July 24, 2007

July 24, 2007, was the day a New Orleans grand jury rejected every charge proposed against Anna Pou in connection with deaths among patients on LifeCare’s seventh floor at Memorial Medical Center. Its decision, recorded as a refusal to indict, ended the case in New Orleans while leaving a sharp public disagreement over whether the deaths amounted to homicide.

The Grand Jury and the Charges

Ten grand jurors assembled in Section E of the New Orleans criminal courts building, a courthouse that Frank Minyard had survived during Hurricane Katrina. They met on the second story, beneath vaulted ceilings and Art Deco chandeliers, in a room where a Blackstone inscription about human and divine law remained painted above the entrance. The twelve-member jury had broad latitude, but nine votes were required to indict. The bill before them contained ten counts: one count of second-degree murder in the death of Emmett Everett, and nine counts of conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, one for each of the LifeCare patients on the seventh floor, including Everett. The central legal question was whether the evidence persuaded the jurors that Pou had the specific intent to kill, a required element of second-degree murder under Louisiana law.

The Decision

Judge Calvin Johnson read the ten proposed counts aloud, then announced the foreman’s handwritten finding: the grand jury had returned no true bill. It declined to indict Pou on every charge, including the murder count concerning Everett and all nine conspiracy counts. The result was not a verdict after trial; it meant that the proposed criminal case would not proceed to trial in New Orleans.

Public Response and Aftermath

The decision drew immediate, conflicting responses. Reporters gathered at the courthouse, where Assistant Attorney General Julie Cullen maintained that the state’s position was that the deaths constituted homicide. At a press conference, District Attorney Eddie Jordan said his office respected and agreed with the grand jury’s decision. With those statements, the case was declared over in New Orleans. That evening, prosecutor Michael Morales looked at the boxed evidence in his office. It was the last homicide he would prosecute in New Orleans: his unit had been disbanded, and he was being reassigned to other felony work. He said he felt no particular way about the outcome and identified advance evacuation before future storms as the lesson he took from the case. The prosecution had been controversial within the office as well as outside it. Morales later acknowledged that he and Jordan had not been eager to bring the case, and that their supervisor, Assistant District Attorney Famularo, had made his reservations clear. They had sought to give Pou, whom they did not regard as a typical murder defendant, due consideration rather than rush toward indictment. But a judge had signed an arrest warrant and multiple witnesses were prepared to testify, so the prosecutors concluded that they could not simply abandon their duties. The grand jury’s refusal closed the case despite that effort to bring the evidence before it.