Human Rights

Testimonies of Evacuees

Profiles of individual prisoner evacuees and their families who either should have been released by now, or who were released long after they should have been.

• I. Arrestees who Were Never Sentenced  MELINDA BEANE 

Beane, the mother of two children, was arrested for receiving a positive drug test and then held on a warrant in a case that was subsequently dismissed. If Beane had had access to the courts, she would have been released as soon as the error was discovered, shortly after she was evacuated to Angola State prison. Instead, forty-eight days after she should have been released, Beane spoke to Human Rights Watch from the state prison. 
 
“My kids need me,” Beane said. “I’m not even supposed to be here!” Calling collect from a pay phone in the prison, she cried softly as she told Human Rights Watch about her nine-month-old baby girl and her fifteen-year-old son, taken in by her sister, after the storm. “Just tell my sister, if you speak to her, thank you,” she asked. 
 
Beane’s sister told Human Rights Watch: “All of my family members live in New Orleans. I wasn’t able to find out where they were, but once they arrived at the Astrodome [in Houston], my aunt made contact with my mother. I bought a plane ticket for my niece and nephew because they didn’t have their mother. I was under the impression that [my sister] was supposed to be released the weekend the hurricane hit. But once they transferred her, I just thought it was the hurricane that held it up. Now, it’s every time I call, ‘we don’t know.’ I get nothing, no information about why she’s still there. … I am really just at a point of confusion to the point where I can’t feel . . . I really don’t know anything, I just know her children need someone to care for them. I’m here as long as they need me. But it’s really frustrating, I get the run around [when I call], the prison sends me to the office, the office sends me to the DA [district attorney].” 
 
When Human Rights Watch asked her what she tells her sister’s son about when he will see his mother again, Beane’s sister sighed and said, “There’s nothing I can tell him, nothing I can do to comfort him … She’s been able to call a few times, and he’s gotten to hear her voice, so that’s some comfort.” 
 
CORNELL CHAPMAN 
Cornell Chapman is twenty years old. He was arrested in May 2005, one week before his son was born, for a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm within the New Orleans city limits. He was unable to make bail and had spent several months in Orleans Parish Prison before Hurricane Katrina hit. He was evacuated to Rapides Parish Detention Center in Alexandria, Louisiana. 
 
“My girl just had my little one,” Chapman said from the parish prison, where Human Rights Watch interviewed him. “I need to be with my family right now. . . . They leave us in the blind, give us no kind of information. . . . We’ve been through hell and they [corrections officials] don’t care anything about it.” After evacuating New Orleans and relocating to Tallahassee, Florida, Chapman’s girlfriend, Melanie Tucker, searched for information about him on the Internet. It took her three weeks—as it did for most families because information about inmates was not fully available until three weeks after the storm—to find out that he was okay and being held at Rapides. Tucker borrowed the $3,500 needed to post bond for Chapman, called the clerk of the court in Alexandria, where Rapides is located, who told her that she could come up and post bond, and located a bail bondsman in Alexandria. On October 5, Tucker boarded a bus with her four-month-old son to go back to Louisiana to post Chapman’s bond. That night, she handed over the bond money to the bail bondsman. But the next morning, he came by to tell her that he could not get Chapman out because he was not licensed in New Orleans. “I called the clerk,” Tucker said. “I went to Alexandria to do this because that’s where he is.” None of the criminal defense attorneys working on bond issues for prisoner evacuees could explain why the court refused to accept bond from the local bail bondsman. 
 
On her way back on the bus to Tallahassee, someone stole over $3,000 of the bond money from her purse as Tucker was throwing out the baby’s diaper. She arrived home at 4:45 in the morning on Friday, October 8. When she spoke with Human Rights Watch that day, she said: “It is a hurting feeling because he hasn’t been able to see his son yet. I am really aggravated, but I’m trying to do everything I possibly can do. All the way for nothing, and all the way back here.” 
 
“If you ever have a chance to talk to him,” she said to the lawyer from Human Rights Watch, “Will you tell him I love him?” 
 
