon demand LDEQ hold a press conference where very specific questions can be asked and answered on the spot.

“I am tired of playing cat and mouse with people who have proven to be less than ethical and responsible in the past.”

Langley, the agency spokesman, said the LDEQ “will follow our prescribed process and will not be holding or participating in a press conference regarding the draft permit.”

Larry said after seeing what LDEQ’s best thinking is for her community, the only permit she’s looking for now is a “cease and desist” order.

“Not the ‘70% percent of emissions, 180 days and keep burning until they make a new plant’ permit. We do not accept the permit,” she said. “We do not.”

This first appeared on the Louisiana Illuminator. 

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Frances Madeson.

The Biden administration on Tuesday sued two corporations behind a petrochemical plant in Louisiana, arguing that the facility poses "unacceptably high cancer risks" to the low-income and predominantly Black residents of nearby communities and demanding significant cuts in toxic pollution.

On behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint asserting that carcinogenic chloroprene emissions from Denka Performance Elastomer's neoprene manufacturing activities at the Pontchartrain Works Site in St. John the Baptist Parish "present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare."

Under Section 303 of the Clean Air Act, the DOJ asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana to compel Denka, a Japanese company that purchased the plant from DuPont Specialty Products in 2015, to "immediately reduce its chloroprene emissions to levels that no longer cause or contribute to unacceptably high cancer risks within the communities surrounding the facility."

The White House's lawsuit stems from an emergency action petition that Earthjustice and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law submitted on behalf of Concerned Citizens of St. John, a local advocacy group.

Earthjustice attorney Deena Tumeh welcomed the Biden administration's intervention as "a long-awaited answer to the community's repeated calls for immediate action."

"EPA is finally treating this health crisis for what it is—an emergency," said Tumeh. "We hope this complaint will lead to a swift and significant reduction in chloroprene emissions."

"We are grateful that the EPA is finally taking the first steps to protect this community. For too long, St. John has been failed by every layer of government and we are now facing a dire health emergency and the highest cancer risk from air pollution in the nation as a result."

Denka makes neoprene, a synthetic rubber used to produce wetsuits, orthopedic braces, automotive belts, and other common goods, at the plant. Chloroprene, a chemical used to produce neoprene, is emitted into the air at the facility in LaPlace and travels to other towns in the parish, including Reserve and Edgard. Pontchartrain Works Site is the only place in the U.S. where the compound is emitted.

Average chloroprene concentrations in the air near the facility are up to 14 times higher than the levels recommended for a 70-year lifetime of exposure to the chemical, according to monitoring data cited in the complaint. More than 15,000 people live within two-and-a-half miles of the plant. Fifth Ward Elementary School is located a half-mile west and East St. John High School is about a mile-and-a-half north.

"In the aggregate, the thousands of people breathing this air are incurring a significantly higher cancer risk than would be typically allowed, and they are being exposed to a much greater cancer risk from Denka's air pollution than the majority of United States residents face," says the complaint. The risk "is especially grave for infants and children under the age of 16."

Noting that the DOJ's "environmental justice efforts require ensuring that every community, no matter its demographics, can breathe clean air and drink clean water," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement that "our suit aims to stop Denka's dangerous pollution."

Robert Taylor, director of Concerned Citizens of St. John, said in a statement, "We are grateful that the EPA is finally taking the first steps to protect this community."

"For too long, St. John has been failed by every layer of government and we are now facing a dire health emergency and the highest cancer risk from air pollution in the nation as a result," said Taylor. "EPA must continue to advance environmental justice, as promised."

EPA Administrator Michael Regan reiterated the agency's commitment to doing so, describing Tuesday's move as an escalation in an ongoing fight launched after he spent five days visiting heavily polluted Gulf Coast communities in 2021.

"When I visited Saint John the Baptist Parish during my first Journey to Justice tour, I pledged to the community that EPA would take strong action to protect the health and safety of families from harmful chloroprene pollution from the Denka facility," Regan said in a statement. "This complaint filed against Denka delivers on that promise."

"The company has not moved far enough or fast enough to reduce emissions or ensure the safety of the surrounding community," said Regan. "This action is not the first step we have taken to reduce risks to the people living in St. John the Baptist Parish, and it will not be the last."

As The Associated Pressreported: "The complaint is the latest move by the Biden administration that targets pollution in an 85-mile stretch from New Orleans to Baton Rouge officially known as the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, but more commonly called Cancer Alley. The region contains several hot spots where cancer risks are far above levels deemed acceptable by the EPA. The White House has prioritized environmental enforcement in communities overburdened by long-term pollution."

Last year, EPA concluded that Black residents of St. John the Baptist Parish are disproportionately harmed by toxic air pollution after Concerned Citizens of St. John and the Sierra Club accused the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the Louisiana Department of Health of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to equally protect people of color. EPA is currently pursuing an agreement with the two state agencies, which have denied the allegations.

"This is a positive move in the right direction... This brings us hope. It's been a long time coming. We need action now for our children and want this to be put in place immediately."

Denka, which has lobbied the federal government for years in a bid to undermine peer-reviewed research revealing the cancer-causing properties of chloroprene, claimed Tuesday in a statement that it "is in compliance with its air permits and applicable law."

"EPA is taking an unprecedented step—deviating from its permitting and rulemaking authorities—to allege an 'emergency' based on outdated and erroneous science the agency released over 12 years ago," the Japanese petrochemical firm said.

Tuesday's lawsuit also names DuPont, which built the Pontchartrain Works Site in the 1960s and produced neoprene there for more than 50 years. The U.S.-based petrochemical giant still owns the land beneath the facility. As Denka's landlord, DuPont may need to provide "permission or cooperation to comply with the court's orders," says the complaint.

As The Guardianreported, "DuPont sold the plant to Denka in 2015 in a secretive deal, which The Guardianlater revealed was motivated by concerns from DuPont that it would face heavier regulation after the EPA's decision to classify chloroprene as a likely human carcinogen."

EPA is expected to propose a new rule for chloroprene emissions on March 31, according to Earthjustice, which said the agency has not updated the rule since it determined in 2010 that the compound is a likely carcinogen capable of causing irreversible damage to people's nervous, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and immune systems.

Speaking to The Guardian about Tuesday's lawsuit, Taylor from Concerned Citizens of St. John said: "This will have a tremendous impact on our struggle here. Over the six years we have been fighting this fight we haven't had anything as great as this to happen in terms of getting concrete action on emissions."

"The state government has totally ignored us—marches on the capitol, rallying—they wouldn't even give us an audience," he added. "And for the administration to come in and do this, it just validates our efforts."

The group's president, Mary Hampton, echoed that sentiment.

"This is a positive move in the right direction," Hampton said in a statement. "This brings us hope. It's been a long time coming. We need action now for our children and want this to be put in place immediately."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

This article was produced in partnership with Verite, WWL-TV and The Times-Picayune | The Advocate, which was part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2022. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The state of Louisiana is dropping thousands of lawsuits against homeowners who received grants to elevate their homes after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 but used the money to make repairs instead.

Many of those homeowners said they had been told by representatives of Road Home, the grant program, that they could use the money for repairs, according to an investigation by The Times-Picayune | The Advocate, WWL-TV and ProPublica.

“It’s about damn time,” said attorney Shermin Khan, who represented more than 50 of the 3,500 people who were sued over elevation grants.

Despite what homeowners were told, grant agreements said the money — federal grants that were managed by the state — had to be used to raise homes. Under pressure from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to recoup grants that hadn’t been spent properly, the state sued homeowners, seeking repayment of $103 million.

Many of those sued were older and poor. Several homeowners preemptively declared bankruptcy, according to their attorneys. Others failed to defend themselves in court, so the state placed liens on their properties.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that the lawsuits would be dropped as he joined federal and New Orleans leaders Thursday morning at a community center in the Lower Ninth Ward to mark the official end of the Road Home program, 17 years after it launched. It was the largest housing recovery effort in U.S. history.

Edwards acknowledged that the $30,000 grants were “insufficient in size to actually elevate people’s homes.” At the time, it typically cost at least three times as much to lift a house and put it onto raised footings.

“It’s been a miserable thing for the state of Louisiana to pursue these individuals because we knew the vast majority of them were never going to pay,” Edwards said.

Edwards said about 5,000 people were sued or could have been for being out of compliance with grant rules. That includes grants for repairs as well as for elevation.

Homeowners sued by the state were living a “nightmare,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said, worried they wouldn’t be able to pass their homes on to their children.

“I decided on my watch it was going to be over,” Fudge said. “The federal government is doing something that it has never done before for the people of Louisiana.”

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., said in an interview that the news outlets’ reporting was instrumental as he tried to convince Fudge to find a way to stop the collection efforts.

“A program that was designed to pull people out of the storm should not put them back into the storm,” Carter said. “Unfortunately, Road Home did that to many.”

Dropping the lawsuits will allow people to go on with their lives, he said. “This gives us an opportunity to at least remedy as best we can the mistakes that were made.”

The state will halt collection efforts related to all Road Home grants and drop any liens placed on homes through the litigation. But people who made partial or full payments will not be reimbursed, officials said.

“There’s only so much we can do,” Carter said. “There won’t be an opportunity for a refund if you’ve already paid back.”

The state paused collection efforts in May after the news outlets found that a law firm it hired had accelerated the pace of legal filings. By then the state had collected about $5 million from 425 families.

After an initial delay, the elevation grant program was launched in 2008, when the state sent letters to 40,000 homeowners telling them they could get $30,000 each to raise their houses to reduce flooding in the future. About 32,000 homeowners participated.

Once the state Office of Community Development received an application, it sent the money to homeowners, according to testimony in one of the lawsuits by Jeff Haley. He helped administer the elevation grant program as an official with ICF Emergency Management Services, the contractor Louisiana hired to run Road Home, from 2006 to 2009.

But no one double-checked before the money went out that homeowners were eligible or that their homes needed to be elevated, said Haley, who is now with the state Division of Administration. The state simply “didn’t have time,” he said. There was pressure to “get the funds out into the community as fast as possible.”

The state told the news organizations that it aimed the elevation grants at people whose homes were in flood-prone areas and who had already received another Road Home grant. It was up to homeowners to determine how much they needed to raise their homes, officials said; if they learned they were already at the correct height, they should have returned the money.

But when homeowners informed Road Home representatives, sometimes in writing, that they didn’t plan to elevate their houses, some were verbally told that they could use the money for repairs, according to eight families and eight attorneys representing more than 200 homeowners.

Wallace and Kristy Styron received a $30,000 elevation grant even though their home in southwestern Louisiana’s Cameron Parish was already above the required height. After the state sued them, Wallace Styron testified that he repeatedly told a Road Home representative that he didn’t need to raise his home and even said he had submitted paperwork to prove it. But the person insisted he accept the grant, he said, telling him he could use it for repairs.

A Road Home document outlining the benefits Styron initially qualified for, dated Dec. 2, 2006, said he was not eligible for an elevation grant. Forms for two other homeowners reviewed by the news organizations said the same. Another three homeowners indicated on forms that they didn’t want the elevation money. Yet all those homeowners received grants, and all were subsequently sued for repayment.

After HUD flagged many grants for being spent improperly, the state changed the rules twice between 2013 and 2015 to allow spending on repairs and other expenses. But by then, so much time had passed that many homeowners couldn’t prove how they had used the money.

HUD considered those to be overpayments and would not close out the Road Home program until Louisiana returned the money. Though state officials told the news organizations in 2022 they didn’t want to sue their fellow citizens, they had been paying attorneys to do just that for about five years.

Days after the news outlets published their investigation, local elected officials and housing advocates called on the state to drop the lawsuits. Two weeks later, Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne announced he was ordering a pause to all collection efforts. He said the state had reached a settlement in a related lawsuit against ICF over how it managed Road Home, and that negotiations had begun with HUD to accept money from that settlement instead of homeowners.

ICF did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but spokesperson Lauren Dyke said in May the firm “worked within the policies put in place by the state.”

The state plans to use $12 million from the ICF settlement to pay off its debt to HUD, plus an anticipated $20.5 million appropriation by the state Legislature and $37 million in unused Road Home funds.

Cameron Parish attorney Jennifer Jones said the elevation lawsuits were a nightmare for her clients. She won four lawsuits in which homeowners testified that Road Home representatives told them they could use the grants to fix their homes, only to be sued later for doing so.

The majority of elevation grants were for properties in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color, as were the lawsuits that followed, according to an analysis by the news outlets.

The $30,000 the state sought from her clients “might as well be $1 million,” Jones said. “They just don’t have it.”

Gentilly homeowner Donna Hilliard was ecstatic to hear the judgment the state filed against her for her $30,000 elevation grant would go no further and the lien against her house would be canceled. She said she was intimidated into making two monthly installment payments of $250 by attorneys working for the state, but she decided to stand her ground after sharing her story with the news organizations.

Pat Forbes, executive director of the Louisiana Office of Community Development, which oversaw the Road Home program, said in May he has “no reason to believe” the state’s attorneys threatened anyone or insinuated the state would take their home.

Celeste Matthews, 68, received $30,000 to raise her Gert Town home and was later sued when she failed to do so. The same day she was featured in the news story detailing the lawsuits, the law firm representing the state notified her that it would pursue a default judgment against her, which could result in a lien on her property. Matthews was facing financial ruin.

Upon hearing the news that the state was dropping the lawsuits, Matthews said: “Thank you, Jesus, thank you. I am elated. Now I can relax.”

If you received a Road Home elevation grant and have already repaid the money, we'd like to hear from you. Contact Rich Webster at Verite.

Mark Ballard of The Times-Picayune | The Advocate contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by David Hammer, WWL-TV, and Richard A. Webster, Verite.

This article was produced for Verite by Richard A. Webster, who covered the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2021-22. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Nearly half of Louisiana sheriffs are in violation of a state law regulating the preservation and destruction of public records, according to documents provided by state officials.

The disclosure follows an article this month by Verite, also published by ProPublica, on accusations that the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office illegally destroyed documents in a lawsuit involving an autistic boy who died in custody. It also comes on the heels of increased scrutiny on the outsize power wielded by Louisiana sheriffs.

