“Spineless Judges and Shyster Lawyers”: Criminal Justice in New Orleans, 1920–1945

Focusing on the prosecution of homicide cases, this essay analyzes the operation of the criminal justice system in New Orleans from 1920 through 1945. Despite the far-ranging legal and institutional developments of the era, few homicide suspects were convicted—only 17.8 percent. Race-based patterns of prosecution and conviction, however, diverged during this period. For white suspects, conviction rates dropped by one-third, while for African American suspects they tripled, rising from half the white rate to double the white homicide conviction rate, as the New Orleans criminal justice system emerged as a key tool to fend off challenges to Jim Crow.