Churchgoing Grandma Jailed Over Sausage

Updated: 10:07 PM EDT
Churchgoing Grandma Jailed Over Sausage
Accused of Looting, She Spent Over Two Weeks Locked Up
By KEVIN MCGILL, AP

KENNER, Louisiana (Sept. 15) - Merlene Maten undoubtedly stood out in
the
prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The
73-year-old church
deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, spent two weeks among
hardened criminals. Her bail was a stiff $50,000.
Her offense?
Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from
a
looted deli the day after Katrina struck.
Family and eyewitnesses insisted Maten was an innocent woman who had
gone to
her car to get some sausage to eat only to be mistakenly arrested by
tired,
frustrated white officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a
nearby
store.
Despite intervention from the nation's largest senior lobby, volunteer
lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a
private attorney,
the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get her freed.
Maten's diabetes, her age, not even her lifelong record of community
service
could get the system moving. Even the store owner didn't want her
charged.
"She has slipped through the cracks and the wheels of justice have
stopped
turning," her attorney Daniel Beckett Becnel III said, frustrated.
Then, hours after her plight was featured in an Associated Press
story, a
local judge on Thursday ordered Maten freed on her own recognizance,
setting up
a sweet reunion with her daughter, grandchildren and 80-year-old
husband. It
was unclear whether she would be released Thursday evening or Friday.

"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them."
-Elois Short

"I'm just gonna hug her and say 'Mom, I'm so sorry this had to
happen."'
Maten's tearful daughter, Elois Short, told AP shortly after getting
the news.
Maten must still face the looting charge at a court hearing in
October. But
the family, armed with several witnesses, intends to prove she was
wrongly
arrested outside the hotel in this New Orleans suburb where she had
fled
Katrina's floodwaters.
"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them. Instead of
chasing
after people who were running, they (police) grabbed the old lady who
was
walking," said Short, who works in traffic enforcement for neighboring
New
Orleans police.
The path to freedom was complicated amidst the chaos of Katrina.
Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hour
away. Her
daughter had evacuated to Texas. And the original judge who set
$50,000 bail
by phone - 100 times the maximum $500 fine under state law for minor
thefts -
hadn't returned a week's worth of calls.
Becnel, family members and witnesses said police snared Maten in the
parking
lot of a hotel where she had fled the floodwaters that swamped her New
Orleans home. She had paid for her room with a credit card and
dutifully followed
authorities' instructions to pack extra food, they said.
She was retrieving a piece of sausage from the cooler in her car and
planned
to grill it so she and her frail 80-year-old husband, Alfred, could
eat,
according to her defenders. The parking lot was almost a block from
the looted
store, they said.
"That woman was never, never in that store," said Naisha Williams, 23,
a New
Orleans bank security guard who said she witnessed the episode and is
distantly related to Maten. "If they want to take it to court, I'm
willing to get
on the stand and tell them the police is wrong. She is totally
innocent."
Police Capt. Steve Carraway said Wednesday that Maten was arrested in
the
checkout area of a small store next to police headquarters.
The arrest report is short and assigns the value of goods Maten is
alleged
to have taken at $63.50. The items are not identified.
"When officers arrived, the arrestee was observed leaving the scene
with
items from the store. The store window doors were observed smashed
out, where
entry to the store was made," police reported.
Williams, one of the witnesses, said Maten was physically unable to
get
inside the store - even if she had wanted to.
"She is not capable of even looting it the way the store was at the
time.
You had to jump over a counter, and she is a diabetic and weak-muscled
and
wouldn't be able to get herself over it. And she couldn't afford to
step on
broken glass," Williams said.
Williams said she tried to explain that to police but was brushed off.
"They didn't want to hear it. They put handcuffs on her. They just
said we
were emotional. It was basically, 'Just shut up,"' she said.
Maten's husband was left abandoned at the hotel, until family members
picked
him up. He is too upset to be interviewed, the family said.
Christine Bishop, the owner of the Check In Check Out deli, said that
she
was angry that looters had damaged her store, but that she would not
want
anyone charged with a crime if the person had simply tried to get food
to survive.
"Especially not a 70-year-old woman," Bishop said.
Short, Maten's daughter, did not witness the incident. She said her
mother
has led a law-abiding life. She is a deaconess at the Resurrection
Mission
Baptist Church and won an award for her decades of service at a
hospital, Short
said.
"Why would someone loot when they had a car with a refrigerator and
had paid
with a credit card at the hotel? The circumstances defy the theory of
looting," said Becnel, Maten's lawyer.
Robin Peak, a legal analyst from the AARP senior lobbying group who
assisted
Maten's family, declined to discuss the case.