Foti cultivates seeds of own defeat
(8/01 /2007) - Times-Picayune
by: John Maginnis
Attorney General Charles Foti is the rare politician who will not let his politics get in the way of doing his job, which is why he probably won't have it much longer.
Instead of tending to his re-election and his growing opposition, he is cultivating the seeds of his own defeat by pushing a criminal case that has made him wildly unpopular.
He sparked his career-threatening firestorm last year when he stepped in front of TV cameras to announce the arrests of Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses for allegedly injecting four elderly patients with lethal drugs at a New Orleans hospital in the desperate days following Hurricane Katrina. Public reaction was swift and harsh, not toward his targets, but, surprisingly to no one but Foti. Letters to the editor and talk show callers have condemned him for prosecuting the care-givers who stayed behind and endured hellish conditions that were prolonged by government's slow and halting rescue efforts.
Though many were disturbed by the investigation's eyewitness accounts of Dr. Pou's and the nurses' actions and sympathized with the grieving families' desire for justice, the greater tide of public opinion has leaned toward closing this most painful chapter of the storm without getting into it.
Foti might have secured indictments and put on a sensational trial by now, but the state Constitution gives original criminal jurisdiction to the local district attorney, in this case Eddie Jordan. Not inconsistent with his track record prosecuting ordinary street crimes, Jordan took a long time to fail to gain an indictment against Dr. Pou and dropped the case last week. (The cases against the two nurses had been dropped earlier.)
At this point, any politician half-concerned with re-election would have accepted the grand jury's decision, moved on and not mentioned it again.
Instead, Foti was back before the cameras, defiantly, angrily criticizing the grand jury's decision and questioning why the district attorney did not use the statements of five medical experts who concluded there were ample facts to support homicide charges. He did not rule out asking a court, in light of Jordan's failure to present key evidence, to turn the case over to himself.
His supporters are mortified at Foti's seeming political death wish. With Blanco-esque approval ratings, he has shown little interest in preparing for the fall election or even raising money. His political consultant Roy Fletcher says that whenever he brings up the campaign, Foti changes the subject to the investigation and waves off warnings of deepening political damage.
Though his two declared opponents, District Attorney Buddy Caldwell of Tallulah and lawyer Royal Alexander of Shreveport, are not well-known, the incumbent's continued embrace of his albatross is bound to inspire an Anyone But Foti movement.
That is, if Foti even runs. He says he will, if only for the political forum to defend his case.
Now state Treasurer John Kennedy is showing keen interest in running for attorney general, whether Foti does or not.
Kennedy has always aspired to be the chief law enforcement officer, having run for it unsuccessfully in 1991 and aiming to do so again in 1999, before opting for treasurer. He reinvented that office and raised its profile, but has taken its limited constitutional powers ("to shut up and sign the checks," he once joked) as far as they will go. He will be accused of office-shopping, but it would be intriguing to see what trouble he could stir up as attorney general.
For General Foti, even if truth is on his side, time is not. If he manages to gain jurisdiction -- no certainty -- there isn't time to get an indictment and go to trial before he leaves office in January.
Most citizens want to put this terrible matter behind them and certainly not have it dominate the fall election campaign. Yet Foti persists, whether out of spiteful obstinance or because he has looked into the eyes of the families whose loved ones did not make it out of Memorial Hospital alive, when they could have. Whether he's right or wrong, or runs or not, Charlie Foti is putting his sense of duty before his political survival, and there is honor, if no future, in that.
