N O L A.C O M
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S u n d ay, n ov e m b e r 9, 2025
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Mental health backlog delays cases
STAFF PHOTO By CHRIS GRANGER
Canal Street is reflected in the window of Adler’s in downtown New Orleans on Wednesday. The Canal Street shop is iconic, but after 127 years, third-generation owner Coleman E. Adler II said he is ready to retire and is closing its jewelry stores.
Losing the jewel of Canal Street
Adler’s, an icon of New Orleans, to shutter after 127 years BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL Staff writer
A New Orleans tradition, that exists only as an old memory, is the excitement of a day spent shopping on Canal Street when it was lined with department stores and ladies donned white gloves — even if only to meet friends under the clock at D.H. Holmes. In the middle of that bustling strip was Adler’s, a family-owned jewelry and gift shop, where generations of brides registered for china, crystal and sterling flatware and krewe captains commissioned pins for their courts. While the gloves and hats on Canal Street long ago gave way to hotels, quick-serve restaurants and T-shirt Adler shops, Adler’s, once known as the Tiffany’s of the South, has remained — until now. After 127 years in continuous operation, Adler’s is going out of business, according to its third-generation owner, Coleman E. Adler II, who is retiring.
PROVIDED PHOTO By ADLER’S
A view of Adler’s on Canal Street in the 1890s. Adler, 82, said the decision to close the two stores, located on Canal Street and in Metairie, was his alone. “I will be 83 in January, and I have been doing this a long time,” said Adler, who took over the business in 1973 at age 29, after his father and uncle died within a month of each
other. “Many of my friends did this a long time ago. It is time.” His four children, who have worked beside him in various capacities at Adler’s over the years, will not keep the business going. “They have their own careers and
ä See ADLER’S, page 22A
Staff writer
Louisiana is failing to swiftly admit criminal defendants who need mental health treatment to the state’s only hospital equipped to care for them, creating a backlog so severe it has stalled hundreds of cases across the state. The dire backlog persists even after a classaction settlement required the hospital to accept patients within roughly two weeks. LONGING On average, murder and manslaughter defendants FOR JUSTICE Part three statewide spent nearly seven in a series months last year waiting for a bed at the Eastern Louisiana Mental Health System, an analysis of homicide cases by The Times-Picayune shows. New Orleans’ defendants languished even longer: seven months and nine days. The delays ripple through courts statewide, but the gridlock is felt acutely in New Orleans, where homicide prosecutions already move among the slowest in the nation. The crushing wait for admittance to the state mental hospital is just one force driving delays in a justice system so clogged that cases can take years to resolve, eroding public trust and upending the lives caught in its churn. At the end of last year, 30 defendants from New Orleans were awaiting transfer to the hospital. By
Landry played role in selection, as at other state universities
Staff writer
BY JENNA ROSS Staff writer
MONROE — The friends arrived at the soup kitchen with toddlers in their arms and worry in their eyes. Ashleigh Pearce and Sabrina Spearman had heard that because of the federal shutdown, their food assistance would be cut. (“Just gone.”) Then they heard that Louisiana would restore a quarter of their allotment at a time. (“So I’ve gotta buy some eggs.”) Then, they could lose benefits, longterm. (“People really need those funds.”)
Insiders reveal how Rousse became LSU’s president BY TYLER BRIDGES
As federal shutdown threatens SNAP, need for Louisiana residents on the rise
STAFF PHOTO By DAVID GRUNFELD
People wait in line for a hot meal at Grace Place Ministries Soup Kitchen on Jackson Street in Monroe on Wednesday. The nonprofit has seen a surge in demand as SNAP benefit reductions and the ongoing federal shutdown make it harder for many families in northeast Louisiana to put ä See SNAP, page 8A food on the table.
PAGE 8B
BY JILLIAN KRAMER
ä See DELAYS, page 4A
‘People just can’t afford to live’
WEATHER HIGH 73 LOW 44
Defendants in N.O. murder trials wait months for treatment, records show
Four days before the LSU Board of Supervisors would select a new university president, McNeese State President Wade Rousse and University of Alabama Provost James Dalton met at the LSU president’s house. Publicly, both were still candidates for the LSU job. Behind the Rousse scenes, however, Rousse had already secured it. Gov. Jeff Landry had spread the word quietly weeks earlier that Rousse’s business-oriented approach for LSU aligned with the governor’s vision. Lee Mallett, the board’s vice chair and a close Landry ally, had been working as- Landry siduously to arrange for Rousse to show off his can-do personality in meetings with other board members and key political and business leaders. But Rousse had publicly faced complaints from some faculty and students who said he wasn’t qual-
Business ......................1E Deaths .........................3B Nation-World................2A Classified ..................... 2F Living............................1D Opinion ........................6B Commentary ................7B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
ä See ROUSSE, page 10A
13TH yEAR, NO. 89