Snippets From Angola By-Julie H. Kilborn

Attorney Julie Kilborn has been interviewing inmates has been interviewing prisoners at Angola in support of LACDL and LAPDA's efforts to locate evacuated inmates, connect them with their displaced lawyers and ensure their cases do not fall through the cracks. She posted the following on the LACDL list serve today (9-16-05)

Here's a small snippet of some of the stories I have heard from the 150+ female inmates from OPP now at Angola that I have talked to over 3 days earlier this week. These women have been incarcerated now for almost 3 weeks, and most have had no contact with any of their family, have no idea if their loved ones survived the storm or if they evacuated safety and to where:

- 3 who had bonded out but were not released from OPP either because of the storm curfew or because the phones went down.

- a 55-year-old lady who has never been in jail before, was taking her 34-year-old son to the store on the Sunday before the storm. Her son is severely mentally handicap and has a 7-year-old mental capacity. Inmate does not drink. Was arrested in the parking lot for public intoxication. As she was being put into the police car, the last she saw was her MR son walking away yelling "mama!" She does not know where her son took shelter from the storm, or even if he survived. She has no way of finding him. She has no idea why she was arrested for public intoxication.

- 38-year-old lady who has never been in jail before, was walking to her car after work when several men approached her asking her where the "stuff" is, apparently mistaking her for a drug dropoff person. As she was telling them she doesn't have anything, police swarmed all over, searching her and her car demanding to know where the dope was. When no dope was found, the police arrested her for prostitution.

- One who was arrested for public intoxication and obstruction of a public place -- the "public place" being her own driveway.

- At least 4 who were arrested just before the storm on 5-6 year-old warrants from misdemeanor charges they had already done their time on but that had not been removed from the computers. At least one of these 4 was stopped for a traffic violation and arrested when she was run on the computer; police did NOT write a traffic citation.

- 4-month pregnant inmate was severely sunburned on her head, face and neck from having to sit under the sun on the bridge waiting to be evacuated. She is now experiencing cramps in her lower abdomen.

- One whose charge for misdemeanor was dismissed on the Friday before the storm but she was never released because "the paper didn't make it out of the courtroom."


Julie H. Kilborn