A judge spoke out about racial bias. Now prosecutors are trying to get her removed from hundreds of

Source: Washington Post

A judge spoke out about racial bias. Now prosecutors are trying to get her removed from hundreds of cases.

By Antonia Noori Farzan
Oct. 31, 2019 at 6:51 a.m. EDT

As the first African American woman elected to serve as a judge in Louisiana’s 16th Judicial District, Lori Landry said she had an obligation to speak up.

“I am keenly aware of the importance of my perspective as an African American female being counted at the table of decision makers,” she told the Daily Iberian in 2014. “It is vital to the success of our community that various voices are included, but that does not mean that I speak only for African Americans or only for women or only for those who are not rich.”

But Landry’s outspokenness on topics like police brutality, racial profiling and sentencing disparities has put her at odds with local prosecutors, who say that she has unjustly accused them of being biased against African Americans. Last month, the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in New Iberia, La., began requesting that she be recused from pending criminal cases on the grounds that she “is biased or prejudiced against this office such that she cannot be fair or impartial.”

Since then, things have only escalated. As of Wednesday, Landry was facing more than 300 virtually identical motions asking that she be removed from upcoming cases, according the Acadiana Advocate. Routine court proceedings have ground to a halt, and hundreds have rallied in Landry’s defense in recent weeks, with one supporter getting ejected from the courtroom on Wednesday.

As evidence of Landry’s alleged bias, prosecutors cite comments that she reportedly made from the bench, such as “African American men do not survive traffic stops with the police.” According to the 27-page motion, she has repeatedly pointed out instances where she believes white defendants are getting more generous plea deals than black defendants, suggested that cops who get caught planting evidence could be indicative of a broader culture of corruption, and claimed that prosecutors apply the state’s habitual offender statute inconsistently, “which disproportionately puts African Americans in more harm or risk than anyone else.”

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/31/judge-spoke-out-about-racial-bias-now-prosecutors-are-trying-get-her-removed-hundreds-cases/