New Orleans, state to help pay judgment
Louisiana and New Orleans leaders agreed Tuesday to help the New Orleans district attorney pay a costly racial discrimination judgment incurred after the office’s embattled former head fired 35 white workers and one Latino and replaced them with African Americans.
The $3.4-million judgment stemmed from the actions of former Orleans Parish Dist. Atty. Eddie Jordan, the first African American elected to the position. He resigned last month as state officials contemplated a takeover of his troubled office, which had come under heavy criticism for failing to bring killers to justice and stem a surge in violent crime after Hurricane Katrina.
After a federal jury found in 2005 that Jordan had fired dozens of investigators and support staff based on their race, Jordan refused to set aside money for the verdict and fought a losing fight to have it overturned. He eventually asked for help from city and state leaders, but they refused. The impasse led frustrated attorneys for the fired workers to try to seize the office’s bank accounts in recent weeks -- a move that threatened to prevent prosecutors from getting paid.
“In order to have a safer city, we must have a criminal justice system that is operating at full capacity,” Mayor C. Ray Nagin said during a Tuesday news conference, taking pains to characterize the city’s contribution as a way to keep the district attorney’s office in business, not a bailout.
Under the deal announced Tuesday, New Orleans leaders agreed to provide $1 million, state officials agreed to contribute $1.6 million and the district attorney’s office promised to put up $300,000.
The state’s portion of the settlement still has to be approved by legislators.
That amounts to $2.9 million, $500,000 less than the workers were supposed to receive. Officials involved in the negotiations believed it would be sufficient to settle the case.
Keva Landrum-Johnson, the acting district attorney, said that the agreement by state and city leaders to help pay the bulk of the settlement should allow prosecutors to focus on their jobs.
“Our office had been plagued by the threat that there would be a cease in our operations,” Landrum-Johnson said during the news conference.
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