The new reporting found that the lack of a records retention policy extends far beyond Jefferson Parish. Of the 64 sheriffs statewide, 23 have never secured state approval for their policy, three allowed their policies to expire (one as far back as 1980) and the policies of an additional four are so limited they only address a small fraction of the records in their possession.

State law requires all public agencies to submit a records retention policy for approval to the State Archives, a division of the Secretary of State’s Office.

Further, in the past decade, nearly two-thirds of all Louisiana sheriffs failed to file a request with the state for permission to dispose of public records, as required by the same law. The State Archives, the agency responsible for overseeing and approving the handling of records, keeps disposal requests on file for 10 years.

The lack of governmental oversight of elected sheriffs — despite years of complaints and allegations of civil rights abuses — has made it difficult for alleged victims of police abuse to prove misconduct. It has also led to impunity for bad actors, according to civil rights attorneys, community activists and criminal justice experts.

And the lack of state approval for the disposal of public records means sheriffs offices are not fully accounting for information about alleged deputy misconduct, which can be crucial in investigations and litigation over claims of civil rights violations. These records can include internal affairs investigations into the use of excessive force and in-custody deaths, as well as more mundane documents such as payroll records.

Verite requested the records retention policies and disposal requests filed by every sheriff from the State Archives, the agency responsible for overseeing and approving the handling of records.

Some of the largest sheriff’s offices are among those that didn’t follow the public records law.

The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office under former Sheriff Marlin Gusman never sought approval for a records retention policy during his 17 years in office, according to the State Archives. In addition, Gusman did not obtain permission to destroy records for at least 10 years.

The parish jail overseen by the sheriff has been under a federal consent decree since 2013 following evidence of rampant violence — at the hands of both the guards and of those jailed — and unsafe living conditions. The consent decree is concerned with federal, not state, law and does not require the OPSO to get a state-approved records retention schedule.

As part of the federal consent judgment, Emily Washington and Elizabeth Cumming, attorneys with the MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans, represent the men and women held in the Orleans Justice Center. They said they have been forced to request court assistance in accessing records related to in-custody deaths and uses of force by jail deputies. This highlights the need for records retention policies, Cumming said, not just for public accountability and transparency, but also for ensuring that jails are being operated in accordance with the Constitution.

“Comprehensive and accurate records are critical if patterns and causes of harm are going to be identified and corrected, for example when looking at staff deployment or employee discipline,” Cumming said. “Without a robust practice of record generation, maintenance, review and assessment, our clients will continue to experience preventable violations of their rights.”

Sheriff Susan Hutson, who defeated Gusman in the 2021 election, completed and signed a new records retention policy draft on Jan. 24, which will be submitted to the state for approval. Improving the agency’s handling of public records is a priority, she said.

“One of the things I told our communities is that this is going to be a well-run department, and that includes following the law,” Hutson said. “These are the community’s records. It’s their information. And we should be making sure it’s collected, preserved and available.”

The problems with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office came to light in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the family of a 16-year-old autistic boy who died in January of 2021 while being restrained by JPSO deputies. Attorneys for the family of Eric Parsa accused the sheriff of illegally destroying the disciplinary records of the accused deputies.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Phillips Currault in a November ruling found that JPSO should have known to preserve the disciplinary and training records of deputies involved in the case. However, she denied the family’s request to place sanctions against the sheriff, stating that the family failed to prove JPSO destroyed evidence in “bad faith” or with a “desire to suppress the truth.”

According to its written policy, the sheriff’s office destroys its deputies’ disciplinary records after three years. Yet, as previously reported, it has not secured approval for that policy, nor has it submitted requests to dispose of public records in at least a decade, according to the State Archives.

This month, JPSO attorney Danny Martiny said the office doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joe Lopinto, who did not respond to requests for comment, denied all wrongdoing in court filings.

Attempts to reach Gusman were unsuccessful.

Record retention policies, or schedules, determine how long public records are preserved, and they provide guidelines on how they should be destroyed. Every public agency is required by law to submit one for approval with the State Archives.

State law instructs the secretary of state to notify the head of any agency of the “impending, or threatening unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, or destruction of records … and initiate action through the attorney general for the recovery of such records.”

Destroying, damaging, altering or removing public records “required to be preserved in any public office or by any person or public officer” is punishable by up to a year in prison, a fine of up to $1,000 or both.

State Archivist Catherine Newsome said aside from “ongoing outreach” to agencies throughout the state, there is little more State Archives can do since it is not a “law enforcement or compliance agency.”

Michael Ranatza, executive director of the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association, in an email said that the group’s interpretation of the law allows sheriffs to retain public records for at least three years in the absence of a “more detailed records retention schedule.”

“We believe that Sheriffs utilizing the statutory alternative of a three year minimum retention period in the absence of a more formal retention policy are not acting unlawfully,” Ranatza said.

He did not address why 42 sheriffs do not have any disposal requests on file for at least 10 years.

Guidance from the secretary of state’s office says, “State agencies are required under La. R.S. 44:411 to submit a records retention schedule” to the State Archives for approval.

Asked if every agency is required by law to submit a records retention schedule to the secretary of state for approval, Newsome said, “Yes.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite.

Since his 2004 arrest for the murders of an 89-year-old woman and her 67-year-old daughter in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, Mr. Henry has always maintained his innocence. He was held pre-trial in the Orleans Parish Jail until 2011 when he was tried for capital murder, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. In 2015, new pro bono counsel at the Innocence Project and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison took over the case, beginning a seven-year fight to overturn his conviction — their efforts included a cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, an application and hearing for post-conviction relief, a successful motion for DNA testing on several items of evidence recovered from the crime scene, two trips to the Louisiana Supreme Court, and Mr. Henry’s release on bail. 

“This day is a long time coming for Darrill Henry,” said Vanessa Potkin, Mr. Henry’s Innocence Project attorney and director of special litigation. “For a decade, he lived under the threat of being convicted and potentially executed for a crime he did not commit. He spent another eight years of a life sentence at Angola, one of the harshest prisons in the country. His ordeal began when he was 29, and now as a 47-year-old man, we see what was taken from him, which includes the ability to raise his two children and to properly grieve the death of his mother and other close family members who died while he was wrongfully incarcerated.” 

The State’s case was weak from the start. It rested on the testimony of eyewitnesses who were shown suggestive photo lineups. No other evidence implicated Mr. Henry in the crime and his alibi put him at several businesses, miles away from the scene, where he was applying for jobs. After unsuccessfully appealing Louisiana’s law (which prevented Mr. Henry from calling an expert at his trial to explain to the jury the flaws in the eyewitness identifications) to the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Henry’s team filed a post-conviction petition to have his conviction overturned. A breakthrough came when biological evidence from the crime scene was tested, and the DNA — which had been recovered from under the fingernails of one of the victims — definitively excluded Mr. Henry. 

Based on the new scientific evidence, Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Dennis Waldron, who presided over Mr. Henry’s 2011 trial, overturned his conviction in March 2020. Judge Waldron subsequently ruled that the DNA evidence in Mr. Henry’s case was “clear and convincing evidence that he is indeed factually innocent of the crime for which he was convicted,” adding that “[i]n all the years that I have served and all of the decisions that I’ve made, I’ve never been as confident in a decision.” 

Afterwards, with the expectation that District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office would appeal, Mr. Henry’s legal counsel filed a motion seeking Mr. Henry’s immediate release. Over the district attorney’s opposition, the trial court granted the application and set bail. Working with the Innocence Project, Mr. Henry’s family, and The First 72+ (a nonprofit organization in New Orleans committed to helping people re-enter their communities after imprisonment), Mr. Henry raised sufficient funds to obtain a bond to secure his release. In May 2020, after overcoming appeals attempting to block his release by the district attorney’s office to the state’s highest court, Mr. Henry finally walked out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola prison) and reunited with his family. In the nearly three years since then, he has lived with the uncertainty of a potential second trial, while awaiting the resolution of his case.

Mr. Henry has lost nearly two decades of his life to this wrongful conviction. At the time of his arrest, he was raising an 8-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son, who are now 26 and 24 respectively. 

“I can finally breathe. I knew this would happen, I just didn’t know when. I never doubted it,” said Mr. Henry after his exoneration today. 

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Angel Harris, who has presided over Mr. Henry’s case since taking office in 2021, addressed him in court saying, “From my position, this case …  underscores the downfalls in our system and is something that we need to recognize when we are looking at eyewitness identification … This will be a case that will guide me on my career on the bench…” She went on to acknowledge that wrongful convictions impact so many people and have residual effects for all.

A Highly Suggestive Photo Array 

On June 15, 2004, Durelli Watts was stabbed over a dozen times, and her house was set on fire. As the assailant was leaving, he encountered Ms. Watts’ daughter, Ina Claire Gex, on the front porch and shot her.

Three neighbors across the street, who were inside their homes when they heard the gunshots, saw the assailant fleeing the scene. While their descriptions understandably varied — as they had seen a complete stranger, briefly and mostly from a far distance, and under stressful circumstances — they all consistently reported that the assailant had worn a red shirt. 

Police received Crime Stoppers tips in the weeks following the crime that pointed to numerous individuals. Mr. Henry became a suspect after a man told police that he had seen the assailant run down the street and enter a house where Mr. Henry’s ex-girlfriend had lived. Despite the fact that the neighbors all had seen the assailant run in the opposite direction, police focused on Mr. Henry.

Just over a week after the crime, police showed one of the neighbors a photo array of six photographs, including one of Mr. Henry wearing a red shirt. Three other people in the photo array were also shown wearing similar red or orange t-shirts. The witness did not identify Mr. Henry but told police that another person in the lineup “jumped out” at him. 

Police then showed a second neighbor a different photo array — this time, no one except Mr. Henry was shown wearing a red shirt. The suggestive nature of this photo lineup was compounded when the witness used her hand to cover each individual’s face from the eyes up and explained that she had never seen the assailant’s eyes or hair because he had worn dark sunglasses and a hat. As a result, the main feature visible in the array was the red shirt. Two-and-a-half months after the crime, police showed another neighbor this same suggestive photo array in which Mr. Henry was the only person seen wearing a red shirt. By this time, this photograph of Mr. Henry in the red shirt had been featured on television news identifying him as the main suspect in the crime, which the neighbor had seen. Not surprisingly, they selected Mr Henry from the array.

Six Years Later, A Third Identification 

As Mr. Henry’s case headed to trial, the State’s case was based entirely on the two identifications that police had procured using the patently suggestive photo procedures. Six years later, however, the person who had initially failed to identify Mr. Henry from the non-suggestive photo lineup nine days after the crime was himself arrested. Facing up to 40 years in prison on unrelated charges of child pornography, the witness suddenly recalled that Mr. Henry was the stranger he had seen running from the scene. While there were obvious incentives for this witness to offer false testimony in exchange for leniency in his case, he denied that this was a motivating factor for his testimony at trial. 

Eyewitness misidentification, as in this case, is the leading cause of wrongful convictions and has contributed to approximately 63% of the 241 Innocence Project exonerations and releases. Since the time of Mr. Henry’s trial, Louisiana has revised its Code of Evidence to allow for testimony from eyewitness identification experts. In 2018, Louisiana also passed a new law adopting standards and best practices around eyewitness identification procedures that law enforcement agencies in Louisiana are required to implement, and giving courts the ability to hold the agencies accountable when they fail to follow statutory procedures. Had Louisiana’s current eyewitness identification procedures and laws been in place in 2004, they would likely have prevented Mr. Henry from being wrongly convicted.  

“The State’s case rested on identifications that were the result of highly suggestive procedures that all but guaranteed Mr. Henry would be misidentified as the perpetrator. Even though we have a new understanding of the unreliability of the eyewitness identification evidence used to convict Mr. Henry, the legal system does not automatically correct itself. If it were not for the DNA, Darrill would be spending the rest of his life imprisoned at Angola as an innocent man,” said Ms.Potkin.     

Mr. Henry has been represented by Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project; Jared Miller of the Orleans Parish Public Defender’s Office; and a team of lawyers from Paul, Weiss, that includes partner Michele Hirshman; counsel Aaron Delaney; associates Ariane Rockoff-Kirk, Johan Tatoy, and Jack Day; and former partner Jim Brochin. Letty Di Giulio of the Law Office of Letty S. Di Giulio was Mr. Henry’s Louisiana counsel throughout the post-conviction proceedings.

The post Darrill Henry Exonerated in New Orleans Double Murder Following Decades Long Fight appeared first on Innocence Project.

This content originally appeared on Innocence Project and was authored by jlucivero.

This article was produced for Verite by Richard A. Webster, who covered the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2021-22. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana has been unlawfully destroying its deputies’ disciplinary records for at least 10 years, according to records provided by state officials responsible for overseeing the retention of records by state, parish and local agencies.

The finding comes at a time when the sheriff’s office is facing multiple lawsuits involving allegations of excessive force, racial discrimination and wrongful death at the hands of Jefferson Parish deputies. Attorneys have accused Sheriff Joe Lopinto of failing to discipline deputies and a lack of transparency when it comes to releasing records that might shed light on their history of complaints and disciplinary action.

The illegal destruction of disciplinary records can make it harder to hold deputies accountable in a court of law or track problem officers moving from department to department, said Sam Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

The sheriff’s office was recently the subject of a year-long investigation by ProPublica and WWNO/WRKF, which found that JPSO rarely sustains complaints against its deputies. The sheriff’s office refused to provide the news organizations with copies of unsustained complaints, calling it overly burdensome and an invasion of privacy. The agency said it couldn’t even provide the number of complaints filed, stating such a number “does not exist.”

Like all public agencies, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office is required by law to secure approval from the Louisiana State Archives, a division of the Secretary of State’s Office, before destroying its public records. It also is required to secure approval for policies, or schedules, dictating how long public records are to be retained before they are eligible for disposal.

The sheriff’s office failed to do either, records show. The only JPSO records retention policy on file with the state concerns body-worn and vehicle-mounted cameras. That was approved in November. The sheriff has not sought approval for retention policies concerning any other public record, including disciplinary files, according to the state archives.

