As seen on the newswires:
An angry New Orleans judge said on Friday that next month he would start freeing people held in jail without trial because the legal system was in “shambles” after Hurricane Katrina.
Facing a shortage of public defenders due to a lack of funding, some poor defendants who cannot afford their own lawyers have been left in jail without trial or proper representation. District Court Judge Arthur Hunter ruled that was unconstitutional.
“If we are still part of the United States and if the Constitution still means something, then why is the criminal justice system 11 months after Hurricane Katrina still in shambles?” he said in an emergency order.[.]
He ordered that on August 29, a year since Katrina hit, defendants whose cases had not gone to trial be released on a case-by-case basis.
The article mentions that the ruling only applies to cases on this particular judge’s docket.
Considering just how much of a mess the preparations and aftermath of Katrina were, this is sadly not too surprising to me. You’d think, however, that provisions/legislation would be made so that in the future, when a catastrophe takes out a region’s legal system, that there would be some support for at-least-temporarily bringing in staff from outside the affected region, or “virtualizing” some processes to permit (for example) justice-by-webcam.