Today was the last day of our involvement in Project Triage, unless we figure out a way to contribute in the months to come. (All the participants feel: We finally know how to do this! Don’t stop now!)

This afternoon, I came across the file of a 52-year-old man who has been incarcerated for over a year for marijuana possession. It might make a difference to you to know that this was his first-ever arrest, as far as I could tell from his docket printout. After entering a not-guilty plea, he sat in jail for 6 months or so awaiting trial. The judge slated a competency hearing (believe it or not, in Louisiana, they still call these “lunacy hearings”) to take place in September, 2005, to determine whether he was mentally competent enough to stand trial. The hurricane struck, and there is no record of him beyond that. Which means he got shuffled off to another prison, god knows where, and his file (like so many others’ files) had just been kicking around til someone found it. So, even though today we “found” his file, it might not be as simple as a phone call – of the hundreds of cases our team of 50 has slogged through this week, his file is one of many “flagged” for review.

Another quickie: I came across a guy today who had been arrested for possession of crack. At his first court appearance, he said he was not guilty. And then the judge ordered him to pay fines and fees to the court and the indigents’ defense board. If you missed that, this means my spreadsheet entries looked like this:

COURT DATE SCHEDULED FOR:
First appearance
WHAT OCCURRED:
Pled not guilty
Sentenced

Needless to say our aptly designed database had not been designed to accommodate entries like “Pled not guilty; sentenced” on one court date.

Kesav, Laureve, Courtney, Annette, Tina, Jeb, Dan, Anna, and Christine all left today. That leaves me, Chris, Josie, and Susan to stir up some St. Patty's day trouble...