As for securing permission to destroy public records, state archivist Catherine Newsome said, “We do not have any disposal requests on file for JPSO.” The state archives maintains records of disposal requests for 10 years.

Newsome said the archives conduct “ongoing outreach” with agencies throughout the state regarding records retention policies, but there is little more they can do.

“We’re not a law enforcement or compliance agency. We don’t have any stick,” Newsome said. “There’s nothing in any of the statutes that say, ‘If an agency doesn’t do this within 30 days, the secretary can fine them $500 or penalize them.’ It is incumbent upon the agencies themselves to comply with these statutes.”

There are more than 4,000 state, parish and local agencies that must comply with state retention records law. The state archives have only four data analysts and a supervisor to handle the workload, making it extremely difficult for them to ensure every agency is following the law, Newsome said.

Destroying, damaging, altering or removing public records “required to be preserved in any public office or by any person or public officer” is punishable by up to a year in prison, a fine of up to $1,000 or both.

JPSO attorney Danny Martiny said the agency could not comment because of pending litigation. The sheriff’s office has denied all wrongdoing in court filings.

The records retention issue was recently raised as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Lopinto and seven deputies, among others, by the family of 16-year-old Eric Parsa in New Orleans federal court. The teenager died in January 2020 after sheriff’s deputies attempted to restrain him outside the Westgate Mall in Metairie. Parsa had a violent meltdown caused by his severe autism, according to the lawsuit. The suit asserted that one of the deputies, who weighed more than 300 pounds, sat on him for at least nine minutes.

The coroner ruled the teen’s death an accident as a result of excited delirium, with “prone positioning” as a contributing factor.

When attorneys for the family deposed Deputy Nick Vega, one of two deputies accused in the lawsuit of sitting on Parsa prior to his death, they asked him about his disciplinary history. Vega referred to several complaints that had not been revealed to the family’s attorneys during discovery, as required by law.

JPSO’s standard operating policy states that disciplinary records will be maintained for three years. After that period has expired, they will be “automatically expunged on a monthly basis from the date of complaint” for internal affairs cases and “citizen complaints and the date of occurrence” for disciplinary reports. The records will not be deleted if litigation has been filed against an employee, or if a court orders certain records to be preserved, according to the policy.

Though the sheriff’s office has an internal policy, the law requires it to submit that policy to the state for approval, which it has not done. And as the plaintiffs later noted in a court filing, automatic expungement — without first seeking state approval — is also against the law.

In October, Andrew Clarke and William Most, attorneys representing the Parsa family, filed a motion seeking court sanctions against the sheriff’s office for the destruction of disciplinary records. Beyond the apparent state law violations, they claim the sheriff’s office also violated a 2020 state court order the family secured mandating that it maintain all records relevant to the case.

“But despite all this, JPSO did not stop the destruction of officer disciplinary records. It was not until nearly a year later — after the January 2021 filing of this lawsuit — that JPSO began preserving disciplinary records,” the attorneys wrote.

The lawsuit claims the sheriff’s negligence in handling public records speaks to a more systemic problem of failing to “properly supervise, discipline or otherwise hold accountable deputies who failed to comply with the law.”

“Their disciplinary history may show a history of excessive restraint or force, or episodes casting doubt on credibility,” the attorneys wrote. “That history is now unavailable because JPSO destroyed it.”

In a response filed with the court, JPSO claimed it was not ordered or obligated to stop destroying disciplinary records prior to the lawsuit being filed in January 2021. Further, the agency said “to ensure that any relevant deputy was not subject to” Internal Affairs complaints, “the Sheriff had an officer review attendance records to confirm that none was absent due to suspension, which he argues proves no significant disciplinary action near or after the incident.”

The sheriff’s office accused the family of filing the motion for “harassment purposes.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Phillips Currault in a November ruling found that JPSO should have known that “evidence regarding the disciplinary and training histories of the officers involved in the incident” leading to Parsa’s death “would be relevant to potential future litigation” and had the “duty to preserve that evidence” by March 2020 at the latest. However, the family failed to prove JPSO destroyed evidence in “bad faith” or with a “desire to suppress the truth.” They also failed to prove that evidence relevant to the case had been lost, she stated in denying the request for sanctions.

Ashonta Wyatt, a leader in Jefferson Parish’s Black community who has pushed for reforms of the sheriff’s office, said the real problem with the agency is that it operates free of oversight.

“Who governs them? Who holds them to account?” Wyatt said of the sheriff’s office. “It’s not like you can go to a mayor, like you can in New Orleans, where the mayor is the governing person for the chief of police. There’s no governing body for them. They operate on an island.”

The New Orleans Police Department’s disciplinary records are “effectively retained forever,” according to NOPD’s Public Affairs Division.

“Our state-approved record retention states ‘active + 10 years,’ defining ‘active’ to be as long as the department exists, meaning these records should be kept until 10 years after NOPD no longer exists,” the division stated in an emailed response. NOPD secured approval from the state for its policy, along with the destruction of any documents.

The Louisiana State Police doesn’t dispose of disciplinary records until one year after the end of someone’s employment, according to a September report by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor entitled “Louisiana State Police: Comparison with Law Enforcement Agencies in Southern States.” The Texas Highway Patrol keeps them for five years after the end of a person’s employment, the Alabama Highway Patrol for six years and the South Carolina Highway Patrol for 15.

Emily Dixon, a coauthor of the auditor’s report, said securing state approval for the preservation and disposal of disciplinary records is vital to public safety given deputies or officers might move from parish to parish.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite.

Instead of enjoying a late Thanksgiving meal with his mother in Georgia, Randal Reid spent nearly a week in jail in November after he was falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana authorities using facial recognition technology.

That's according to Monday reporting by NOLA.com, which caught the attention of Fight for the Future, a digital rights group that has long advocated against law enforcement and private entities using such technology, partly because of its shortcomings and the risk of outcomes like this.

"So much wrong here," Fight for the Future said Tuesday, sharing the story on Twitter. The group highlighted that many cops can use facial recognition systems without publicly disclosing it, and anyone's "life can be upended because of a machine's mistake."

Reid—a 28-year-old Black man misidentified as one of three people who allegedly stole over $10,000 in Chanel and Louis Vuitton purses from a pair of shops via bogus credit card purchases—was pulled over by local police in Georgia's Dekalb County on November 25, while he was driving on Interstate 20 to meet up with his mother, NOLA.com reported.

"They told me I had a warrant out of Jefferson Parish. I said, 'What is Jefferson Parish?,'" Reid recalled. "I have never been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for theft. So not only have I not been to Louisiana, I also don't steal."

Reid wasn't released from the Dekalb County jail until December 1. While behind bars, he worried about losing his job as a transportation analyst and being convicted of felonies that he did not commit.

"Not eating, not sleeping. I'm thinking about these charges. Not doing anything because I don't know what's really going on the whole time," he said. "They didn't even try to make the right ID."

Tommy Calogero, Reid's lawyer, told NOLA.com that Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives "tacitly" admitted the misidentification and rescinded a July warrant. The news outlet noted that court records show a Baton Rouge Police Department detective "adopted JPSO's identification of Reid to secure an arrest warrant" for one of the thefts.

According to the report:

Sheriff Joe Lopinto's office did not respond to several requests for information on Reid's arrest and release, the agency's use of facial recognition, or any safeguards around it. That office also denied a formal request for the July 18 arrest warrant for Reid and copies of policies or purchases related to facial recognition, citing an ongoing investigation.

Baton Rouge police also did not respond to questions about its warrant for Reid's arrest. The warrant, signed by 19th Judicial District Judge Eboni Rose, does not say how Lopinto's office identified Reid.

As Fight for the Future summarized: "Police blindly trusted a facial recognition scan to arrest a man in Georgia. He was wrongly imprisoned for a WEEK. Now (surprise, surprise) the cops are stonewalling the press about their failure."

Experts from the ACLU of Louisana and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) shared concerns with NOLA.com about police use of the technology—which, as research has shown, more frequently misidentifies people of color.

In response to reporting on Reid's experience, the national ACLU on Tuesday stressed the flaws of facial recognition tools and asserted that "law enforcement must drop this dangerous technology—we shouldn't have to worry about being falsely arrested because an algorithm gets it wrong."

The national ACLU has previously called on policymakers to end law enforcement use of facial recognition technology across the United States—including after the January 2020 wrongful arrest of Robert Williams, a Black man in Michigan misidentified as a shoplifting suspect.

"My daughters can't unsee me being handcuffed and put into a police car. But they can see me use this experience to bring some good into the world," Williams wrote in a June 2020 opinion piece. "I keep thinking about how lucky I was to have spent only one night in jail—as traumatizing as it was. Many Black people won't be so lucky. My family and I don't want to live with that fear. I don't want anyone to live with that fear."

Even before Williams' arrest, Fight for the Future and partners groups launched a "Ban Facial Recognition" campaign, which has tracked restrictions and known uses of the technology as well as enabled constituents to pressure lawmakers to ban it. Despite some progress in restricting or banning law enforcement's use of such tools at the local and state levels, the United States still lacks federal law on the topic.

"Like nuclear or biological weapons, facial recognition poses a threat to human society and basic liberty that far outweighs any potential benefits," the campaign's website argues. "Silicon Valley lobbyists are disingenuously calling for light 'regulation' of facial recognition so they can continue to profit by rapidly spreading this surveillance dragnet. They're trying to avoid the real debate: whether technology this dangerous should even exist."

According to the campaign, "Industry-friendly and government-friendly oversight will not fix the dangers inherent in law enforcement's use of facial recognition: We need an all-out ban."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The race was animated by debates over campaign finance and corruption, which climate advocates claim has obstructed Louisiana’s transition to clean energy. Lewis’ supporters hope his win will help the state, which currently ranks 50th in the country for renewable energy production, chart a new path. But the issues at play in the election are not unique to Louisiana. 

“This race and the amount of money that’s pouring into it is contributing to the conversation of, what is the job and role of a public service commissioner?” said Shelby Green, a research fellow at the Energy and Policy Institute, a nonprofit utility watchdog group. “And is it ethical for a commissioner, whose job is to regulate companies, to receive campaign contributions from those companies?”

Lewis ran to unseat Democratic incumbent Lambert Boissiere III, who had served for three six-year terms representing the commission’s only majority-Black district, an area that stretches across 10 parishes between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The race went to a runoff after Boissiere failed to receive the 50 percent share of votes that he needed to win the November primary outright. On Saturday, Lewis beat Boissiere with 59 percent of the vote. With his win, Lewis made history as the first openly LGBTQ politician elected to a state-level office and the first openly LGBTQ Black person elected to any office in state history. The other commission seat up for election this year went to the Republican incumbent; the three remaining seats on the Louisiana Public Service Commission weren’t up for election this year.

Louisiana is one of only 11 states where utility regulators are elected — in the rest of the country they are appointed by the governor or legislature. These figures are tasked with ensuring that electricity and other services provided by utilities are reliable and that their rates are “just and reasonable” — a vague phrase embedded in most state regulatory acts. They do this by approving energy companies’ spending and growth plans, making them key players in determining the speed by which utilities adopt clean energy.

Lewis was backed by a super PAC largely funded by the advocacy arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental nonprofit. He ran on a platform of strengthening the electric grid against storms, transitioning the state to solar and wind power, and fighting the hefty fees energy companies tack onto electric bills. It was a message that many across south Louisiana were eager to hear. 

After Hurricane Ida tore through the region last year, causing widespread flooding and property damage, service providers took weeks to restore power in some areas, and more than 10 heat-related deaths were reported. Months later, residents saw their electric bills spike, as utility giant Entergy applied additional fees that it argued were necessary to repair transmission lines damaged in the storm — and which the Louisiana Public Service Commission approved. 

“That’s the same area that was heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina and still feeling the remnants of that hurricane even today,” said Green. The district has not only been impacted by climate change, she added, “but also from an economic standpoint, they are the ones who lost their wealth the most during that time and are still recovering.”

Rate increases are not the only issue that brought people to the polls. Boissiere has accepted tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Entergy and other utilities, a fact that Lewis used to try to discredit him during his campaign. 

“Tonight, Louisiana has a public service commissioner who’s unafraid to hold Entergy accountable,” Lewis told a crowd of supporters at a pub in Baton Rouge on election night. “I owe this victory to the people of Louisiana and their commitment to a brighter, cleaner, and 100 percent renewable future.”

Environmentalists say Boissiere’s decisions have benefited coal-reliant energy companies at the expense of ratepayers. In 2019, he voted to change a long-standing policy by which homeowners with rooftop solar panels were credited the same amount of electricity that they supplied to the grid. They now only get back a third of the power that their systems generate. 

“It pushes the expansion and development of solar for rooftop residential and commercial to those who can afford it, which is largely people who have a pile of money,” said Logan Burke, the executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a utility-focused Louisiana advocacy group. “It is a major inequity in renewable policy in Louisiana.”

During Boissiere’s tenure, the Louisiana Public Service Commission has supported Entergy’s approach of building small-scale transmission projects and blocking larger regional transmission planning efforts, which advocates say would have improved reliability and helped transport renewable energy. 

Louisiana is one of only a handful of states that has no renewable portfolio standard, a policy that requires utilities to transition to cleaner sources of energy over time. In most states these policies have been enacted by the legislature, but the Louisiana Public Service Commission is endowed with the power to enact one without direction from the state. In 2009 the commission shelved a proposal to develop such a standard in Louisiana, deeming it too costly for utility customers. It was never raised again, despite the plunging cost of renewables: The cost of utility-scale solar power fell by 88 percent between 2010 and 2021, and the cost of onshore wind power fell by 68 percent during that period, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, a trade group. Lewis has said that creating a renewable portfolio standard  for Louisiana will be one of his top priorities after entering office.

Louisiana is far from the only state where utilities have spent big to sway public service commission elections. For example, a 2019 probe found that the largest electric utility in Arizona spent millions of dollars in past elections to install commissioners who were friendly to the company. Lewis aims to end the practice altogether in Louisiana, which could be accomplished either through legislation or a pledge by commissioners. 

