OJC guard will not be charged in teen’s suicide

A New Orleans judge has thrown out the criminal charge filed against a guard on duty at the Orleans Justice Center when a 15-year-old killed himself in the New Orleans jail, which is under a federally mandated consent decree.

Keriana Alexcee, 27, was arrested last year on a malfeasance charge.

An affidavit alleged she failed to make required security checks every 15 minutes the night Jaquin Thomas hanged himself with a mattress cover. Thomas was being held on a murder charge when he died in October 2016.

Judge Camille Buras threw out the charge May 23, a month after a hearing where a jail official testified that Alexcee had never been sworn in as a deputy, and hadn’t been trained for work on the jail’s youth tier.

Prosecutors plan to appeal.

A defense attorney says Alexcee was unfairly blamed for systemic problems at the troubled jail.

Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman have been squabbling for years about the state of Orleans Parish Prison, as it was once called.

While Landrieu attributed the jail’s ongoing problems to poor administrative leadership and management, Gusman has repeatedly argued that the Landrieu administration had severely underfunded the jail for years.

The Landrieu administration tried repeatedly to get the U.S. Department of Justice to seize control of the Orleans Justice Center.

This article originally published in the June 04, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.