Pro-Life, Pro-Choice (choose life) and Pro-active

The owners of a nursing home in New Orleans, where several residents died during hurricane Katrina have been acquitted of negligent homicide.

On that fateful day, 35 residents at St. Rita's drowned as flood waters inundated the home. The owners of the home were charged with negligent homicide because of their failure to respond in time to the evacuation warnings. A jury took 4 hours of deliberation before acquitting the couple of the charges.

However, I personally cannot understand how these owners, who failed the residents of the nursing home could have been acquitted. I cannot see how justice has been done in this case. There was plenty of warning that Katrina was heading for New Orleans, yet the owners failed in their duty of care to evacuate the residents and ensure their safety. Did the lives lost matter?

"Prosecutors depicted the Manganos as greedy and negligent. One witness suggested that Ms. Mangano was concerned about the cost of an evacuation. Three other nursing homes in the parish evacuated residents, the prosecutors said, but the Manganos ignored urgent warnings broadcast as the storm bore down.

The Manganos, prosecutors said, barely had an evacuation plan — they had only a nine-passenger van that would have been inadequate. It was “reckless disregard,” Assistant Attorney General Paul Knight told the jury in his closing argument."

 

The defense in this case argued that their clients were innocent because of the failure of the levee banks, and they cited the lawsuit against the authorities on this matter. However, was this sufficient reason to acquit a couple who were so clearly negligent in their failure to remove the residents from the nursing home. How is it that the jury failed to understand that the owners had a duty of care such that they should have commenced the evacuation as soon as the warning was made? Even AMTRAK had come to the party and was willing to assist in taking residents out of New Orleans, but thousands refused to take advantage of the offer. Then there is the failure of the mayor of New Orleans in not ordering the use of the school buses for the purpose of evacuating New Orleans citizens. 

Blame is being placed in the wrong place. People need to recognize that the responsibility for the disaster stops with the mayor of New Orleans, and in this case with the owners of St. Ritas.