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Courtroom clerk staffers in New Orleans dig by landfill to seek out wrongly tossed courtroom data
By Debra Cassens Weiss
August 14, 2025, 9:26 am CDT
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry speaks with reporters outdoors the U.S. Supreme Courtroom constructing in Washington, D.C., on March 18, 2024. (Picture by Francis Chung/Politico by way of the Related Press)
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has ordered the Louisiana State Police to analyze why legal courtroom data had been tossed right into a landfill, forcing legal clerk of courtroom staffers to wade by the particles final week to get well them.
“This can be a disgusting abuse of energy and a slap within the face to crime victims,” Landry mentioned on X, previously often called Twitter.
NOLA.com has protection.
Movies shared on-line present employees standing in particles whereas recovering mangled paperwork, the Related Press studies. Darren Lombard, clerk of the legal district courtroom, mentioned he labored with workers members to dig by the rubbish, however not all of the paperwork had been recovered.
“The final day we had been on the market, it stormed a bit, so we recovered nearly every thing we might,” he advised WWL-TV.
Lombard mentioned the Louisiana secretary of state’s workplace has a course of in place for lacking or destroyed paperwork that can be used if a wanted doc can’t be discovered. The tossed paperwork had been from the Nineteen Fifties to the Nineteen Seventies.
The tossed Orleans Parish paperwork included case appeals, docket books and proof logs in instances of homicide, rape and armed theft, in keeping with NOLA.com. Felony data should be completely retained within the parish.
The paperwork had been being positioned inside trailers at a Division of Public Works upkeep yard as a result of the legal courtroom clerk’s workplace doesn’t have adequate storage, mentioned Joe Risk, the New Orleans chief administrative officer, in an interview with NOLA.com. The paperwork had been discarded when public works staffers had been cleansing out the trailers from the Federal Emergency Administration Company.
The town has reached a lease to purchase settlement for a brand new website to retailer all courtroom paperwork, Risk mentioned.
GETTING HANDS DIRTY: These are movies of Orleans Parish Legal Clerk Darren Lombard’s workers…digging by a landfill…For courtroom data that metropolis staff wrongly dumped final week.@FOX8NOLA pic.twitter.com/WTvZI86U4c— Chris Joseph (@ChrisJosephNews) August 5, 2025
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