New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams recently announced his office will not be prosecuting simple possession of certain drugs, even as NOPD Chief Ferguson says his officers are going to continue to make those arrests. How is that expected to work? Will it make citizens any safer? Newell invited Rafael Goyeneche from the Metropolitan Crime Commission onto the program Wednesday morning to explain.
“Raffy, we knew there was going to be a difference of opinion as to how this was going to work out, and knew there would be a lack of interest from this DA to prosecute these crimes,” Newell began.
“The objective is achieving public safety while not violating anybody's constitutional rights,” Goyenecha said. “But some of this DA’s policies have me scratching my head, because a lot of his positions are based on absolutes. He's not gonna prosecute drug possession cases, he's never going to prosecute a juvenile as an adult, he's never going to invoke the habitual offender statute. And he was critical of prior DAs that allegedly always invoked the habitual offender statute, always prosecuted juveniles as adults, and always prosecuted drug possession cases. If he's right about that, then all of those prosecutors were wrong for always doing things a certain way - just as it is, I think, equally inappropriate that he never uses those same tools that are available to prosecutors. Sometimes the only juveniles that can be prosecuted as an adult are the juveniles that commit serious crimes of violence - murder, attempted murder, and rape - and to say that you're never going to prosecute those individuals as an adult removes an important tool in balancing public safety.
“It’s the same thing with the habitual offender statute,” Goyeneche continued. “We saw that raise its head in the Michael Davis case. Before the last time I was on, you had the mother of officer Chris Russell testify in that case. Davis was serving a life sentence for being part of a robbery crew that robbed the Tango Bar, and when officer Chris Russell responded to that call for service, he was shot in the head and killed, and the shooter was convicted of a murder and was serving a life sentence. The other three members of the crew were prosecuted for armed robbery. Two of the three pled guilty and were sentenced to 15 and 25 years. Prosecutors did not offer a deal like that to Michael Davis, they went to trial, convicted him, and a new trial was awarded in the case, even though it's not a Ramos case and the Supreme court decision didn't apply.”
“The District Attorney's office is never going to object to motions for trials, and the by-product of that is Michael Davis went from a life sentence to prosecutors agreeing to an 18 year sentence. And is that justice? Whether you're always going to do something, or you're never going to do something, I think both are equally inappropriate. There has to be some balance to achieve maximum desired results, and never prosecuting drug possession cases does not take into consideration the criminal background of would-be offenders. You know as a former police officer and head of the JPSO, sometimes you make a drug case and that's a violent offender. Those offenders are treated and decisions are made by prosecutors on a case by case basis, not just on the offense, but on the offender's criminal history. And apparently that's not something that's being taken into consideration with respect to drug possession cases by this DA.”
“It's obvious that there's a connection between drug use and crimes,” Newell said. “We see that all the time, you’ve got to look at the whole picture. I don't know how they believe that this is a good move in order to bring about a crime reduction strategy. We in law enforcement have worked hard to break down the barriers and silos within our own organizations, to make sure that the narcotics division is open and transparent and completely communicating with the burglary division or the robbery division or others, because we're often looking for the same characters.”
“All right. So go back to the Mitch Landrieu administration when New Orleans was experiencing an astronomical homicide rate,” Goyeneche said. “One of the ways that they attacked that homicide rate was to recognize that there were a number of violent drug organizations that were fueling the shootings and homicides. So they created a MAG unit - a multi-agency gang task force - to identify the most violent drug gangs. JSPSO was a part of that because some of those drug gangs were active in Jefferson Parish too. And some of them were prosecuted in Jefferson Parish. And as those gangs were identified, prosecuted and convicted, we saw the homicide rates and the shooting rates go down and the violent crime rates go down.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
