Scandal in Louisiana's Criminal Courts
Radley Balko * October 28, 2008, 2:33pm
There's a major scandal brewing in Louisiana's criminal justice system.
Since 1994, Chief Judge Edward Dufresne has been handling the appeals of indigent Louisiana convicts who had to file their own briefs. Last year, the aid Dufresne had assigned to handle those appeals committed suicide. According to his suicide note, Jarrold Peterson killed himself in part because of the guilt he faced over what he had been asked to do as part of his job.
Peterson sent a posthumous letter to Louisiana's Judiciary Commission with a damning allegation. He said Dufresne had instructed him to deny every appeal not prepared by an attorney. Peterson said he was instructed to write up and file the denials without every showing the appeals to the judges. Peteson handled about 2,400 such cases in the 13 years he was in charge of them.
The Louisiana Supreme Court will now decide if the investigation of the allegations and the review of those cases will be handled by another circuit, and outside panel, or the same 5th Circuit court where all of this may have happened. ...
