“It’s a difficult time at the Orleans Public Defenders. A big portion of our budget comes from traffic tickets and court fees, which means that if people aren’t getting speeding tickets and our own clients aren’t being convicted, we have to make hard cuts, like cutting our expert fund, which pays for services like DNA testing and psychiatric exams – services that people with money can pay for themselves.
For example, this is Emmanuel Benjamin. He was 17 when he was accused of firing a gun at a Mardi Gras parade, a very serious offense. It’s a Mardi Gras parade, it’s chaos. People are running everywhere, hiding or trying to get away. Emmanuel, he was there with family but with a group of friends at the time, and just like everyone else, when he heard the shot he ran. Then, an officer said, ‘I saw him. This is the person that fired the gun.’ The gun went off at least 5 blocks away from where Emmanuel was stopped. But this officer said that he was sure.
When I met Emmanuel he said, 'I was there. I ran. But I didn’t do it.’ He played football at his high school, got good grades, and had never been in serious trouble. But, that kind of crime has a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 3 years, and a trial would come down to this one police officer saying he was somehow certain it was Emmanuel, and us saying there’s no way he could really be sure it was him.
But the expert fund changed everything. It paid for us to send the gun for DNA testing, and guess what? Someone’s DNA was on it, but it wasn’t Emmanuel’s. It could not have been him, and the officer was just plain wrong – but with this test, now we could prove it! Emmanuel’s case was dismissed and he didn’t have to go to trial risking 3-15 years of his teenage life, because we could fund a simple DNA test.
This service vanished because of our insecure funding structure – and sure, staff is furloughed and that’s uncomfortable and hard for many people. But what each one of those people cares about is how it’s affecting our clients. Emmanuel straight up did not do it, and an entire year and half of his high school life was spent worrying about going to prison for something that he didn’t do.” #nolabeings
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