Jim Beam column: Delayed justice disrupts lives

Published 7:21 am Saturday, August 2, 2025

Two of the most disturbing news stories I have read in a long time deal with the slow pace of major criminal justice cases in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

“Longing for justice,” the New Orleans story, said long delays in New Orleans inflict years of anguish on families of murder victims.

“Drowning in murder cases” was the headline on the Baton Rouge story. It said the capital city’s court has adopted improvements, but it still faces funding challenges.

Jillian Kramer and Jeff Adelson of The Advocate | The Times-Picayune spent more than a year investigating how long it takes homicide cases to move through New Orleans. It involved the analysis of tens of thousands of court records for 916 murder and manslaughter defendants over the last decade.

The reporters used records from the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court and the 19^th Judicial District Court. They built a database of every person who faced a charge of murder or manslaughter (578 cases) in Baton Rouge from Jan. 1, 2018, to Dec. 31, 2024, a seven-year period.

The Orleans Parish Criminal District Court takes nearly three years, on average, to close its cases from arrest to disposition — triple the time court authorities say it should take to resolve felonies. In the last decade, the analysis shows only 49 cases, or about 1 in 13, closed within that one-year mark.

Thirty-nine cases idled for more than six years. And the reporters said chronic delays have no one cause or culprit. Here are some of the many reasons:

Staffing shortages, funding gaps, neglected DNA tests, a debilitating backlog at the state’s only mental hospital for criminal defendants, and judges inattentive to the chronic swirl of dysfunction and its cost.

Another disturbing report said similar problems exist in courts across Louisiana, which are among the slowest in the country.

An executive director of a New Orleans court watch organization said, “The amount of time it takes to close a homicide case in New Orleans is an unconscionable failure.”

The reporters said families of murder victims are caught in a grinding cycle of trauma and grief as they return again and again to courtrooms, desperate for closure.

They aren’t the only losers. Murder defendants presumed innocent by the law until proven guilty, are stripped of their rights to a speedy trial. They end up spending a long time in jail cells.

Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams agrees it takes too long to try cases. “It’s too long for grieving families and too long for my prosecutors.”

Baton Rouge’s district courts take an average of three years to close its homicide cases — slower than nearly every other court in Louisiana and many in high-homicide cities nationwide.

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore’s office faced a backlog of about 250 open homicide cases as of April. “We’re drowning in murder cases,” he said.

Kenneth Odom didn’t live to see his son’s alleged killer brought to trial. He died six years after his son, Keith Odom, was fatally shot at a Baton Rouge truck stop.

Landry Michael Carter, the man accused of killing Keith Odom has yet to go to trial. It began in a courtroom in 2022, but the judge died. Two retired judges filled in until voters elected a judge more than two years later.

Similar stories have occurred in New Orleans. Taj Sullen watched two men charged in her son’s murder in the courtroom for years suffering from postponements. She came for their trial, but it was cancelled. One of them got out of jail by posting bail.

Sullen had moved from Houston to a West Bank hotel, but the long stay was draining her finances. On a recent call with a prosecutor in March, Sullen learned the trial would be pushed back another six months to Sept. 8. The private lab’s DNA analyst wasn’t available to testify.

A triggerman shot Sabastian Henry on Feb. 18, 2022. Sullen’s sixth child died before his 21^st birthday.

Sullen said of the defendant, “There’s just no justice for me. He’s getting more justice than me.”

It’s clearly evident that officials in the state’s criminal justice system and members of the Louisiana Legislature need to get their heads together and come up with some solutions for what is justice at its worst.

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at jim.beam.press@gmail.com.