Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
ACLU Presents:
Katrina - Broken Promises:
Katherine #3
Katherine Mattes/Deputy Director of the Tulane Law School Criminal Clinic
KM: The state does have legal obligations, of course, to provide them with shelter, food
and medical care. But, of course, there are some very basic constitutional rights that
were violated. You have the right to have a speedy trial. You have the right to have
a counsel. You have the right to appear before a magistrate or a judge. In so many of these
instances, all of these rights were violated . We learned from this that in order to exercise
your right to have a speedy trial, in order to exercise all of these other important rights,
such as your right to confront witnesses, you have to have a lawyer there. You have
to have a voice who can speak for you. Unless you have that lawyer, no one is out there
to say: "Hello I'm here. You know, I'm entitled to have these things". So many of the other
constitutional rights, which we value in our society, are dependant on having counsel.
The public defender's office prior to Katrina didn't have any kind of system, any kind of
information system, that told them who their client's were. They didn't have the names
of their clients. So there's no way for them to go and say: "Well, where is John Smith"?
"You didn't see John Smith?" "Oh, we found him in Alexandria." "He was supposed to be
released a month ago." "Oh, well, we'll follow through on that." There was no way to do that
because they didn't have that kind of a system in place before the hurricane. After, of course,
Katrina with the public defender's office dissolve , you didn't have access to a lawyer;
you went in there, got into court and so some of your other constitutional rights were ignored,
or there was no one there to voice them for you or to assert them for you.
ACLU FOR MORE STORIES AND TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CIVIL
LIBERTIES TWO YEARS AFTER KATRINA, GO TO:
WWW.ACLU.ORG/BROKENPROMISES