Prison Justice
Court docket clerk staffers in New Orleans dig by landfill to search out wrongly tossed courtroom information
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry speaks with reporters exterior the U.S. Supreme Court docket constructing in Washington, D.C., on March 18, 2024. (Photograph by Francis Chung/Politico by way of the Related Press)
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has ordered the Louisiana State Police to research why felony courtroom information have been tossed right into a landfill, forcing felony clerk of courtroom staffers to wade by the particles final week to get better them.
“It is a disgusting abuse of energy and a slap within the face to crime victims,” Landry stated on X, previously often called Twitter.
NOLA.com has protection.
Movies shared on-line present staff standing in particles whereas recovering mangled paperwork, the Associated Press reviews. Darren Lombard, clerk of the felony district courtroom, stated he labored with employees members to dig by the rubbish, however not all of the paperwork have been recovered.
“The final day we have been on the market, it stormed a bit, so we recovered nearly all the pieces we might,” he instructed WWL-TV.
Lombard stated the Louisiana secretary of state’s workplace has a course of in place for lacking or destroyed paperwork that might be used if a wanted doc can’t be discovered. The tossed paperwork have been from the Fifties to the Nineteen Seventies.
The tossed Orleans Parish paperwork included case appeals, docket books and proof logs in instances of homicide, rape and armed theft, in response to NOLA.com. Felony information should be completely retained within the parish.
The paperwork have been being positioned inside trailers at a Division of Public Works upkeep yard as a result of the felony courtroom clerk’s workplace doesn’t have enough storage, stated Joe Risk, the New Orleans chief administrative officer, in an interview with NOLA.com. The paperwork have been discarded when public works staffers have been cleansing out the trailers from the Federal Emergency Administration Company.
Town has reached a lease to purchase settlement for a brand new web site to retailer all courtroom paperwork, Risk stated.
GETTING HANDS DIRTY:
These are movies of Orleans Parish Prison Clerk Darren Lombard’s employees
…digging by a landfill…
For courtroom information that metropolis staff wrongly dumped final week.@FOX8NOLA pic.twitter.com/WTvZI86U4c
— Chris Joseph (@ChrisJosephNews) August 5, 2025
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