Despite the overwhelming support that Lewis received from environmental groups and the constituents of his district, the young politician has his work cut out for him. His success hinges on his ability to convince the other members of the commission to radically transform the way that it regulates utilities in the state. The five-member body has historically leaned against the development of renewables, but with Boissiere out and Republican commissioner Craig Greene signaling an interest in increasing competition in the state’s energy market, the odds may be in Lewis’ favor. That’s why clean energy advocates are hopeful that his win will usher a new era of clean energy in Louisiana. 

“I do think that there is an appetite from some sitting commissioners to make this transition,” Burke said. Over the past year, she has heard commissioners say that they received hundreds of phone calls from frustrated residents whose energy bills have skyrocketed due to the rising cost of natural gas. 

In a Louisiana Public Service Commission meeting last May, Democratic commissioner Foster Campbell blasted his colleagues for dragging their feet on renewable energy. “If we’d have all listened to all this global warming bologna and took it to heart a long time ago, if the companies would have worked together and the people would have worked together rather than splitting it down the middle and making it a political issue, we’d have been a long ways down the road and saved a lot of money,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Louisiana, an electoral upset could mean a breakthrough for renewables on Dec 13, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Pontecorvo.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards recently announced a milestone emissions reduction project. And yet, there is still no plan to mitigate the systemic grid failure that results in avoidable deaths and continues to threaten the lives of Louisianians every year.

Systemic grid failure is a deadly result of political and corporate mismanagement in Louisiana. But now is the time to create a more resilient grid system, starting with voting in new leadership during midterm elections in the state.

The Louisiana Gulf Coast often faces back-to-back catastrophic, life-altering hurricanes. In the aftermath of these storms are frequent and unpredictable rolling blackouts—with little to no assurances or accountability from utility monopolies or political leaders to make changes to the grids. Entergy has already said earlier this year that even a Category 1 hurricane would cause statewide power outages in Louisiana for seven days, and 21 days if there’s a Category 4 storm. And those are conservative predictions.

To be sure, hurricanes and other severe weather events will cause unpreventable power outages to some degree. But state and federal entities that do have the power to transform our electric sector and improve grid reliability still refuse to do so because of their alliance with the fossil fuel industry, especially in oil and gas states like Louisiana and Texas. Major utilities like Entergy or CPS Energy campaign against renewable energy advancements and invest millions of dollars into fossil fuels and politicians backed by polluting industries.

This is systemic grid failure—and we are flooded with examples here in The Gulf South. Political corruption and corporate greed has created deadly energy crises in areas that experience severe natural disasters the most, and thus, more and more frequent blackouts. It’s a deadly cycle that goes beyond having to use flashlights or a camp stove.

I was living in Austin, Texas during Winter Storm Uri last year, one of the most stressful natural disasters of the many I’ve experienced growing up in Southeast Texas. Some reports show that over 700 people in Texas died during Winter Storm Uri, many from a lack of electricity. The evidence, even from ERCOT itself, was overwhelming and clear: natural gas and coal were largely responsible for the grid failure. To make matters worse, most average people’s homes weren’t (and still aren’t) weatherized—meaning outfitted with technology that helps protect people in the event of power outages, like solar panels and/or battery storage and proper insulation. Hundreds of people watched their loved ones die in their homes.

And yet, the Texas grid is nowhere near fixed. Just this past summer, ERCOT urged Texans to conserve energy during a major heat wave because it was once again on the brink of failure. Texas not only continues to reject comprehensive energy reform, the state also continues to prop up the fossil fuel industry and spread disinformation about renewable energy. Again, this is systemic grid failure.

Louisiana’s energy situation is grimly similar to Texas'. Entergy New Orleans and its parent company have vigilantly resisted efforts to improve its infrastructure with renewable energy, which industry experts say is necessary to limit power outages and minimize impacts. The Entergy enterprise also skirts past weatherization programs to protect people in their homes.

Rather, Entergy puts money towards huge polluting power plants. In 2017, Entergy spent $210 million to build a gas-fired power plant in New Orleans (that residents didn’t want), which came online in 2020. They justified building the plant by saying it would help prevent blackouts from major storms.

Yet, a year after the plant came online, Hurricane Ida came through, and the city of New Orleans went dark. Much of Southeast Louisiana’s river parishes—and especially their historically Black and Indigenous communities—were without power for over a month, and continue to live with unreliable electricity. Of the 14 people in New Orleans that died as a result of Hurricane Ida, nine were related to excessive heat and the prolonged power outage.

Once New Orleans “recovered” months after Ida, several lawsuits were filed against Entergy, calling the frequent post-storm blackouts “deadly and avoidable.” And Louisiana is still dealing with unreliable energy and frequent rolling blackouts while ratepayers face exorbitantly high bills (also due to our reliance on natural gas), with the burden disproportionately landing on Black and low-income people.

Most people who die from severe weather events die in their homes, not in commercial buildings. Therefore, energy leaders and city officials should collaborate to create plans that equip people’s homes and residential buildings with battery storage, solar power, and updated insulation standards.

But grid resiliency could change the energy game, and it’s a matter of life or death. Instead of holding on to antiquated coal power plants or using ratepayers’ money to build gas plants, public dollars should go towards electric infrastructure that follows strict resilience standards to mitigate and adapt to severe weather.

Regulators like Entergy, New Orleans Council, Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC), and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who refuse to protect the public from widespread power outages are committing manslaughter on a mass scale.

Their decisions result in the deaths of hundreds of people.

Grid operators, utilities, fossil fuel lobbyists, and the political agencies that prevent grid reform and home weatherization (despite knowing the consequences) must be also held accountable for the traumatic harm and deaths they cause. And one of the most powerful ways to call for accountability is with our vote.

While it’s not a presidential election cycle, election season is here and new legislative sessions are just around the corner in 2023. There are 2 of the 5 seats up for election this November for LSPC. Commissioners serve 6-year terms, with 3-term limits. That can add up to 18 years, making these positions very powerful.

State and local public agencies control our energy future. For example, the LPSC can reduce energy burdens, create an equitable and robust renewable energy portfolio, fix transmission issues, and improve energy efficiency.

Renewable energy helps when disaster strikes in areas like Louisiana, Texas, and Puerto Rico. The time is now to wean off fossil fuels and reduce transmission congestion in our grid, making room for the renewable sources that can prevent energy blackouts and save lives. 

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Courtney Naquin.

Frontline leaders in Louisiana and environmental advocates cautiously celebrated Friday after gas developer Tellurian revealed that major deals with Shell and Vitol have fallen apart, a big blow to an export terminal project.

"Our priorities are backwards; we should be putting people first, not big polluters."

"While the fight is not over, this is hopeful news," declared Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project and Southwest Louisiana organizing director with Healthy Gulf.

Ozane and other campaigners hope the canceled contracts are a step toward stopping the development of the Driftwood liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and export terminal on the west bank of the Calcasieu River.

Tellurian said in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it "received a notice of termination from Shell" regarding a pair of sale and purchase agreements and also "delivered a notice of termination to Vitol" for another 2021 deal.

In other words, the LNG developer has "lost two of its biggest potential customers," and, as a result, "Tellurian's shares, halted multiple times after the disclosure on Friday, were last down about 20%," Reuters reports. "The company announced the canceled deals a few days after withdrawing a $1 billion high-yield bond sale that would have funded the initial construction."

Tellurian noted in a statement Friday that it "has updated its Driftwood LNG financing strategy to prioritize securing equity partners." Highlighting sales last quarter and future expectations, president and CEO Octávio Simões said the company has "made good progress on our construction plan" for the new terminal "and will continue funding that with our cash and operating cash flow."

Meanwhile, activists urged action from elected officials and investors alike to kill the project.

"It has been clear from the beginning that Tellurian's Driftwood project is a bad investment," said Sierra Club's Adèle Shraiman, asserting that the company "has led investors on a roller coaster of reckless gambles and abrupt changes for years, burning through hundreds of millions in investor cash and yielding abysmal results."

"Their newest offering promised massive risk and very little stability for investors, so it's not surprising that investors have backed away from this deal," she added. "Driftwood LNG also faces several legal challenges and community opposition, so its financial future is tenuous at best. Banks and investors would be wise to reconsider support for other reckless LNG expansion projects."

Ozane similarly argued that "from tax breaks to pollution and now to these recent financial downswings, we have all the evidence we need to understand that Driftwood will be a parasite on Southwest Louisiana. It's time that our public officials and the banks that support this awful project finally pull the plug on Driftwood."

Noting that some local residents of the already heavily industrialized area are still dealing with the destruction of hurricanes from the past few years, the campaigner said that "our priorities are backwards; we should be putting people first, not big polluters."

James Hiatt of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade also called for focusing on the needs of locals rather than pouring money into "destructive and dangerous" projects in communities "still recovering from record-breaking natural disasters caused by our collective dependence on fossil fuels."

"Our food and electricity bills soar while gas companies make record profits," Hiatt said. "Damaging our coasts and livelihoods for the profits of the few is a fool's errand."

Southwest Louisiana resident Natalie McLendon agreed and expressed relief that the Driftwood development may not happen.

"We don't need more LNG export terminals," she said. "I just want people to be able to enjoy the land and water without the blight of industry, and all the pollution they impose on our communities."

Speculation over the terminal's future comes as scientists continue to stress that for the sake of ensuring a habitable planet, human health, biodiversity, and the global economy, the world must swiftly transition away from fossil fuels.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The Taiwan-based chemical giant first announced its plans to build the $9.4 billion petrochemical complex on a sprawling 2,400-acre site in St. James Parish in April 2018. If approved, the so-called “Sunshine Project” would have been one of the largest and most expensive industrial projects in the state’s history. Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, celebrated it as a boon for economic development that would bring 1,200 new jobs to the region. 

But the project encountered swift opposition from the local community. 

St. James is perched on a bend of the lower Mississippi River in a region known as “Cancer Alley” for its concentration of plants that spew cancer-causing chemicals. Numerous large industrial facilities already operate in the parish. A ProPublica investigation in 2019 found that the air around Formosa’s proposed site already contained more cancer-causing pollution than 99.6 percent of industrialized areas of the country. If the complex was to be built, the analysis estimated, the level of cancer-causing industrial pollution in some parts of the parish could more than triple. 

“Formosa was wrong to even want to come in here and poison us because we’re already being poisoned,” Sharon Lavigne, a lifelong parish resident, told Grist. After Formosa selected her hometown for its new chemical complex, Lavigne founded Rise St. James, a faith-based grassroots organization with the explicit goal of stopping Formosa’s plans. 

That’s when the company’s legal struggles began. In 2019, on behalf of Rise St. James, the environmental watchdog Earthjustice sued the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for its decision to grant Formosa its permits to emit air pollution. Around the same time, another environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, filed suit against the Army Corps of Engineers for issuing the company its Clean Water Act permits. The federal agency voluntarily suspended the water permits last year and required its staff to develop a full environmental impact statement, citing environmental justice concerns. That review has yet to be released. 

In her ruling, Judge Trudy White called the state agency’s environmental justice analysis “arbitrary and capricious” and said that it “does not comply with the agency’s public trustee duties.”  

Despite the judge’s ruling, Formosa reportedly said on Thursday that it still intends to build its complex in St. James. 

But without air or water permits, the company will have to “go back to the drawing board” and rework its permits from scratch, said Corinne Van Dalen, a senior attorney at Earthjustice.

The district court’s ruling comes on the heels of another major victory for the residents of St. James. Last week, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality announced that it was withdrawing the permit application for South Louisiana Methanol’s proposed chemical complex. The project site was located between two historic Black neighborhoods, including Freetown, a community founded by formerly enslaved people.

“These developments mark a new day for the residents of St. James,” Van Dalen told Grist. “This predominantly Black area was once seen as ground zero for new petrochemical developments. And the residents galvanized this enormous campaign and they fought and they fought and they’re winning. Goliath is wobbling. And now they get to have a new St. James.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Goliath is wobbling’: Louisiana court strikes blow to Formosa’s giant plastics plant on Sep 16, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

A Louisiana woman denied an abortion despite carrying a fetus with a fatally flawed skull revealed Wednesday that she traveled nearly 2,500 miles round trip to New York City in order to undergo the procedure.

"Basically, they said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby."

Nancy Davis, 36, told The Guardian that she traveled from her hometown of Baton Rouge to a Manhattan clinic, where she terminated her wanted pregnancy on September 1.

That's because Louisiana is one of more than a dozen states with so-called "trigger laws" immediately banning abortions that went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and half a century of federally guaranteed reproductive freedom in June.

"I felt like we made the best decision for our baby as well as ourselves," Davis said during a Monday appearance on "Dr. Phil."

"It's still taken an emotional toll on me. I have problems sleeping at night, I have problems eating; it's been very emotionally draining," she added. "It was extremely traumatizing, it was mentally draining in all aspects, it was physically draining."

When she was about 10 weeks pregnant in late July, Davis underwent an ultrasound at Woman's Hospital in Baton Rouge that showed her fetus was missing the top of its skull—a fatal condition called acrania. Babies with the rare condition usually die within days—and sometimes minutes—of birth.

While Louisiana's abortion ban has a broad exception for fetuses that would die outside the womb, acrania is not included on the state's list of medical conditions that qualify for such an exception.

Staff at Woman's Hospital, therefore, refused to perform an abortion on Davis, apparently worried about potential prosecution, imprisonment, fines, and forfeiture of their professional licenses if they did.

"Basically, they said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby," Davis said at an August 26 press conference. "I want you to imagine what it's been like to continue this pregnancy for another six weeks after this diagnosis. This is not fair to me and it should not happen to any other woman."

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Davis, said during the press conference that Louisiana's law was causing his client to suffer "unspeakable pain, emotional damage, and physical risk."

He added that the Republicans who implemented the state's ban "replaced care with confusion, privacy with politics, and options with ideology."

In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 14 states have fully banned abortion or implemented six-week bans as of September 9, with a near-total ban looming in West Virginia.

Of those states, pregnant people in Louisiana seeking abortions must travel an average of 1,332 miles round trip for the medical procedure—the longest such trip in the nation, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

National medical groups have warned of the "irreparable harm" such laws will cause, while experts argue that poor and Black patients are disproportionately affected by such bans.

