After an outcry over New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan’s dropping the case against a man accused in last summer’s quintuple murder, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti agreed to investigate how the Orleans Parish prosecutor’s office deals with homicides and other violent offenses, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Mayor Ray Nagin requested the probe after homicide detectives located the lone witness in the case who the district attorney’s office claimed had disappeared. Councilwoman Shelley Midura asked Jordan to resign. Jordan refused.
Foti called his office’s evaluation of the district attorney’s shop a “systems review,” saying the probe could go back as far as 10 years. One observer questioned whether Foti’s office has the expertise to conduct what is essentially a “performance audit” of the district attorney. “Why not bring in someone like the national DAs association? Some entity that has done these type of performance audits before,” said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission. Although the attorney general is Louisiana’s highest-ranking lawyer, the office does not prosecute homicides or other violent crimes.
Link: http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/foti_to_conduct_a_review_of_ca.html