By Brendan McCarthy
Times-Picayune
NEW ORLEANS — After a year of back-and-forth wrangling, Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman and the American Civil Liberties Union have come to a resolution on a public records request for which Gusman initially demanded a $1.75 million payment.
The ACLU of Louisiana, which has repeatedly criticized and questioned conditions at Orleans Parish Prison, in February requested documents on prisoner deaths at the city jail. Gusman’s office demanded $1.75 million for the public records.
Now, after months of phone calls and a curtailed request, the sheriff is requesting $1,007 for the documents.
Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said the sheriff has not been forthcoming with records and suggested he is trying to hide details of jail conditions.
Esman said the importance of the records is underscored by two recent deaths: one of a 43-year-old woman who stopped breathing while in restraints inside the jail’s psychiatric unit, the other of a 54-year-old man who died in a holding cell hours after his arrest for public drunkenness.
Gusman was traveling outside the city and unavailable for comment Wednesday, a sheriff spokesman said.
Gusman’s attorney, T. Allen Ussry, said the ACLU had filed a vague and “extremely unreasonable” request for records.
Ussry said he met with sheriff’s department officials and had them calculate the hours it would take, including overtime, to fulfill the request. That factored into the initial $1.75 million estimate.
“We work with everybody, but we have a jail to run too,” he said.
Ussry said the ACLU dragged its feet in responding to his queries and that the group was responsible for the delays. He said he considered the matter resolved Wednesday.
In recent months, the ACLU obtained some of the requested documents electronically. The group also curtailed the scope of the request.
Esman said the reduced bill is still “excessive and unreasonable” but said she sent a check for the documents on Wednesday.
Though the jail lost accreditation by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care in recent years, Gusman has said he made improvements to get back to pre-Katrina standards. One of the commission’s key findings was that the jail lacked sufficient mental health personnel, employing one full-time psychiatrist and one part-time psychiatrist for a jail whose population typically exceeds 2,300 people.
Copyright 2009 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company