"Even in very obvious cases, cases the anti-abortion movement insists they don't oppose, these bans result in women being denied access to abortion," Joshua Stein, a postdoctoral student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., tweeted.

"That includes the case of the unnamed 10-year-old girl who was raped, unable to get an abortion in Ohio because of the state's laws, traveling to Indiana," he continued. "The state [attorney general] insisted the law didn't prohibit such cases, but the possible providers weren't sure and didn't want to risk liability."

"It also includes the many, many cases where doctors are forced to adopt the 'expectant management' (wait-and-see) approach even when abortion would be the greatest reduction of risk to the patient's safety, as in the Elise Taft case," Stein added, referring to a Wisconsin woman who suffered a miscarriage and subsequently required emergency lifesaving surgery that experts say will be denied to people in states with strict bans.

"The implementation of these bans means that people are seeing the real consequences, either when people they know try to access services or when brave women come forward to make their experiences public," said Stein.

"The GOP wants to change the topic away from that; the anti-abortion [movement] wants to change the topic away from that," he added. "They want to distract from the real, serious, and obvious consequences of their policies (consequences actual experts knew about for years). They shouldn't be allowed to."

Belying conservative claims that the abortion issue should be left up to the states to decide, influential Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Tuesday introduced what reproductive rights defenders have long warned is the GOP endgame: a national abortion ban.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The post End-Times: a Visit to Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Stephen F. Eisenman.

Reproductive rights groups in Louisiana filed suit Monday in an effort to block trigger-ban laws that took effect in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority struck down Roe v. Wade last week, ending constitutional protections for abortion care.

Filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) on behalf of Hope Medical Group for Women, Hope's administrator Kathaleen Pittman, and Medical Students for Choice, the lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of the trigger laws, which banned abortion in Louisiana immediately after the high court handed down its ruling on Friday.

"A public health emergency is about to engulf the nation."

All three of Louisiana's remaining abortion clinics, including Hope Medical Group, were forced to stop performing the procedure following the Supreme Court's unpopular decision. Abortion is now illegal in Louisiana except when it is deemed necessary to save the life of the pregnant person.

"A public health emergency is about to engulf the nation," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "As expected, Louisiana and many other states wasted no time enacting bans and eliminating abortion entirely. People who need an abortion right now are in a state of panic."

"We will be fighting to restore access in Louisiana and other states for as long as we can," Northup added. "Every day that a clinic is open and providing abortion services can make a difference in a person's life."

Louisiana is one of 13 states that had trigger bans in place in preparation for the end of Roe. "Louisiana women would have to travel as far as New Mexico or Illinois to have an abortion" under the newly enacted laws, noted the local Daily Advertiser.

The CRR lawsuit contends that Louisiana's trigger laws must be struck down because they are "unconstitutionally vague."

"Seeking reproductive care is already difficult in the U.S., and especially in Louisiana," Pittman of Hope Medical Group said in a statement Monday. "Now, as state governments are trying to ban abortion throughout the country, including in Louisiana, my heart is with our patients whose entire lives and future may change based on the next few days."

"We are committed to this monumental legal challenge—not to perpetuate an endless political battle, but to ensure our patients' wellbeing and so that they may draw strength from our dedication to this fight," said Pittman.

Louisiana is just one of several trigger-ban states hit with lawsuits from reproductive rights groups in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to end Roe, which sparked nationwide outrage and mass protests.

In Utah, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU sued the state government over its abortion ban. If left in place, the lawsuit warns, the ban "will be catastrophic for Utahns."

The Kentucky branch of the ACLU has also signaled its intent to take legal action against the state government for outlawing abortion.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Now, some 118,000 cubic feet of water spill through the mile-long channel every second — five times the discharge of New York’s Hudson River. It’s enough to throw off ships trying to navigate downstream, so the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the country’s waterways, is planning to close the errant channel next month. But that, in turn, raises another problem: Sediment carried along in the river water appears to be building tiny lumps of land just off the state’s rapidly disappearing coast along the Gulf of Mexico, leading state officials to view the breach as an opportunity to harness the river’s ability to restore lost wetlands. And they are lobbying to keep the sediment flowing.

Starved of sediment, Louisiana has been slipping away, hastened by sinking land and rising seas. Wetlands are crucial for shielding the coast. They absorb the flood waters brought by powerful, climate change-fueled storms and are home to a diverse array of fish and creatures like alligators and herons. “The more wetlands we have between our communities and the Gulf of Mexico, between our communities and a hurricane that’s approaching our coast, the better off we are,” said Bren Haase, executive director of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. 

The dilemma at Neptune Pass underscores the challenges of wrangling the country’s mightiest river and all the industries and people that rely on it. “It’s one of the biggest events on the river to happen in recent decades,” said Alex Kolker, a coastal scientist at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium who recently published a report on the channel. In 2016, the pass was 150 feet across; it’s since grown to 850 feet. Near its mouth, the channel courses so fast, leaping over the eroded bank, that it’s formed whitewater. “Rarely around the country are other people working with volumes of water this large,” he said.

Last year, with the pandemic keeping him at home, Kolker had “more time to geek out on the internet,” and he often spent it poring over satellite images of the Mississippi River. He honed in on one southern stretch where fissures had formed in the levee — the banks built on either side of the river — allowing water to break away and pour into the nearby bay. Kolker noticed one crevasse had quickly evolved, widening and straightening out. It seemed to be ejecting sediment into the Breton Sound, the inlet between the coast and the Gulf of Mexico, where none had been before. 

Such behavior was once typical for the Mississippi, one of the main ways the river built up land, depositing sediment as it wandered across the floodplain. But the Army Corps’ 140-year-old system of levees — installed for flood control and navigation — prevents crevasses, with the exception of those that form south of Bohemia, Louisiana, on the river’s east bank, where there are no towns and the levees aren’t meticulously maintained. According to Kolker, the last 15 years of high water, fueled by heavy rainfall, could have stressed the old rock levees that line the river, leading to the formation of Neptune Pass. 

The Army Corps had also been monitoring the crevasse over the last year, ready to intervene once it began to obstruct navigation. The Mississippi River is one of the country’s major arteries of industry, where ships nearly as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall sail up and down its southern stretches, many of them shuttling fossil fuels, the production of which has played an outsize role in endangering Louisiana’s coast. Trouble started brewing last month, according to Ricky Boyett, a spokesperson for the Corps. Neptune Pass had captured enough water to actually slow the Mississippi River downstream. As a result, sediment was falling out of the current and, bit by bit, rising into shoals that had never existed on that stretch of the river. “That was an indication that we’re gonna start getting major impacts,” Boyett said. 

In mid-May, the Corps sent a dredge to remove the piled-up sediment. They also began hatching plans to seal the crevasse and restore the lower Mississippi’s rapid flow, which usually jets sediment straight to sea. Starting in July, the Corps will lay down a blanket of rock where the bank has washed out. But the Corps does recognize the importance of sediment’s ability to travel and build land, Boyett said. So they’re considering a barricade, farther into Neptune Pass, with a narrow opening that would allow small boats — which have been taking the shortcut into Quarantine Bay for months now — water, and sediment to keep sailing through.

The Corps and the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority recently met to discuss the construction plans. Haase said the Corps was receptive when he recommended viewing Neptune Pass “as an opportunity — not necessarily just a problem for one facet of why we manage the river.” Signs of land-forming are already evident in satellite images: tear-shaped islands called mouth bars. Uninterrupted, they could grow into a fan-shaped blob of land over the next century or so, similar to those on either side of the small fishing town of Venice, a few miles down river. 

Boyett said the Corps’ priority is maintaining navigation and commercial traffic. “But if we can do it and get benefits on the other side too, why not?” he asked. 

As the Corps finalizes its plans to close the crevasse, the Mississippi River may have yet another trick up its sleeve. In early June, a few weeks after his first survey, Kolker returned to map the bottom of Neptune Pass with sonar. He was stunned to discover massive underwater holes, one of them at least 100 feet deep and 650 feet wide. Even if the Corps’ new gate allows water and sediment to stream through, the closure would likely slow the current. Kolker wondered if the current would be strong enough to flush sediment into the bay, or if that precious sand and grit would simply fall into the depths of Neptune Pass. More modeling is needed, he said, before scientists can predict the river’s next move. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the Louisiana coast disappears, the Mississippi River’s newest channel is building much-needed land on Jun 17, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lina Tran.

Louisiana Republicans on Wednesday advanced legislation that criminalizes abortion as homicide, allowing for the prosecution of both the pregnant person and those who assist them.

Introduced in March by Rep. Danny McCormick (R-Oil City), House Bill 813 advanced out of committee in a 7-2 vote Wednesday, just days after a leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion revealed the court's right-wing majority is on the cusp of striking down Roe v. Wade. 

Amid a nationwide wave that includes hundreds of state-level attacks on reproductive rights, HB 813 now heads to the full House in Louisiana.

McCormick's measure, which would give personhood to a fertilized egg, states that its provision should be enforced "without regard to the opinions and judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States in Roe" or that decision's "judicial progeny, past and future." It would additionally make any state judge who fails to enforce any of the provisions subject to impeachment or removal. It could also criminalize patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF).

"This is a bill to immediately end abortion in the state of Louisiana. No compromises, no more waiting," said Baptist Pastor Brian Gunter, whom McCormick said helped author the bill.

In a Twitter thread sharing reporting on the proposal, Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern drew attention to HB 813's criminalization of pregnant people.

"Republicans told us for years that they would never punish women who get abortions," wrote Stern. "Now that Roe's about to fall, they're racing to authorize the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of abortion patients for murder."

"When abortion is outlawed," he added, "every uterus becomes a potential crime scene."

Louisiana is among the states with a so-called trigger law that would ban abortions should Roe fall, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

McCormick, for his part, is also the owner of M & M Oil Company and whose other legislative acts this year have included fighting against incentives for wind and solar projects and proposing justification for shooting of protesters in some instances.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Andrea Germanos.

However, the solution proposed by House Bill 568, sponsored by Rep. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, which has cleared the House, does address or rectify the root of the problem.

Adam Pertman, adoptive father, former Exec. Dir. Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, president of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, and author of Adoption Nation put it very simply:

The money’s the problem. Anytime you put dollar signs and human beings in the same sentence, you have a recipe for disaster..

The bill contains an exception for expectant moms who, in good faith, decide not to proceed with the adoption in favor of parenting the child. However, Rep. Joe Marino, I-Gretna has expressed the very valid concern that the exception would not prevent a birth mother from being arrested or threatened with arrest if she changes her mind after receiving payments from a prospective family.

How do you eliminate the possibility of scams and prevent such arrests? First, medical and housing and food expenses for expectant mothers planning to place their children for adoption can and should be covered by Medicaid and WIC and other state and local programs for those in need. Any additional expenses should be paid by a non-reimbursable state pool set up for this purpose.

A non-reimbursable state pool would be paid into by a fee tacked onto every adoption in the state thus eliminating direct payments from prospective adopters to expectant mothers which open the door for corruption and coercion.

Delegitimize all direct payments

Payments made from those wanting to adopt to those considering it create feelings of indebtedness and undue obligation for pregnant women considering adoption and also create feelings of entitlement and false expectations for those hoping to adopt.

Madelyn Freundlich, MSW, MPH, JD, LL.M, author and independent child welfare consultant in New York City, echoes Pertman’s concern and speaks more directly to the issue at hand, asking:

To what extent do prospective adoptive parents’ expenditures to cover a birth mother’s medical . . . or other living expenses create a sense of indebtedness that may affect her decision-making? . . . Does a birth mother ultimately ‘owe’ it to the prospective adoptive parents to follow through on an adoption because a good deal of money has been expended?

Money passing directly between the adult parties to adoption often comes with overt or covert messages of repayment.  Mothers considering adoption placement are already under a great deal of stress and likely are indigent. The belief or fear that they would have to repay such expenses can negatively impact their ability to freely reach an informed decision.

Adoption is not baby buying or paid surrogacy. We like to believe that adoption is altruistic and in the best interest of children. We must maintain this value with ethical practices and the best way to do that – and prevent scams – is get the money out, particularly by eliminating direct payments that commodify infants.

For more, see: “Ensuring Ethical Practice _in Child Adoption: A Guide for Legislators, Practitioners and Consumers of Adoption Services“.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mirah Riben.

Brandon Moore knew something was off at Louisiana’s Raymond Laborde Correctional Center when he woke up to prison guards slamming windows shut in the middle of the night. By morning, a funny smell permeated the air and black smoke was pouring from a tire recycling facility next door. “It looked like the world was coming to an end,” recalled 35-year-old Sean Watts, who is also incarcerated at Laborde.

Over the past 20 years, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality repeatedly issued compliance orders and documented environmental violations at the Cottonport Monofill tire processor and landfill, located next to the prison. The company never cleaned up its mess and declared bankruptcy seven years ago. On January 16, towering piles of tires and tire scraps caught fire, and they wouldn’t stop burning for 11 days.

“Very high levels of PM2.5 like this are definitely known to trigger asthma events and cause difficulty breathing.”

Satellite view of Louisiana’s Raymond Laborde Correctional Center and Cottonport Monofill tire processor and landfill, which is located right next to the correctional center.

Screenshot: Google Map

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Alleen Brown.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: All Incidents and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: All Incidents.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: All Incidents and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: All Incidents.

Princella Talley is a public voices fellow of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and an outreach coordinator and development associate with Citizens’ Climate Education.

I live in the great state of Louisiana. It’s a state where you’ll most frequently hear two things from tourists and residents: The food is good, and the weather can make you feel as hot as the boil we dump our crawfish in.

This week, the double whammy of storms Marco and Laura have placed Louisiana in a state of emergency just as we come upon the 15-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That storm destroyed more than 800,000 homes and killed some 1,800 people, leaving thousands of New Orleans and South Louisiana residents with no place to call home, labeled “refugees’” as they fled the costliest and most destructive storm in United States history.

