THREAD: Biden is reportedly nominating a former judge, Keva Landrum, to be U.S. Atty in New Orleans. The history of this judge’s illegal behavior and violent crimes will shock you to the core.
A few years ago, we uncovered that Judge Landrum was running a modern day debtors' prison. The things I saw during this investigation have haunted me ever since. The story of corruption is hard to believe.
Judge Landrum and other judges were jailing very poor people in New Orleans if they couldn't pay debts. They created a "Collections Department" inside the court to illegally collect debt. When our clients couldn't pay, they were caged in unbearable conditions. It gets worse.
Judge Landrum 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.
The judges even used some of these profits they extorted from the poorest people in New Orleans (disproportionately Black) on benefits for themselves and their spouses. Even the District Attorney wrote a letter asking the State Attorney General to prosecute the judges.
This scheme violated many laws, but among the most basic principles: the U.S. Constitution forbids a judge from putting a human being in a cage solely because the person cannot make a cash payment. And yet it happened every day for years. It's how Landrum and others did business.
For years, Judge Landrum 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…
What did this mean? Mothers and fathers separated from their families. People forced to sell blood plasma to pay their debts. Debtors brutalized in filthy jail cells without sunlight, fresh air, exercise, and medical care.
The violations of constitutional rights were so egregious that the federal court in New Orleans issued a judgment against Judge Landrum and other judges declaring that they were violating the basic 14th Amendment rights of some of the poorest people in New Orleans.
After she lost, Judge Landrum chose to appeal to try to preserve her financial conflict of interest. But 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.
Although Landrum lost this civil case, both federal and state prosecutors ultimately decided that they would let the criminal offenses of the judges go. I’ve written a lot about how our legal system only chooses to prosecute *some* crimes by *some* people. yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
That's just one example. The Supreme Court reversed a conviction because Landrum helped DAs discriminate against Black jurors. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan took an unusual step of writing separately to call out Landrum’s behavior. theappeal.org/landrum-new-or…
And there’s much more: few people have amassed as long and as monstrous a record of fighting to keep innocent people in prison as Judge Landrum. This post by a longtime official with the Innocent Project describes many examples from Judge Landrum’s career. facebook.com/story.php?stor…
In one of the most heartbreaking stories, Landrum fought to keep an innocent teenager, Kia Stewart, in prison in horrific conditions for 10 years before he was exonerated. She ignored evidence of innocence to keep Robert Jones away from his family for an additional 8 years.
And there’s more. Landrum was a key prosecutor in the DA Office at a time when we now know from internal docs, court rulings, and prison data that the office used fake subpoenas, illegally jailed crime victims to coerce testimony, routinely hid evidence of innocence.
Over a period of years as a DA and a judge, Landrum presided over the greatest expansion of caging Black people in modern history, as New Orleans became the world leader in human caging of Black people and poor people. She made a lot of money for the bail industry and others.
Stories like this are important. They show how powerful people reward people willing to do monstrous things for them. And if we don’t make noise, the cycle of corruption will continue. To my knowledge, Biden has never publicly been asked about this corrupt nomination.
It isn’t too late to do something. For some reason (perhaps you can guess by now), it appears that Landrum's background check hasn’t been completed. And key members of the Senate who confirm nominees can be educated about her horrific history of criminality and injustice.
To my knowledge, Landrum would be the first U.S. Atty ever to serve after a court judgment that they violated federal constitutional rights. And *this* is the person that elite politicians advising Biden want to appoint to "enforce the law." People must know about it. (end)
As others have pointed out, despite this record of unethical and criminal conduct, the law firm @DeutschKerrigan in New Orleans chose to hire Landrum earlier this year and @WWLTV apparently uses her as a legal analyst. Do they know about this and not care? deutschkerrigan.com/professionals/…
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