Every year CourtWatch NOLA issues a report in keeping with their mission to demand accountability, transparency and fairness and ensuring the Orleans Parish Criminal Courts and the public officials within the courthouse are answerable to the people of Orleans parish. Simone Levine and Veronica Bard of CourtWatch NOLA joined Newell Wednesday morning to discuss what their report revealed this year.
“I know this is very much a different year with the pandemic,” Newell began. “There are a lot of stressors on the system. I noticed you made that observation quite a few times.”
“We really concentrated on the accountability of the system, the health concerns, whether the system had taken public health in mind, checks to power,” Levine said. “That was really the thing that we were looking at because we knew when we looked at 2020, all across the country and all across the world, there was a real surge of the people on the ground for democracy. We were no different here in New Orleans. We definitely pushed our leaders, our elected leaders to ensure that all of our systems were accountable - that's what this report is really about.”
“As we go through the report, what struck you as being some of the most important observations that you reached, as you made your assessments of the court system?”
“One of the things that concerned us the most was that we, as members of the public, as journalists, as crime survivors, l as loved ones of defendants, family members - we were all denied access to court. We were denied access for a whole entire month, Court Watch NOLA. The board is made up of heads of law firms around town and leaders all across the city. We wrote a letter to the court and we demanded access. We literally were told we are not allowed to access court by Zoom - the felony court, as well as magistrate court, where bail and bond are determined. They were all on Zoom since the courts were closed by COVID. We pushed and we pushed and we pushed but were given absolutely no reason by the acting chief judge at the time, Robin Pittman. She was spokesperson for the court. We understand that the court had taken a vote to deny the public access denied journalists and nobody was provided answers. And so one of the things we looked at is we asked the court for an emergency preparedness plan and the emergency preparedness plan that we found was really a mishmash of documents that had been put together during and after Katrina after Katrina. It was incredibly outdated and had absolutely no provisions related to public health and no provisions for public access to the court. And as you know, it's so fundamental, constitutional, that the people of this country have access to their courts. And so that is why, we were pushing for that.”
“What ultimately happened - there was a period of time, you say a month, where we did not have access?”
“We finally had a journalist that was reporting on the issue that was able to gain access. There was a judge that gave him access, Judge Keva Landrum. And after that, Karen Herman, the chief Judge, had come back to the court and finally allowed members of the public and news media to access those proceedings by Zoom. The other thing that was happening was that the municipal court was closed entirely. They were conducting proceedings by Zoom, but only for those people that were incarcerated. We were given instant access, literally the day we asked, municipal court Chief Judge Sean Early, which we commend him for in the report. But then municipal court demanded that users of the court - that means traffic court users and users of the municipal court, really the lowest of infractions, which is trespass - they were required to come back to court. As of June 1st, there was no zoom access for them whatsoever.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
