QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Hugo Holland captures everything that’s wrong with the criminal-justice system in Louisiana."
Lawyer G. Ben Cohen: Promise of Justice Initiative;
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COMMENTARY: "How a fired prosecutor became the most powerful law enforcement official in Louisiana." by Radley Balko, published by The Washington Post on November 2, 2107. (Radley Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces.)
GIST: "This past June, the Louisiana legislature passed 10 bills tackling sentencing reform, prisoner rehabilitation, and related criminal-justice reforms. The New York Times editorial board called the effort “one of the most ambitious criminal-justice reform packages in the country.” The reforms took effect recently, and supporters cite a Pew Charitable Trusts study that claims that the bills will reduce the state’s prison population by 10 percent over the next 10 years. There’s a good case to be made that the bills are historic. The state’s incarceration rate is about double the national average. If it were an independent country, Louisiana would lead the world in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizens. And even as much of the rest of the country began moving toward decarceration years ago, up until this recent series of bills, Louisiana only continued to get more punitive. So any move toward decreasing the state’s prison population would be a landmark shift in strategy. But some defense attorneys and reform advocates say that all is not as rosy it seems in Louisiana. They say the state could have done a lot more, and see the reform package as a missed opportunity. “Louisiana leads the country in incarceration,” says G. Ben Cohen, a defense attorney who takes cases in Louisiana through the nonprofit Promise of Justice Initiative. “And after these bills, it will still lead the country in incarceration.” Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) and the package’s supporters are at least a little more optimistic — they say that after 10 years, the new laws will put the state at No. 2. But the skeptics also say that the state could have done more if weren’t for the one man who is almost single-handedly holding up real criminal-justice reform: Hugo Holland, an old-school prosecutor formerly of the DA’s office that at one point led the state in death sentences. Holland is arguably the most powerful prosecutor in Louisiana, which is odd given that not only has he never run for office, he isn’t even officially a full-time state employee. In fact, Holland was forced to resign his position as an assistant district attorney for Caddo Parish in 2012. He and another prosecutor were caught falsifying federal forms in order to procure a cache of M-16s for themselves through the Pentagon program that give surplus military gear to police departments. According to pay records obtained by the Promise of Justice Initiative and shared with The Watch, almost immediately after he was fired, Holland was re-hired by parishes all over the state as a part-time prosecutor. Some DAs have given him their most serious and high-profile cases — death penalty cases in particular. In fact, by 2015, thanks to those freelance gigs, Holland had doubled the salary he was earning when he resigned. Perhaps more importantly, Holland has also been hired by the Louisiana District Attorneys Association — with public funding — to persuade state legislators to vote against criminal-justice reform. So far, he has successfully scuttled momentum to end the death penalty in Louisiana, and persuaded lawmakers to divert money from indigent defendants in death penalty cases. He was less successful in killing the reforms passed in June, but some reform advocates say he did persuade lawmakers to vote down the reforms that most worried prosecutors. “Hugo Holland captures everything that’s wrong with the criminal-justice system in Louisiana,” says Cohen. And his sudden ascendance and popularity with prosecutors has some activists worried that the state’s taste for reform may be short-lived. (Read on at the link below to find out why Balko concludes the punitive, law-and-order school still isn’t dead in Louisiana but lives on in Hugo , why Balko concludes that Holland's firing five years ago appears to have freed him to become one of the most influential law enforcement officials in Louisiana - and what Balko says the Rodricus Crawford case says about Louisiana's criminal justice system. HL);
The entire commentary can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
