THREAD: Local news reports that Biden is nominating a former judge, Keva Landrum-Johnson, to be U.S. Attorney in New Orleans. A few years ago, we uncovered that Judge Landrum-Johnson was running a modern day debtors' prison. The story is shocking. (1)
Judge Landrum-Johnson and other judges were illegally jailing very poor people in New Orleans if they couldn't pay debts. They even created a "Collections Department" inside the court to illegally collect debts! When our clients couldn't pay, they were caged. It gets worse. (2)
Judge Landrum-Johnson and other judges took a cut of the profits to run their courts, creating an unconstitutional financial conflict of interest that destroyed whatever "neutrality" they were supposed to have as judges. It gets worse. (3)
The violations of constitutional rights were so egregious that the federal court in New Orleans issued a judgment against Judge Landrum-Johnson and other judges declaring that they were violating the basic 14th Amendment rights of some of the poorest people in New Orleans. (4)
Judge Landrum-Johnson appealed, and a unanimous federal appeals court held that her financial conflict of interest violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the simple due process right to a neutral judge. (5)
For years, Judge Landrum-Johnson and other judges devastated thousands of lives in New Orleans, overwhelmingly Black and indigent people. They then fought us @CivRightsCorps for years in federal court as we tried to stop them. Read about our case here: civilrightscorps.org/work/criminali… (6)
To my knowledge, this would be the first U.S. Attorney ever to serve after a federal court judgment finding that they were rampantly violating federal constitutional rights. And *this* is the person that elite politicians want to appoint to "enforce the law." (end)
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