It’s a time many of us wish we could forget. And yet, I still vividly recall being woken up by a family member to witness the sight of Katrina’s wrath from my comfortable bed in Virginia. My stomach turned upside down with sadness and disbelief. I checked in with friends who were forced to flee from college in New Orleans, overwhelmed and unable to process the physical and psychological trauma left in Katrina’s wake. Most of them never returned to pursue their degrees.

I recall, too, the heavy tensions that surfaced from in-state migration, as some residents moved northward to Central Louisiana. Many locals resented the unexpected influx of newcomers. At the same time, many New Orleanians were frustrated by the circumstances that forced them to stay somewhere they didn’t want to be.

The cushion may have been a bit softer for those in higher income brackets, but Katrina created a domino effect of impacts that spared no one. In this state, you didn’t have to live in South Louisiana to be emotionally tied to the region. Family members, friends, jobs, and memories of revelry resided there. As we tried to pull ourselves together, our communities would be unwound yet again. Hurricane Rita hit us all less than a month later.

The beauty and devastation that defined Louisiana during the hurricane season of 2005 was palpable, felt by its residents and witnessed at a distance by the rest of the country. The hurricanes triggered PTSD, depression, aggression and physical illnesses; suicide rates skyrocketed in New Orleans.

Fifteen years later, the psychological and economic destruction have not left us. And Louisiana continues to serve as a real-time state of reference for the harrowing effects of climate change. In 2016, Isle de Jean Charles, mostly home to residents who belong to the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, became known as the first place to have climate “refugees” from Louisiana.

We’re still face-to-face with grief. But acceptance is also evident. Last year, Republican Congressman Garret Graves took a stand against climate denial. In February of this year, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced the formation of a new Climate Initiatives Task Force to address climate change by reducing carbon emissions and building resilience for the coast. Just last week, in a historic move for our state, he signed two executive orders on behalf of this initiative.

Another big move forward for Louisiana is the establishment of Louisiana’s Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE), which helps residents in the six most impacted parishes better adapt to coastal changes, mitigate flooding and other environmental impacts, and strategically plan for the future through community-led co-design.

In my own work, I’m often pleasantly surprised by local willingness to engage about climate change. Teachers from Alexandria, Louisiana, have brought entire junior high classes to Houston to learn about climate action at our Citizens’ Climate Lobby Third Coast Regional Conference. They’ve also asked us to build them a curriculum to teach the importance of environmental quality and sustainability throughout the year.

Our local Citizens’ Climate Lobby volunteer leaders have had more than 300 letters signed by local residents requesting that our Congressional representative, Ralph Abraham, address climate change by supporting clean energy policies.

As I write this, we in Louisiana are bracing for the physical and mental impacts of another storm. And yet, this time we feel less alone. The world is experiencing the repercussions and grief of climate change on a global scale. We grieve as the climate is changing, but there is so much opportunity for us to change, too.

We can better position our young people and local leaders to motivate residents to advocate for clean energy. We can listen to the most marginalized communities to discover ways to provide more access to green technologies for economically disadvantaged consumers and support a more inclusive climate-resilient workforce.We can put larger investments of time and funding into innovative community leadership on climate change so we can transition away from fossil fuels.

As V.S. Naipaul has written, “We are never finished with grief. It is part of the fabric of living. It is always waiting to happen.” Grief is inevitable, but hope is in the midst.

On September 8, 2020, Carine Williams will join the Innocence Project as Chief Program Strategy Officer. In this newly created position, Williams will be responsible for oversight, management and supervision of Client Intake and Evaluation, Post-Conviction Litigation, Research, Strategic Litigation, Senior Litigation Counsel and Social Work and Public Policy Reform. She will work to ensure that each of these program areas are aligned, focused, motivated and high performing.

Williams is a brilliant lawyer who has dedicated her career to criminal justice reform: she has represented poor people charged with and convicted of crimes at trial, in federal habeas corpus proceedings and in prisoner civil rights cases; she has authored policy reform reports; she taught a seminar on capital habeas and prisoner civil rights litigation at Columbia Law School; and she supervised and managed large teams in complex criminal and civil penalties resolutions.

After graduating from Harvard University and Yale Law School, Williams spent two years clerking for the Hon. Deborah Batts of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. 

Thereafter, Williams spent the bulk of her career working with George Kendall at Holland & Knight LLP and Squire Patton Boggs LLP where she provided pro bono representation in capital/criminal post-conviction and prisoner civil rights cases. Among the many cases Williams litigated was that of Albert Woodfox, one of the “Angola 3” who was held in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary for more than 40 years. 

Williams supervised and managed large defense teams in complex government enforcement cases at Sullivan & Cromwell. And, most recently, she has maintained her own private practice where she not only offers retained, appointed and pro bono representation in criminal cases, she also authored policy reports on matters including New York parole board reform.

Join us in welcoming Williams.

Henry, an Innocence Project client, has always maintained his innocence in the murders of an 89-year-old woman and her 67-year-old daughter. And the results of modern DNA testing recently performed on evidence from under the mother’s fingernails excluded Henry as a match, clearly proving his innocence.

Based on these results, Judge Dennis Waldron overturned Henry’s double murder conviction on March 12, and ordered a new trial.

Henry is now awaiting his new trial at the Louisiana State Penitentiary — known as Angola prison — which has suspended all visits for at least a month in light of the coronavirus pandemic, according to officials. So far, no cases of COVID-19 have been reported within the prison itself, but Henry said he is constantly washing his hands to stay healthy because hand sanitizer is not allowed in the prison.

While his family was overjoyed to receive the news, his son, Darrill, said it’s still very difficult to be apart from his father and that his wrongful conviction affects their whole family.

“It bothers me, not having him to talk to when I need him, not having a father to do certain stuff with, for him to be there for me to call on, period … I’m glad it’s almost over,” the younger Darrill told the Innocence Project.

The modern DNA testing recently performed on the crime scene evidence was not available when Henry went to trial in 2011. But that wasn’t the only factor that influenced his wrongful conviction. Police officers obtained eyewitness identifications of the attacker using highly suggestive procedures.

“I’m glad it’s almost over.”

On the day the attacks took place, Henry was miles away from the crime scene, applying for jobs.

“Mr. Henry’s conviction rests on eyewitness identifications that were obtained through procedures known to lead to misidentifications,” Vanessa Potkin, Innocence Project’s director of post-conviction litigation, said. 

Eyewitness misidentifications have contributed to almost 70% of the 368 wrongful convictions that have been overturned by DNA evidence in the U.S., according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations. 

“No other evidence implicated him in the crime … In vacating Mr. Henry’s conviction, the court recognized that as a matter of fundamental fairness the DNA new evidence should be presented to a new jury,” she said.

Daranika is currently pregnant with Henry’s first grandchild and is due in September. She hopes her father will be able to get to know and spend time with his grandchild in a way he couldn’t with his own children due to his wrongful conviction.

Daranika remembers Henry as a doting father to her and her brother.

“When he was out, we were always together — he would not leave me and Darrill behind,” Daranika said. “All I can remember is my daddy picking me up from school, running down the hallway, and seeing his face brightened my day. He was such a fun person, and it’s been hard to be without him for 15 years.”

But Henry has always remained positive. While incarcerated, he wrote poetry, which he often recites in church, including this poem about fatherhood and his love for his children.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2020/03/20/amidst-coronavirus-pandemic-darrill-henry-wins-a-new-trial-but-must-wait-in-prison/feed/ 0 40362 https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/09/utah-flies-employees-to-mexico-to-save-on-prescription-drugs/ https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/09/utah-flies-employees-to-mexico-to-save-on-prescription-drugs/#respond Sun, 09 Feb 2020 23:23:18 +0000 https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/09/utah-flies-employees-to-mexico-to-save-on-prescription-drugs/ SALT LAKE CITY—Ann Lovell had never owned a passport before last year. Now, the 62-year-old teacher is a frequent flier, traveling every few months to Tijuana, Mexico, to buy medication for rheumatoid arthritis — with tickets paid for by the state of Utah’s public insurer.

Lovell is one of about 10 state workers participating in a year-old program to lower prescription drug costs by having public employees buy their medication in Mexico at a steep discount compared to U.S. prices. The program appears to be the first of its kind, and is a dramatic example of steps states are taking to alleviate the high cost of prescription drugs.

In one long, exhausting day, Lovell flies from Salt Lake City to San Diego. There, an escort picks her up and takes her across the border to a Tijuana hospital, where she gets a refill on her prescription. After that, she’s shuttled back to the airport and heads home.

Lovell had been paying $450 in co-pays every few months for her medication, though she said it would have increased to some $2,400 if she had not started traveling to Mexico. Without the program, she would not be able to afford the medicine she needs.

“This is the drug that keeps me functioning, working,” said Lovell, who works at an early-intervention program for deaf students that’s part of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind. “I think if I wasn’t on this drug … I’d be on disability rather than living my normal life.”

The cost difference is so large that the state’s insurance program for public employees can pay for each patient’s flight, give them a $500-per-trip bonus and still save tens of thousands of dollars.

Other states have taken new approaches to addressing the high costs of prescription drugs. California is looking at launching its own generic-drug label. Louisiana has a Netflix-style program for hepatitis C drugs, where the state negotiated a deal to pay a flat fee rather than for each prescription.

Several states are looking at creating boards aimed at keeping prices affordable, and four have started what’s expected to be a lengthy process to begin importing drugs from Canada under a new Trump administration plan.

The Utah program was created under a 2018 state law dubbed “right to shop,” by Republican Rep. Norm Thurston. The Public Employees Health Program offers it only for people who use a drug on a list of about a dozen medications where the state can get significant savings. Of the 160,000 state and local public employees covered by the insurer, fewer than 400 are eligible, according to Managing Director Chet Loftis.

Officials have tracked the medications from the manufacturer to the pharmacy to the patient, to make sure people are getting the same drugs they would at home, he said. They contract with a specialty pharmacy that works with one of the region’s largest private hospital systems. A representative from a company, Provide Rx, escorts patients from the San Diego airport to Hospital Angeles in Tijuana and back across the border.

Lovell has a prescription from her doctor in Utah, and each time she travels to Mexico she sees a doctor at the hospital as well. She updates the doctor on her condition, gets her prescription, and takes it to the pharmacist, who gives her the medication.

Provide Rx also works with a dozen or so private companies, some of whom offer similar bonus programs to their staffers, said general manager Javier Ojeda.

Just over a year after the program began, the state has saved about $225,000, Loftis said.

Though the number of people participating is relatively small, the savings add up quickly. The annual U.S. list price for the drug Lovell takes, Enbrel, is over $62,000 per patient. With the Mexico program, after the cost of the flight and the bonus, the state still cuts its expenses in half.

“It makes sense for us to do this,” Loftis said.

Thurston had hoped more people would sign up, saving the state $1 million by now.

But officials are optimistic more people will sign on now that they see the program is working. They have expanded to offering flights to Canada, where there’s a clinic in the Vancouver airport and the travel costs are about the same.

While importation of prescription drugs is illegal because drugs sold in other countries haven’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. allows people to bring in a three-month supply for personal use.

There have been long been more informal trips across the border elsewhere; Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has taken bus trips with patients from border states into Canada to highlight the cost of prescription drugs. But the Utah program appears to be the only formal state program of its kind, said David Mitchell, a cancer patient and the founder of the advocacy group Patients For Affordable Drugs.

“It is unfortunate and, in fact, wrong that the citizens of this great country have to travel to other countries to get drugs they need at affordable prices,” he said.

Others say the “pharmaceutical tourism” approach has risks and doesn’t solve the issue of high prescription drug prices in the United States. Peter Maybarduk with the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen said people can come across unsafe medications in other countries, and it’s important not to undercut the importance of U.S. regulators.

“It is a Band-Aid for people who really need it,” he said. “We need reform of the system as whole.”

In most other countries, national health programs negotiate lower drug prices at large scale, and sometimes refuse to cover the most expensive ones. Meanwhile, patents generally run much longer in the U.S. than other countries, allowing for monopolies. Drug makers also often point to the high cost of creating a drug to bring to market.

Utah truck driver Jason Pierce has been grateful to find the drug Stelara, the only effective treatment for his psoriasis. It’s also expensive, so he and his wife, a Utah health department employee, started traveling to Mexico to get his shots.

Their insurance through her state job covers it completely, so the trips don’t save them any money. But with both flights covered through the state program and the $500 bonuses, they can make a short vacation.

“It’s pretty easy,” he said. The drug is “exactly the same.”

And the travel means the drug saves their public insurer thousands, helping save taxpayer money and bring down premiums, his wife, Robbin Williams, said.

“I just think it’s the moral and right thing to do,” she said.

Chauvin’s wife, Kim, was frantic — one of their four shrimp trawlers was caught on a sand bar on Grand Isle, near Dean Blanchard’s place, 70 miles east. Switching from cell phone to cell phone, she tried to compile information and mount a rescue plan for a worst-case scenario.

“On the one hand we have tropical depressions, on the other we have this humongous dead zone,” she said. “We’re between a rock and a hard place.”

Kim has met with farming groups keen to help clean up the Gulf Coast. She found that local and family-owned farmers were sympathetic to the plight of shrimpers and recognized their role in the chain of pollution. “I don’t blame the mom and pops,” she said. “It’s usually big corporations who think they don’t have to change.”

Big or small, farmers are largely free to do what they want, because federal regulations don’t require them to curb fertilizer runoff. Oversight mostly falls to state agencies that are often keen on voluntary efforts in place of enforcing rules. Kim would like to see strict federal limits on agricultural pollution entering the Mississippi, backed by fines for non-compliance and reparations for historical damage to Louisiana’s shrimping industry.

Federal agencies have launched efforts to attack the problem. The USDA has granted millions of dollars to agricultural and conservation groups for the development of nutrient reduction strategies. And in 1997, the EPA organized what is now called the Hypoxia Task Force, which later pledged to shrink the dead zone by three quarters before 2015.

But at the end of 2014, with no progress in sight, the task force extended its deadline to 2035, with a new pledge to hit a 20-percent reduction by 2025.

