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CALCASIEU PARISH
Clerk restricts access to crime records
Official defends policy as advocates call for transparency
BY MEGAN WYATT
Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By LESLIE WESTBROOK
Marlene Doucet speaks to guests about cotton spinning and weaving during the Great Acadian Awakening on Tuesday at Vermilionville. The multiday celebration of the history, culture and influence of Acadian people, held every five years, will continue through Saturday with presentations, live music, food, French tables, dancing, art and more across Acadiana.
ABOVE: Zachary Richard gives a presentation on the Acadians of Louisiana during the Great Acadian Awakening on Tuesday. RIGHT: Attendees gather at the La Maison des Cultures at Vermilionville on Tuesday.
Amy Davis woke up to sirens before dawn on April 8, 2022. Three doors down from her Bee Tree Street home in Westlake, her neighbor had shot a man. But the particulars of the crime would remain hidden from public view. Davis has largely had to lean on rumors from neighbors about the status of the case. That’s because the Calcasieu Parish Clerk of Court’s Office maintains a policy that says they will not turn over “If we make violent crime records to the a mistake public without on that and a signed order it arbitrarily from a judge. gets out and Attorneys and constitutional someone gets experts say the murdered, that policy likely vicomes back olates the state on us.” constitution’s open courts and LyNN JONES, public records Calcasieu Parish provisions, the clerk of court state public records law and the First Amendment. “The whole point when you have a serious criminal allegation is that it be out there for everybody to see to make sure the punishment is fair, that the trial is fair and that people can see the repercussions of bad behavior,” said David Cuillier, director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida. “There’s a lot of reasons why transparency is built into the
ä See RECORDS, page 7A
Shutdown brings unprecedented restructuring BY LISA MASCARO
AP congressional correspondent WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is making this government shutdown unlike any the nation has ever seen, giving his budget office rare authority to pick winners and losers — who gets paid or fired, which programs are cut or survive — in an unprecedented restructuring across the federal workforce. As the shutdown enters its third week, the Office and Management and Budget said Tuesday it’s preparing to “batten down the hatches” with more reductions in force to come. The president calls budget chief Russ Vought the “grim reaper,” and Vought has seized on the opportunity to fund
ä See SHUTDOWN, page 5A
WEATHER HIGH 88 LOW 60 PAGE 12C
Roman grave marker found in N.O. yard
across it. Santoro, an anArchaeologists uncover carved thropologist at Tulane University, 2,000-year-old was “immediately fascinated” by the discovery, imagining that it tombstone was a grave marker left behind by
the home’s previous owners for a family member. She reached out to colleagues in Staff writer Latin and classical studies, who Daniella Santoro and her hus- suggested the slab might be someband, Aaron Lorenzo, were doing thing far more unlikely — an auyard work at their New Orleans thentic Roman tombstone. home in March when he found a They were skeptical, but it marble slab beneath a lemon tree, turned out that the improbable hidden under a tangle of thick theory was correct. The stone was vines and dirt. a 2,000-year-old grave marker for Santoro heard Lorenzo call for Sextus Congenius Verus, a secondPHOTO PROVIDED By DANIELLA SANTORO her: “You’ve got to come see this.” century soldier and sailor in the An ancient Roman tombstone was found in the The couple looked closely at the backyard of a New Orleans home in March. ä See MARKER, page 7A stone and noticed Latin letters
BY POET WOLFE
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