The 2007 St. Rita's Nursing Home Trial was the criminal case against the nursing home’s owners, Sal and Mabel Mangano, over residents’ deaths during Hurricane Katrina. A jury acquitted them of every charge. The trial’s aftermath also became part of a wider contest over who should answer for the disaster: nursing-home owners, public officials, or those responsible for failed levees and evacuation plans.

Charges and Competing Claims

The Mang anos faced 35 counts of negligent homicide and 24 counts of cruelty to the infirm, brought by Charles Foti. The case concerned residents who drowned at St. Rita’s Nursing Home during the storm. The owners’ attorney, James Cobb, planned to call Governor Kathleen Blanco and argue that the government bore responsibility for failed levees and inadequate evacuation planning for vulnerable residents.

That defense placed the prosecution in an uncomfortable political frame. At the same time that Foti accused the nursing-home owners of negligence, the state was seeking to hold those responsible for deficient levees accountable for an estimated $200 billion in damages, using similar language of willful, wanton, and reckless conduct. The overlap sharpened the question of whether responsibility for the deaths would be assigned to the home alone or considered alongside wider failures in protecting residents.

Public Relations and Political Conflict

Before the trial, James Cobb worked with Rick Simmons, Anna Pou’s attorney, on a public-relations effort aimed at damaging Foti’s public image. Simmons took pride in statements supporting Pou that he had drafted for professional organizations to adopt and release. Cobb and members of Pou’s team also fed negative stories about Foti to the media. Foti described their efforts as a conspiracy; Cobb later acknowledged the collaboration. The alliance connected the nursing-home case to the separate investigation of deaths at Memorial Medical Center, although the two cases concerned different patients and allegations.

The campaign was not only about legal arguments. By challenging Foti’s credibility, the Mangano defense and Pou’s supporters contested the authority of the official response to Katrina’s deaths. Their efforts placed the trial within a broader struggle over public blame, professional reputation, and the political consequences of prosecuting people whose actions were bound up with a disaster response.

Verdict and Aftermath

In September, a jury in St. Francisville, Louisiana, acquitted Sal and Mabel Mangano on all 35 negligent-homicide counts and all 24 cruelty-to-the-infirm counts. The verdict ended the criminal case against the owners, but it did not resolve the broader dispute over the failures that had left vulnerable residents exposed during the storm.

Six weeks after the acquittals, Foti lost his reelection bid, finishing last in a three-candidate primary. The account links that defeat to a campaign by Pou’s supporters to unseat him, but does not establish that the campaign alone determined the result. The trial thus concluded with a clear legal outcome and a less settled political one: the owners were acquitted, while the contest over accountability continued.