Small family farms, local conservationists, universities, and some local governments have been experimenting with methods to curtail fertilizer runoff. State officials, including Brad Redlin, a manager for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s water-quality program, are trying to nudge farmers into better practices with incentives. They’ve started initiatives in which farmers and local governments split the costs of creating wetland filtration systems, and supported new markets for harvested cover crops so that farmers can recoup some of the cost of planting.

“There’s been little to no taste for regulating agriculture,” Redlin said. “But there’s a level of reassurance that conservation systems do exist out there in the countryside.”

In 2012, Redlin designed a voluntary certification program for farmers in Minnesota, in partnership with the USDA and EPA, that established standards for agricultural water quality. When farmers sign up, the state studies their farms using software that highlights bad practices. Redlin’s program suggests alternative methods to farmers to run their operations cleaner and more efficiently — the reduction of overall fertilizer use, the planting of cover crops, and limiting soil tilling, which leads to erosion.

In 2016, his network of 15 state certifiers began walking across Minnesota’s farmland, field by field, to begin assessments. The process appeals to farmers who want an assessment of the health of their whole farm. If the farm is not up to par, the farmer might have to plant cover crops or build buffers designed to interrupt the flow of runoff. Redlin now has 731 producers certified over a total area of 489,385 acres.

“It’s often expressed that 70 percent of the problem is coming from 20 percent of the people; that’s not invalid,” Redlin said. “But it seems to be a different cliché, like death by a thousand cuts. Every farm is a little bit leaky and the cumulative result is a dead zone in the Gulf.”

Mike Naig, Iowa’s secretary of agriculture, smoothed his navy-blue suit jacket as he sat at a polished wood conference table preparing to co-chair the 2019 meeting of the Hypoxia Task Force in Baton Rouge. Naig comes from a long line of farmers and still travels back to his parent’s farm in northern Iowa to help work the land.

“We all understand that we feed into the Gulf,” he said. “And shame on us if we don’t take advantage of the opportunity to show that we can be effective.”

Naig works as an intermediary between farmers, the USDA, the EPA, and Congress, drumming up support for agricultural conservation projects through funding, policy changes, and permitting. He helps public and private interests collaborate — farmers, fertilizer sellers, environmental scientists, and governments — lining up access to equipment, technical assistance, and financial aid for nutrient-reduction projects. Naig has 14 watershed demonstration projects across the state, which show how cover crops, bioreactors, and wetlands can reduce nutrient runoff on working farmland on a small scale.

According to Naig’s department, his efforts have led to 1 million acres of cover crops planted and 88 completed wetlands, with another 30 under development across Iowa.

Naig thinks federal regulations to curtail runoff would backfire. If it was a regulatory obligation, he argued, the dynamic between farmers and government would breed bitterness. Top-down structures for conservation, enforced federally, he said, would mean flip-flopping on industrial and environmental goals every time a new president landed in the White House.

“We want people to use their own innovative approaches,” Naig said. “I think we’ll get to a better place, and we’ll get there faster, through unleashing people’s creativity.”

Iowa’s 2013 Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a state government initiative to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, promised a 45 percent decrease in fertilizer runoff by 2035, but despite Naig’s efforts there’s been no change yet. Experts say large-scale crop producers have yet to make adaptations to their methods of growing.

For shrimpers living along the Delta like Dean Blanchard and Kim Chauvin, patience is wearing thin. “On a congressional level we need to say enough is enough,” she said. “We need to list annual goals for change, and stick to the plan.”

She said that shrimpers want face-to-face meetings with large-scale commercial farmers and fertilizer companies. They want to show the consequences of current methods of farming on those who live and fish on the coasts. They want fines and regulation for offending agricultural operations and a return to healthier waters.

“We need them to understand what they’re doing to the fishing industry,” Chauvin said. “The states above us should be paying something to the industry that they’re destroying.”

Written and photographed by Spike Johnson with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This story was published in partnership between Grist, the Center for Public Integrity — a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust — and The World, a radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter.

Chauvin’s wife, Kim, was frantic — one of their four shrimp trawlers was caught on a sand bar on Grand Isle, near Dean Blanchard’s place, 70 miles east. Switching from cell phone to cell phone, she tried to compile information and mount a rescue plan for a worst-case scenario.

“On the one hand we have tropical depressions, on the other we have this humongous dead zone,” she said. “We’re between a rock and a hard place.”

Kim has met with farming groups keen to help clean up the Gulf Coast. She found that local and family-owned farmers were sympathetic to the plight of shrimpers and recognized their role in the chain of pollution. “I don’t blame the mom and pops,” she said. “It’s usually big corporations who think they don’t have to change.”

Big or small, farmers are largely free to do what they want, because federal regulations don’t require them to curb fertilizer runoff. Oversight mostly falls to state agencies that are often keen on voluntary efforts in place of enforcing rules. Kim would like to see strict federal limits on agricultural pollution entering the Mississippi, backed by fines for non-compliance and reparations for historical damage to Louisiana’s shrimping industry.

Federal agencies have launched efforts to attack the problem. The USDA has granted millions of dollars to agricultural and conservation groups for the development of nutrient reduction strategies. And in 1997, the EPA organized what is now called the Hypoxia Task Force, which later pledged to shrink the dead zone by three quarters before 2015.

But at the end of 2014, with no progress in sight, the task force extended its deadline to 2035, with a new pledge to hit a 20-percent reduction by 2025.

Small family farms, local conservationists, universities, and some local governments have been experimenting with methods to curtail fertilizer runoff. State officials, including Brad Redlin, a manager for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s water-quality program, are trying to nudge farmers into better practices with incentives. They’ve started initiatives in which farmers and local governments split the costs of creating wetland filtration systems, and supported new markets for harvested cover crops so that farmers can recoup some of the cost of planting.

“There’s been little to no taste for regulating agriculture,” Redlin said. “But there’s a level of reassurance that conservation systems do exist out there in the countryside.”

In 2012, Redlin designed a voluntary certification program for farmers in Minnesota, in partnership with the USDA and EPA, that established standards for agricultural water quality. When farmers sign up, the state studies their farms using software that highlights bad practices. Redlin’s program suggests alternative methods to farmers to run their operations cleaner and more efficiently — the reduction of overall fertilizer use, the planting of cover crops, and limiting soil tilling, which leads to erosion.

In 2016, his network of 15 state certifiers began walking across Minnesota’s farmland, field by field, to begin assessments. The process appeals to farmers who want an assessment of the health of their whole farm. If the farm is not up to par, the farmer might have to plant cover crops or build buffers designed to interrupt the flow of runoff. Redlin now has 731 producers certified over a total area of 489,385 acres.

“It’s often expressed that 70 percent of the problem is coming from 20 percent of the people; that’s not invalid,” Redlin said. “But it seems to be a different cliché, like death by a thousand cuts. Every farm is a little bit leaky and the cumulative result is a dead zone in the Gulf.”

Mike Naig, Iowa’s secretary of agriculture, smoothed his navy-blue suit jacket as he sat at a polished wood conference table preparing to co-chair the 2019 meeting of the Hypoxia Task Force in Baton Rouge. Naig comes from a long line of farmers and still travels back to his parent’s farm in northern Iowa to help work the land.

“We all understand that we feed into the Gulf,” he said. “And shame on us if we don’t take advantage of the opportunity to show that we can be effective.”

Naig works as an intermediary between farmers, the USDA, the EPA, and Congress, drumming up support for agricultural conservation projects through funding, policy changes, and permitting. He helps public and private interests collaborate — farmers, fertilizer sellers, environmental scientists, and governments — lining up access to equipment, technical assistance, and financial aid for nutrient-reduction projects. Naig has 14 watershed demonstration projects across the state, which show how cover crops, bioreactors, and wetlands can reduce nutrient runoff on working farmland on a small scale.

According to Naig’s department, his efforts have led to 1 million acres of cover crops planted and 88 completed wetlands, with another 30 under development across Iowa.

Naig thinks federal regulations to curtail runoff would backfire. If it was a regulatory obligation, he argued, the dynamic between farmers and government would breed bitterness. Top-down structures for conservation, enforced federally, he said, would mean flip-flopping on industrial and environmental goals every time a new president landed in the White House.

“We want people to use their own innovative approaches,” Naig said. “I think we’ll get to a better place, and we’ll get there faster, through unleashing people’s creativity.”

Iowa’s 2013 Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a state government initiative to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, promised a 45 percent decrease in fertilizer runoff by 2035, but despite Naig’s efforts there’s been no change yet. Experts say large-scale crop producers have yet to make adaptations to their methods of growing.

For shrimpers living along the Delta like Dean Blanchard and Kim Chauvin, patience is wearing thin. “On a congressional level we need to say enough is enough,” she said. “We need to list annual goals for change, and stick to the plan.”

She said that shrimpers want face-to-face meetings with large-scale commercial farmers and fertilizer companies. They want to show the consequences of current methods of farming on those who live and fish on the coasts. They want fines and regulation for offending agricultural operations and a return to healthier waters.

“We need them to understand what they’re doing to the fishing industry,” Chauvin said. “The states above us should be paying something to the industry that they’re destroying.”

Written and photographed by Spike Johnson with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This story was published in partnership between Grist, the Center for Public Integrity — a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust — and The World, a radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter.

BENTON, La. — Authorities say at least seven people have died as severe storms sweep across parts of the U.S. South, bringing high winds and unrelenting rain.

The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, said Saturday via Twitter that three people have been confirmed killed near Carrollton in Pickens County. The Alabama Emergency Management Agency said that an “embedded tornado within a long line of intense thunderstorms” caused the deaths.

Earlier Saturday, firefighters in Louisiana found the bodies of an elderly couple Saturday near their demolished trailer, the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office said via Facebook. The winds were so strong that the home was moved 200 feet from its foundation.

The deaths of the victims, who were the in-laws of a parish deputy, brings the storm-related toll in Louisiana to three after a 75-year-old man was killed in Oil City, according to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office. Raymond Holden was in bed when the tree fell on his home, crushing him.

Bossier Parish Sheriff Julian Whittington told The Associated Press that a truck driver and a Benton police officer had a close call after being shocked by a downed power line.

“A power line was hanging across the road and an 18-wheeler truck ran into it and got hung up in it and the Benton officer got there to help him,” Whittington said. Both were expected to survive.

The National Weather Service in Shreveport estimated that a tornado, with about 135 mph (217 kph) winds, touched down in Bossier Parish.

Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas on Saturday morning were clear of the severe thunderstorms that had passed through the night before. One person died Friday night in Texas when a car flipped into a creek in Dallas. Additionally, lightning from Friday’s stormy weather is suspected of causing two house fires in the North Texas cities of Burleson and Mansfield. Officials said no one was injured.

Homes were damaged or destroyed in Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas on Friday, but no injuries were reported. Downed trees and power lines were widespread.

According to PowerOutage.us, Mississippi had more than 61,0000 power outages midday Saturday. About 35,000 customers were without power in Louisiana. In Tennessee, Memphis Light, Gas and Water said about 23,000 customers were without power Saturday morning. Damage was widespread throughout Shelby County, Tennessee’s most populous county that includes Memphis, including downed trees and power poles, some of which will need to be replaced, according to the utility.

Entergy Arkansas reported nearly 42,000 power outages Saturday morning, mostly in the southeastern part of the state. Southwestern Electric Power Co. reported nearly 5,000 customers in East Texas were without power Saturday morning.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation reported Saturday morning that portions of several highways in the southeastern part of the state were closed due to flooding. The Arkansas Department of Transportation reported that portions of several state highways across the state, particularly in the southeastern portion of Arkansas were closed due to downed trees and power lines and to flooding.

On Alabama’s Gulf Coast, Baldwin County canceled school activities including sporting events for Saturday. The National Weather Service warned of high winds and flooding and the potential for 10-foot-high (3-meter-high) waves on beaches, where northern visitors escaping the cold are a common sight during the winter.

Many streams already are at or near flood levels because of earlier storms, and heavy rains could lead to flash flooding across the region, forecasters said. Parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana were under flash flood warnings or watches on Saturday.

The storm, bringing the threat of ice and snow to the Chicago area, prompted the cancellation of about 1,000 flights Saturday at Chicago’s two main airports.

The Chicago Department of Aviation’s online flight-tracking website showed that as of 10:30 a.m. Saturday about 950 flight cancellations were reported at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and more than 50 flights had been canceled at Midway International Airport.

Delays at O’Hare and Midway were averaging around 15 minutes, the department said.

The weather service issued a winter weather advisory, flood watch and lakeshore flood warning for the Chicago metropolitan area for Saturday and a winter storm warning for adjacent areas of northwestern Illinois.

The weather service said rain, possibly mixed with snow, freezing rain and sleet was expected through Saturday afternoon in the Chicago area before changing by evening over to snow and sleet, possibly mixed with freezing rain.

Breezy conditions were forecast with gusts as high as 45 mph (72 kph).

AP writer Juan A. Lozano contributed to this report from Houston. Rick Callahan contributed from Indianapolis.

This article was produced in partnership with The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

Given the human misery set into motion by Katrina, the harm these spills caused to the environment drew little attention. But it was substantial.

Nine days after the storm, oil could still be seen leaking from toppled storage tanks, broken pipelines and sunken boats between New Orleans and the Mississippi River’s mouth. And then Hurricane Rita hit. Oil let loose by Katrina was pushed farther inland by Rita three weeks later, and debris from the first storm caused damage to oil tankers rocked by the second.

All told, the federal agency overseeing oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico reported that more than 400 pipelines and 100 drilling platforms were damaged. The U.S. Coast Guard, the first responder for oil spills, received 540 separate reports of spills into Louisiana waters. Officials estimated that, taken together, those leaks released the same amount of oil that the highly publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster spilled into Alaska’s Prince William Sound — about 10.8 million gallons.

The Oil Pollution Act, passed by Congress in response to the Valdez incident, requires that federal and state agencies work with the companies that spilled the oil to conduct a preliminary assessment of damage to natural resources. Once a comprehensive report is finalized on the value of the affected plants, soil, water and wildlife, those so-called responsible parties must pay for restoration efforts.