TRENT FAISON 
Faison was arrested in New Orleans just before the hurricane and charged with public drunkenness. He was held in Orleans Parish Prison and was evacuated after the hurricane to the Caddo Correction Center, a state facility. He remains locked in the prison six weeks after his arrest. He has never been convicted, nor has he ever appeared before a judge on this charge. 
 
JOHN RUST 
John Rust was arrested on August 26, 2005, on a 2004 warrant for failing to appear in court on an outstanding charge. Rust states that he was never informed of the court date—a fact confirmed by the docket master report from the Orleans Parish Criminal district court. But Rust never got to explain this because of hurricane Katrina. 
 
His wife, Jenny, was not able to locate him until September 11th. She subsequently paid a lawyer a thousand dollars for his release, but, as of October 11, he was still being held. As she explained to Human Rights Watch: 
 
“I paid a thousand dollars for a lawyer who told me last week he’d be out between Friday and Monday. Now tomorrow is Monday and its Columbus day, they’re not gonna open the courts and let him out! I just got through calling the prison and found out he’s been moved again! Believe me I know there are real criminals out there, but its like, If you were out there in an orange suit you’re all criminals. Your life wasn’t worth anything… some people after the hurricane were getting tremendous help, other people got worse than nothing. It’s been 45 days since he’s been gone, and I made myself a calendar of it, and living through the hurricane without him. It’s been hell. We’ve lost our home, we had no insurance, we lost everything. Now I just have these four walls and a telephone.” 
 
MICHAEL BANE 
Michael Bane is a seventy-year-old homeless man. He was arrested on August 13, 2005 in New Orleans on three municipal offenses: obstructing a public passage, public intoxication, and begging. The judge set bond for Bane at $300 on each of these charges, but he did not have the money to pay the bond, so he remained in Orleans Parish Prison awaiting an appearance before a judge. Had he had access to a court after the storm, he would likely have been released 10 days from the date he’d been arrested.  
 

• II. Those Whose Sentences Have Expired but Are Not Yet Released  
   

MARK PRITCHARD 
Pritchard was arrested on August 25, 2005 in New Orleans for missing an appointment to take a drug test, a violation of his probation on a conviction for a first offense misdemeanor marijuana possession. He was sentenced to five days and should have been released August 30th. He was moved from Orleans Parish Prison to Claiborne Detention Center, a state facility. 
 
Human Rights Watch spoke to Pritchard’s wife, who relocated to the Midwest with their children after Katrina. She spoke from the hotel room where she is now living: 
 
“We started calling [Orleans Parish Prison] before we left the state before the hurricane to determine that they were going to release those who were supposed to be released that week. They told us, ‘No we’re not releasing anyone. [After the storm] I was agonizing over where [my husband] could possibly be, my little nephew, too. We found both of them. [After I found him] I called the 1-800 number [the DOC had set up for families] but I feel like I have been beating my head against a wall. . . . Everyday it’s the same thing, they don’t know when he’ll be released. . . . Of course the kids wonder where their father is, but what answers can you give them? They just take it one day at a time. That’s for all of us. . . . They keep telling us they are releasing them as soon as possible, and when another week goes by, and I ask why they [the prison that is holding her husband] haven’t released him. ‘It’s a process,’ they say, ‘we would love to let him go, but we don’t have an order [from the court].’ People look at them [prisoners like her husband] that they’ve done wrong, but you have to look at the human side of things. They have done wrong, but now they are scheduled to be released. They should be released. I have no magic words, other than it is an injustice. . . . Believe it or not, this is what they told me they were doing, people have been released alphabetically. [B]ut there are so many of them.” 
 
VINCENT CHAIKEN 
On August 15, 2003, Vincent Chaiken, sixty-five years old, was arrested in New Orleans and held at Orleans Parish Prison on two municipal charges: public drunkenness and sleeping on public property. He was sentenced to 21 days in jail, and therefore should have been released within the first few days of September. Although he was transferred to Hoyle Rehabilitation Center, a state correctional facility, he is not listed on any official lists of prisoner evacuees from the Orleans Parish Prison transferred to state facilities. He was only discovered because, in the weeks following the mass evacuation, teams of attorneys visited each prisoner evacuee held in custody to determine their status.