NEW ORLEANS — Seventeen months ago, when Edward Augustine was arrested with what the police said were marijuana and crack cocaine in his pocket and a handgun in his waistband, he seemed like just another run-of-the-mill drug suspect: easy to prosecute, easy to lock up.
But two months later, the floodwaters rushed through the labyrinth of evidence rooms in the courthouse basement, scattering tens of thousands of items and leaving a fetid mess. When Augustine finally came to trial late last month, the authorities could no longer find the three things they needed most: the small bag of marijuana, the rocks of crack and the gun. The judge threw out the case, and Augustine walked free.
As the judge, Lynda Van Davis, put it, Augustine, 18, had lucked out. But he is not the only lucky defendant in New Orleans. As the city's criminal justice system slowly gears back up after Hurricane Katrina, as many as 500 defendants, mostly in drug, theft and assault cases, have been freed because of problems with evidence, including the difficulty in locating witnesses.
Law-enforcement officials say a few of those who were freed could potentially be violent — a cause for concern in a city battling a surge in drug-related murders. And some judges say that missing witnesses and damaged evidence, from spoiled DNA samples to rusted guns, will almost certainly lead to more acquittals, even in murder, rape and armed robbery cases.
"It's amazing that for every case I've walked into lately, there's evidence missing," said Rick Tessier, a defense lawyer.
Several judges have jettisoned cases like Augustine's over the last few weeks. And in acquitting him, Van Davis chastised prosecutors for going ahead without the drugs or the gun.
"This is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous," she said from the bench.
But District Attorney Eddie Jordan responded in an interview, "We can't just tuck our tails between our legs and run just because it's difficult."
He said that under state law, testimony from the arresting officer, and a lab report that confirmed Augustine had possessed illegal drugs, should have been enough to convict him. He added that although the evidence problems might seem to be "an Achilles' heel," he did not think "that the overwhelming problems that some of the critics have speculated about have materialized."
While 800 suspects have pleaded guilty to various crimes since the New Orleans courts reopened in June, only about 90 trials have been held, about a third the normal number. More than 2,000 people arrested before Hurricane Katrina are still waiting for their cases to be heard, and at least 400 of them remain in jail. And 1,500 cases have been temporarily set aside because the defendants, who were out on bond, apparently evacuated and never returned.
Court officials say other delays have come from a shortage of jurors and from limits on how many inmates can be brought to court each day. And the public defender's office is so overwhelmed that it has recruited law students to conduct interviews with long-neglected clients who cannot afford a lawyer.
But a growing source of delays and acquittals has been the lack of witnesses and evidence.
After Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, the evidence rooms at the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court sat in chest-high water for two and a half weeks. Only recently have court officials begun to realize the extent of the evidence problems within the old Beaux-Arts courthouse, which was closed for nine months and is still not quite back to full operations.
Warren E. Spears, the clerk in charge of the evidence room, said in an interview that before the storm that only about 10 percent of the hundreds of thousands of items had been sealed in plastic bags. The rest were in paper bags and scrap boxes holding clothes, guns and drugs, some of which had disintegrated in the swirling waters, he said, dumping their contents into heaps on the floor.
Spears said clothing from murder and assault cases had taken "a brutal beating." Photo lineup cards used to identify suspects had got stuck together and could not be separated. Stacks of assault weapons turned to rust, he said, and holes had to be punched in duffel bags filled with rotting marijuana to let the water out.
The court hired a cleanup contractor to gather the evidence, clean off the mold and place it in plastic bags and fresh boxes. Court officials have estimated that 8 to 10 percent of the evidence was a total loss. Spears added that a number of the workers spoke little English, and he could only gesture to them as they guessed which items should be packaged together.
Water also seeped into safes, he said, rotting a great deal of paper money that had to be freeze-dried to remove the moisture.
At separate police evidence rooms nearby, some DNA samples for rape and murder cases were held for months without refrigeration, possibly ruining their usefulness, other officials said. Given staffing shortages, the condition of the evidence only comes to light as each case approaches trial.
The problematic evidence is starting to make life easier for the city's defense lawyers.
Pamela R. Metzger, a member of a state board that oversees the public defender's office, said she had learned about the evidence problems after asking Spears about a suspected crack pipe that was missing in one of her cases. Metzger, who is also a law professor at Tulane University, said she was urging the public defense lawyers, who handle the vast majority of the court's cases, to raise more challenges about the condition of the evidence and how it has been handled.
"I think you'll see more and more and more of that," she said.