Louisiana Supreme Court (ffdb729d)

The Louisiana Supreme Court entered the Memorial case when three nurses challenged subpoenas requiring them to testify before a special grand jury investigating Anna Pou. On June 13, 2007, the court denied their appeal, leaving the nurses legally obligated to appear and making the scope of their protection from prosecution a central part of the dispute.

The Subpoenas and Their Terms

The district attorney had decided not to prosecute Cheri Landry, Lori Budo, and Memorial nurse manager Mary Jo D’Amico, but sought their testimony to learn what they knew about Pou. The arrangement recognized their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination: their testimony, and information derived from it, could not be used against them in a criminal case, unless they made false statements or otherwise failed to comply. That protection did not amount to a general promise that they could never be prosecuted; evidence obtained independently remained a possible basis for charges.

The Appeal and Its Stakes

The nurses’ lawyers challenged the subpoenas through the state supreme court. They emphasized that murder had no statute of limitations, so the women could remain vulnerable to prosecution later, even if their compelled testimony and its fruits were excluded. As a warning, the lawyers pointed to the Danziger Bridge shootings case: officers accused of shooting unarmed civilians after the storm had been compelled to testify under similar immunity conditions, yet all seven were eventually indicted by a special grand jury. The comparison expressed the nurses’ concern about the practical limits of the promised protection; it was an argument in the appeal, not a finding by the court about the nurses’ own liability.

Ruling and Consequence

On June 13, 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court judges denied the challenge. Landry, Budo, and D’Amico therefore had to testify before the special grand jury, subject to the stated limits on the use of their testimony. The decision advanced the investigation’s effort to obtain evidence about Pou while leaving unresolved the distinction at the heart of the dispute: compelled testimony was protected under the arrangement, but the possibility of a later case built on other evidence remained.