Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams' office said Tuesday it is refusing to prosecute charges of possessing small amounts of all drugs except heroin and fentanyl.
Williams spoke often about refusing marijuana possession charges during his successful campaign for office last fall. But current policy from the district attorney’s office goes further to include amounts intended for personal use of drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamines and black market painkillers.
The policy was first reported by The Lens based on emails it obtained under a public records request to Williams’ first assistant, Bob White. In a March 25 email to a subordinate released to the news outlet, White said the policy is in effect “for now."
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Whether the policy becomes permanent, it makes Williams an outlier among other district attorneys in Louisiana, where drug possession charges often come with stiff sentences upon conviction. Many Louisiana prosecutors are open to placing defendants in diversion programs, but those still leave the possibility of a court case hanging over their heads, in contrast to outright refusals to prosecute.
White’s email left open the possibility that the policy could be a short-term measure as Williams' office works to clear a backlog of cases stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying courthouse shutdown.
The exception to the policy, of heroin and fentanyl possession cases, involves a category tied to last year’s staggering increase in overdose deaths in New Orleans. Accidental drug-related deaths grew 51% in 2020 from the year before, according to the coroner’s office. Of last year’s 365 accidental drug deaths, 284 involved fentanyl.
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Prosecutors dismissed 415 cases in the first month after Williams took office, with 55% of those “narcotics-related,” according to the DA's office. The aim of that first batch of dismissals was to give the court breathing room as it began resuming more normal operations.
If the drug dismissal policy becomes permanent, it would place Williams on the leading edge of new policies around the United States from “progressive prosecutors” who have pledged to take a less punitive approach to drug crimes.
Other progressive prosecutors, such as District Attorney Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, have moved away from prosecuting low-level drug possession charges. But those shifts have often come with a catch. As of 2019, Krasner’s office required defendants to prove that they had entered drug treatment programs, for instance.
Orleans Parish’s new district attorney has pledged to publish all his policies on the office website, but that hasn’t happened yet, and the drug possession policy was instituted with no fanfare. At a Thursday forum, Williams said his office plans to post policies online as soon as it launches a new website.
Williams also said the aim of his case dismissals thus far was to “get rid of the fat and the bloat that has exited in this system. … We’ve removed that stuff off of our docket so we can have a laser-focus on serious crime.”