Fourteen years later, not one assessment of the damage to natural resources after the two 2005 hurricanes has been completed. None of the 140 parties thought to be responsible for the spills has been fined or cited for environmental violations. And no restoration plans have been developed for the impacted ecosystems, fish, birds or water quality, a review by The Times-Picayune and The Advocate and ProPublica has found.

The extent of the damage to the environment may never be known.

Even small spills have impacts, said Darryl Malek-Wiley, an organizer with the environmental conservation organization Sierra Club. Oil seeps into the marsh mud and affects the worms and snails. Birds that eat those animals are affected, as are the fish and the fishermen who bring them home. Then the marsh plants start to die, and saltwater intrudes to push them over. The coastline recedes. The next storm churns closer.

“I think it’s an outrage that they haven’t made any progress,” Malek-Wiley said. “Here we are 14 years later and they haven’t done anything. A year after Katrina, things had settled down significantly. I think the oil response team should have been moving forward with environmental damage claims.”

Over the same period, some of the very same companies responsible for spills have gotten reimbursements totaling $19 million from a federal trust fund that allows private parties to submit claims for expenses incurred cleaning up their spilled oil. In order to get their money back, companies have to file papers saying how much oil they spilled, why it spilled and what they did to capture it. They often describe the spill as the result of an “unforeseeable act of God.”

By failing to hold anyone accountable for the spills, Louisiana is likely leaving on the table hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental remediation money. When BP spilled 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the company agreed to pay $8.8 billion to help restore the natural environment. If the companies responsible for the Katrina and Rita spills paid up at the same rate, Louisiana would add more than $700 million to its restoration budget — money that Steve Cochran, associate vice president for coastal resilience at the Environmental Defense Fund, said is desperately needed.

“It’s pretty clear what the value of money is in a place like Louisiana, where we have these restoration needs,” Cochran said. “Every dollar that’s not collected [in fines] is a dollar that we can’t spend on this work.”

Indeed, most of the coastal restoration work going on in Louisiana is being funded with the BP settlement. When reached by phone, Cochran was just leaving a meeting with state natural resource managers about coastal resilience projects slated for next year, funded with about $750 million of money from the BP spill.

“It’s a lot of work that’s desperately needed but that is only possible because that [BP settlement] money became available,” Cochran said.

With no statute of limitations on assessing oil spills in Louisiana, officials at the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office, or LOSCO, say they are still working their way through a complex process of using computers to model the damage. But Stephanie Morris, a lawyer for the agency, says that even if they complete that work, it will be difficult to fine responsible parties or otherwise hold them accountable for damages caused 14 years ago.

“The [oil companies] always fight with us,” Morris said. “Their position with us is always: ‘Louisiana has a lot of spills. You have a degrading coast. Are you trying to say these injuries are from my little spill?’”

Charlie Henry, a member of the regional National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration response team, oversees the damage assessment process for spills in Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma and has worked with LOSCO on oil spill response for 30 years. If the 2005 spills had not been signed over to LOSCO, assessing them would likely have fallen to Henry’s group.

He says it’s common for five years to pass before a spill assessment and remediation plan is complete. He thinks that the fact that LOSCO is still working on the 2005 hurricane spills shows diligence, not fecklessness.

“Some states would have given up on [the hurricane spills] — just moved them to a cold-case file like a police department would when they can’t solve it,” Henry said.

Since the 2005 spills, little action has been taken to help prevent something similar from recurring. Neither Patrick Courreges, communications director at the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, nor Greg Langley, the press secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, were aware of any new regulations since Katrina to protect against storm-related oil spills or the associated damage to the environment.

“The thing about Katrina was, it came to shore as a Cat 3 but really it still had a Cat 5 storm surge with it,” Langley said. “When you get that much water rushing in on you at that velocity, it’s going to knock things down. That’s like, an act of God.”

At the federal level, the catastrophic 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill prompted some reforms. The Obama administration decided that it was problematic to have the same agency oversee oilfield leasing and offshore safety, and those functions were split between new divisions within the Interior Department. The administration also imposed a series of more stringent well safety regulations. However, many of them have been rolled back by the Trump administration.

While hurricanes gain speed due to the effects of climate change, the push for oil leasing in the Gulf of Mexico shows no sign of slowing down. In 2014, the Obama administration opened up 40 million new acres in the Gulf for oil and gas development. Four years later, the Trump administration announced plans to open up most of the rest, in what would be the largest expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. history. Many of these 76 million acres are to be offered at reduced royalty rates to encourage additional near-shore drilling in Louisiana waters.

Meanwhile, scientists expect that future storms will exacerbate oil damage to the environment.

“In the Gulf, storms are predicted to be less frequent but more intense when they do come,” said Sunshine Van Bael, an ecologist at Tulane University who evaluated damage to marsh ecosystems from the BP oil spill. “One thing that storms do is, if oil has been buried underneath the marsh because it wasn’t rehabilitated, a storm could come along and whip that back up to the surface. So, the aftereffects of the oil spills might be greater [with climate change] since the storms are predicted to be more intense.”

The Regulatory Pipeline: The Way It’s Supposed to Work

In 1967, a 37 million gallon spill of crude oil from the tanker Torrey Canyon caused massive environmental damage off the coast of England, prompting the U.S. to develop a national strategy the following year to guard against a similar outcome. The Oil Pollution Act, passed in 1990, established the framework for state and federal oil spill response that is still used today.

When oil spills into water, it sets into motion a complex series of events. The spiller, or someone who notices oil in water, calls the U.S. Coast Guard, which gives the spill an identification number and logs it into the National Response Center database. In Louisiana, the state police are also notified. They assign each spill a different number and relay information to LOSCO. Depending on the size of the spill and the resources affected, as many as 12 other state and federal agencies are notified.

To create clearer jurisdiction, the Louisiana Legislature in 1991 created LOSCO to manage the process. Its deputy director, Karolien Debusschere, said, “I’ve been doing this a long, long time, and I feel it’s a pretty well-functioning system.”

Along with having to pay for cleanup and mitigation, the company that caused the spill could be subject to fines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the state DEQ. It might also face civil lawsuits from private parties and from LOSCO on behalf of state residents.

That’s how Louisiana’s system works. In theory, at least.

A Leaky Process

The reality is quite different and much more opaque.

An analysis of Coast Guard National Response Center data by ProPublica and The Times-Picayune and The Advocate shows that Louisiana out-spills every other state. In some years, it has as much as 10 times the number of crude oil spills into water reported as in other oil-producing states like Texas, California, Oklahoma and Alaska. This amounts to around 1,000 spills into Louisiana waters every year, though most are small. Nearly a quarter of these spills are due to an ongoing leak by Taylor Energy, reported every weekday, but even without these, the state still far outspills every other.

Since its creation in 1991, LOSCO has settled assessments for 24 spills. No method exists for the public to track individual spills through the assessment process, how many spills are being addressed, or at what stage they leak out of the system.

Unless citizens monitor the National Response Center database, or the Coast Guard announces the spill in a press release, the public only learns that a spill has occurred when a notice of intent to restore the habitats is released. That, in turn, only happens after a spill has made it through the damage assessment pipeline. If the spills never gets assessed, a public notice is never filed.

No such notices have been filed for the 2005 spills. A list of 407 spills from Katrina and Rita, down from the original count of 540 for unexplained reasons, sits cued up in a spreadsheet on Debusschere’s computer — unevaluated, unresolved and unremediated.

All these years later, the only way Debusschere figures she can still evaluate the impacts is to work with scientists to build a computer model to simulate damages. She says she has no idea when that effort might be complete.

LOSCO did complete preliminary assessments for at least some of the 2005 spills, as well as some modeling of the damage. But none of it has been released to the public and Morris declined to share it with a reporter, saying it was a work in progress.

There is limited baseline data on the natural, pre-spill state of the environment along Louisiana’s coastline, making it hard to accurately estimate the ecological damage.

And it’s even harder now. The oil that fouled Louisiana’s waters in the summer of 2005 has long since dispersed or settled into the marsh mud. The plants, pelicans, fish and otters that might have been affected are gone.

“You know, the natural environment is always changing,” Henry explained. “There’s some studies on turtles and marine mammals you can draw from, for example, but none of them are comprehensive. And none of them are current, because maybe they were all done five, 10 years ago.”

That’s not how it’s done in Alaska. According to Henry, after the Valdez spill, the state of Alaska started requiring oil companies to document the condition of the environment at the desired site before issuing a drilling permit, ensuring that if a spill does occur, the damage can be measured.

The outdated data available for Louisiana, on the other hand, has been collected at the state’s expense, most of it only after the latest massive disaster.

Knocked Off Track

Debusschere said that LOSCO was making progress before the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig gushed 134 million gallons of crude into the Gulf. She blames the BP spill for knocking the agency off track in processing the Katrina-era spills.

“It kind of sucked up the room,” Morris, the LOSCO attorney, said. “It’s the same folks on both sides, you know, all got engaged to work on Deepwater Horizon.”

Still, critics wonder why LOSCO hadn’t completed any of the 2005 work before the BP spill.

“There should have been some kind of action in the late 2006, 2007 period,” said Malek-Wiley of the Sierra Club. “A year after Katrina, things had settled down significantly. I think the oil response team should have been moving forward with environmental damage claims.”

During that 4 1/2-year lull between Gulf oil catastrophes, LOSCO did finish damage assessments for five small oil spills that occurred before Katrina. Two of them dated to the late 1990s. For one of these, remediation efforts are ongoing.

The BP disaster may have actually helped streamline the processing of both past and future spills at LOSCO by coalescing a network of experts who now have extensive experience evaluating oil damage to Gulf habitats, Morris said.

It also made a powerful argument for more resources. At the time Katrina hit, LOSCO only had five employees working response and damage assessment and an annual operating budget of just over $5 million. Today, LOSCO has 19 people handling those duties, and its budget has had a modest increase, to $7.5 million.

Resorting to Civil Litigation

Where LOSCO’s small team has failed to fully assess the harm caused by a single spill from Katrina or Rita, some damages from a 2005 spill have been resolved through civil litigation.

In 2009, a class-action lawsuit against Murphy Oil Corp. ended in a settlement requiring the company to pay $330 million to 6,200 claimants, including owners of about 1,800 homes in St. Bernard Parish. The damage occurred when one of Murphy’s storage tanks floated off its foundation during Katrina and dumped over a million gallons of crude oil into a square-mile segment of Meraux and Chalmette.

Paul Thibodeaux, the lawyer who represented Murphy Oil, called the incident “the largest environmental disaster [of Katrina] that affected people directly.”

Thibodeaux thinks that similar lawsuits against companies that spilled oil farther out along the coastline were never pursued because there weren’t enough plaintiffs in these rural areas to land a lucrative settlement.

But even in the areas affected by the Murphy Oil spill, many owners of damaged properties could not be located. In a flooded post-Katrina neighborhood, few left forwarding addresses.

In 2007, the EPA fined the same Murphy Oil facility $395,313 in civil penalties plus $1.5 million in cleanup costs after a large benzene leak. That case was settled in April 2019. But there has been no official accountability for the 1 million-plus gallon oil spill that occurred in 2005.

Debusschere says Murphy Oil’s million-gallon spill will be included in LOSCO’s modeling of Katrina and Rita damages.

Murphy Oil officials did not return several voicemail messages seeking comment.

Malek-Wiley notes that there are simple methods to secure an oil tank in place when a hurricane is on the way.

“If you know a hurricane is coming, you fill your tanks with additional water to make them heavier so they won’t shift. Murphy didn’t do that, and their tanks shifted, allowing the oil to come out,” Malek-Wiley said.

Murphy wasn’t the only company to make such a mistake.

The largest single spill of the 2005 hurricanes occurred when tanks owned by Bass Enterprises succumbed to strong winds and tides, spilling 3.8 million gallons of crude oil into Cox Bay, on the Mississippi’s east bank between Port Sulphur and Empire in Plaquemines Parish. It was four times larger than the Murphy spill.

The EPA’s database on environmental violation enforcement, ECHO, does not report any action against Bass Enterprises since the company paid a $1,760 fine for an unrelated violation in 2003. Bass Enterprises declined to comment.

Despite the hurricane danger, Louisiana doesn’t specifically mandate that oil companies weigh or bolt down their tanks. According to Dwight Bradshaw, a senior environmental scientist at the DEQ, you just can’t protect against some storm-related spills.

“Down at the Bass Cox Bay spill, you had 18 to 20 feet of water,” Bradshaw said. “It’s the laws of physics. Oil is lighter than water, so those tanks are gonna be lifted off their foundations. It’s an act of God. So, they’re not responsible.”

Under state and federal laws, oil companies are supposed to have risk management plans in place for so-called act of God events like hurricanes. But it’s not clear how many do have such plans. Bradshaw said that the DEQ makes site visits and can ask to see the written plans anytime, but that the companies are not required to file anything.

Environmental activists worry that the failure to hold anyone accountable for the 2005 spills sends the wrong message.

“To the extent that fines are supposed to be disincentives for behavior, it’s a failure of the system,” Cochran of the Environmental Defense Fund said. “If I get a speeding ticket but I don’t have to pay it, I probably won’t slow down.”

“Acts of God”

While natural resource damage assessments stagnate and civil cases fail to find plaintiffs, some claims from oil companies have moved more quickly.

To date, more than $19 million has been paid out from the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to reimburse at least two oil companies for costs they incurred cleaning up oil they spilled during Katrina and Rita. According to U.S. Coast Guard documents, those expenses include $38,000 for an oil recovery barge that succumbed to hurricane turbulence and $16.5 million in oil recovery costs that resulted when debris from a hurricane-damaged drilling platform punctured an oil transport tank.

Since 2000, at least 28 hurricanes or tropical storms have made landfall in Louisiana — an average of more than one per year. But still they are treated by the state as unforeseeable events.

Adam Babich, former director of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, said Louisiana has had a more liberal application of the act of God defense than other states or federal courts. He explained that while the act of God defense does not usually release oil companies from liability, it can weaken arguments to hold them accountable.

“We don’t normally penalize [companies] for act of God events,” Greg Langley of the DEQ said. “We just get right to remediation.”