Thread by @propublica

For more than a decade, the all-white judges of a Louisiana appellate court ignored thousands of petitions filed by prisoners, most of them Black, who claimed they had been wrongly convicted.

Efforts to expose the injustice went unheard. (THREAD)

propublica.org/article/louisi…

2/ In Louisiana, all such 'pro se' (that’s Latin for "for oneself") petitions must be reviewed by 3-judge panels.

“It got somewhat cumbersome to have to select 3-judge panels for every writ, because you’d get hundreds of them,” said a longtime law clerk to Judge Edward Dufresne.

3/ So, at a 1994 meeting of the judges of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal in Jefferson Parish, Dufresne proposed a plan to streamline the process: A 3-judge panel would no longer rule on pro se applications.

Instead, Dufresne would oversee them himself.
propublica.org/article/louisi…

4/ In reality, Dufresne would delegate handling of these applications to an employee.

None of the judges would ever lay eyes on the prisoners' claims.
propublica.org/article/louisi…

5/ The judges' decision on that day would ultimately affect more than 5,000 prisoners whose claims went unreviewed.

The change was briefly noted in the meeting minutes between notes about upgrading the court's IT system and approving the rental of a new copier.

6/ Jerrold Peterson, a high-level court official, developed a system to dispense with prisoners’ applications speedily.

He drew up 15 brief rulings — ambiguous enough to fit a wide range of claims.
propublica.org/article/louisi…

7/ Peterson later wrote that Dufresne would sign off on the rulings “without so much as a glance.”

“Not one criminal writ application filed by an inmate pro se has been reviewed by a judge on the court.”

8/ To create the appearance of a proper review, former staffers said Dufresne formed a “pro se committee” of 3 judges who lent their names to Peterson’s rulings.
When a committee member retired, they would be replaced by another judge.

9/ Even though 5th Circuit judges were no longer reviewing these petitions, the court was still collecting fees for each application — and using that money for the court’s' benefit, said former staffers:

10/ On May 19, 2007, Dufresne — who had long since risen to the court's top seat — summoned Peterson to his office, where it became clear Peterson was soon to be fired for intervening in a case unrelated to the pro se scheme he'd overseen for more than a decade.

11/ “Jerry thought he was one of them,” a former colleague said. “He thought he was unfireable because he knew all the court’s secrets.”

Now, some of the same judges who asked him to break the law were dismissing him for what struck him as comparatively small-scale misconduct.

12/ He drafted a letter: “Who's integrity is really in question when you have conveniently ignored your duty to review pro se criminal writ applications so you can reduce your workload, present a false picture of the court’s work, and charge large sums for work you haven’t done?”

13/ Peterson was confident his accusations would prompt a major investigation.

But he underestimated the determination of the state’s legal establishment to protect its own.

Read the full story here:
propublica.org/article/louisi…

14/ Dufresne remained the court’s chief judge until his death in 2010. His obituary didn’t mention the pro se scheme.

In St. Charles Parish, there’s a Judge Edward Dufresne Parkway, a Dufresne Loop and an Edward Dufresne Community Center, where a life-size bronze statue stands.