By John Simerman
NOLA.com
NEW ORLEANS — Embattled Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman spent more than four hours on the witness stand in federal court on Thursday, weathering questions over his ability to run a legal jail.
Then he took a few minutes lambasting Mayor Mitch Landrieu; defending his stewardship of a dangerous jail facility; and trying to explain his apparently vague memory of a scathing video showing inmates carousing in and out of jail, and why he never turned the tape over to the district attorney.
Gusman, whose memory of the tape while on the witness stand proved sketchy - he couldn’t remember the scene of an inmate roaming Bourbon Street, or that of a long-barreled handgun being unloaded in a prison cell - said he could barely see the images.
He watched the tape on a “very small screen,” he said to reporters, holding finger and thumb a few inches apart. “It wasn’t much that I saw.”