Memorial Three

The Memorial Three—Anna Pou, Cheri Landry, and Lori Budo—stood at the center of a dispute over responsibility for patient deaths at Memorial during Hurricane Katrina. The label joined a physician facing a grand-jury decision on murder-related charges with two nurses drawn into the investigation as witnesses. Their cases became a test of whether conduct during a disaster should be judged by ordinary professional and legal standards, and the uncertainty persisted even after the grand jury declined to indict Pou.

The Investigation and the Nurses’ Subpoenas

The district attorney decided not to prosecute Landry and Budo, but that decision did not end their exposure to the case. The week after a fundraiser for Pou, the women were subpoenaed through their lawyers to testify before the grand jury without counsel, so prosecutors could learn what they knew about her. Memorial nurse manager Mary Jo D’Amico was subpoenaed alongside them.

The women were protected by their Fifth Amendment privilege: 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. The protection did not amount to a permanent guarantee against prosecution. Their lawyers argued that, because murder had no statute of limitations, the nurses could still face future cases built on other evidence. They challenged the subpoenas through the state courts, but on June 13, 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court rejected the appeal. The nurses would have to testify.

Their lawyers pointed to the prosecution of officers accused in the Danziger Bridge shooting case as a warning. Some officers in that case had been required to testify under similar conditions of immunity; all seven were eventually indicted by a special grand jury. The comparison framed the nurses’ concern not as a prediction that the cases were identical, but as evidence that compelled testimony did not necessarily end the danger of prosecution.

The Case Against Pou

The indictment prepared for the special grand jury contained ten counts against Pou: one count of second-degree murder in the case 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 legal question was whether the evidence showed a specific intent to kill, an element of second-degree murder under Louisiana law.

On July 24, 2007, the grand jury considered the charges and declined to indict Pou on any of them. That decision was consequential for the nurses as well as for Pou. Some LifeCare nurses celebrated, apparently feeling that the removal of suspicion from Pou also eased the cloud over their own actions in entrusting their patients to her. The outcome was a refusal to bring charges, not a finding that erased the circumstances or disagreements surrounding the deaths.

Disaster as a Contested Standard

Supporters of the Memorial Three argued that conduct during the confusing and dangerous conditions of Katrina should be assessed differently from conduct in ordinary circumstances. Their position echoed a fictionalized defense of Pou on Boston Legal: that New Orleans during the storm had, in effect, fallen outside the usual world of American law and professional norms. The argument made the disaster itself part of the moral and legal dispute—both the setting in which actions were taken and a proposed reason to judge them differently.

The book places that defense alongside the response to the Danziger Bridge case, where supporters of accused officers also invoked the exceptional conditions after the storm. In that case, colleagues publicly praised the officers, and an internal police investigation cleared them, even as criminal proceedings continued. The parallel shows how appeals to crisis conditions could become a public claim for solidarity and a different standard of judgment, while leaving the underlying allegations to be tested through legal processes.

Trauma and the Wider Circle of Staff

The investigation and its aftermath reached beyond the three people named by the label. Gina Isbell, a LifeCare nurse, described enduring poor sleep, nightmares about patients, and guilt over the staff she had selected to work during the hurricane and the patients who died. After leaving Memorial by boat, she also discovered that she had lost her home and community in St. Bernard Parish. Her account connects the legal dispute to losses and distress carried by hospital workers who were not themselves the focus of the indictment.

Isbell remained angry about how slowly help had arrived, rather than directing that anger at Pou. She wore a hurricane-shaped pendant and continued to see patients’ faces in nightmares, yet also took comfort in a memory of an elderly patient expressing gratitude during the final hours at Memorial. She believed that she and her colleagues had done the best they could and said she would serve in another storm if asked. The coexistence of trauma, grief, and continued commitment complicates any simple account of staff solidarity as either a defense of every decision or a denial of suffering.

Karen Wynn’s experience further reveals the strain placed on colleagues by the prospect of testimony. As she prepared for a possible grand-jury appearance, her lawyer helped her anticipate questions and keep her account consistent. Revisiting the events could leave Wynn struggling for weeks afterward; she recognized what she understood as post-traumatic stress in herself and coworkers. Her experience conveys how the proceedings could reopen the crisis even for people whose role was not the central subject of the charges.

Disputed Responsibility and Lasting Meaning

Accounts of the people involved did not resolve into a single shared interpretation. A nurse who cared for John Thiele during his later intensive-care hospitalization believed, from a brief conversation about Memorial, that he felt remorse and wished he could have acted differently. Thiele later rejected that interpretation: he said he remained confident in what he had done and distinguished his own potentially reversible critical illness from the conditions of some patients at Memorial. His account underscores that even among people connected to the events, the meaning of compassion, reversibility, and responsibility remained contested.

The Memorial Three thus names both a set of individuals caught in one investigation and a wider argument about how disaster changes—or should not change—the standards applied to medical conduct. Pou’s non-indictment ended the grand jury’s consideration of the charges against her, while the subpoenas, the nurses’ fear of future prosecution, and the distress reported by hospital colleagues showed that the legal decision did not settle the human or ethical questions left by the storm.