JAMBALAYA JUSTICE

Jambalaya Justice is finally available through Amazon.com, Bn.com, independent book stores, and other websites where books are sold. I will also have some available int he near future from my website, but have to get my computer guy (translation, brother-in-law) to add the info to sell through Paypal. It's supposed to be easy to do, but for some reason I couldn't get it accomplished on the Gumbo Justice website and had to get him to do it for me. But that's what family is for, right?

In any event, I was pleased to see it is finally out, although it is not yet available on Kindle or Nook, but hope it would be soon. I saw today purely through luck that someone has already done a really nice review of the book.

Soon, I will be re-organizing my blog to include guest bloggers, interviews and book reviews, and am continuing to work on the third in the Crescent City Mystery Series, Chocolate City Justice, which is a little darker as it opens as Katrina approaches and follows the various characters through the hurricane.

And of course I'll be getting word of Jambalaya Justice out there. Hope you enjoy it.

Jambalaya Justice

Just as I am finished editing Jambalaya Justice, the second in the Crescent City Mystery Series and follow up to Gumbo Justice, I saw on the news that one of the New Orleans police officers originally convicted in relation to a police-Katrina murder has had his conviction overturned and has been granted a new trial. The feds are reviewing the federal judge's decision to determine if they will re-try him or not.

I have blogged about this particular murder before. There were five officers, some rank, allegedly involved. During the aftermath of Katrina, when the police had set up makeshift district offices, a rookie sharpshooter was accused of shooting a civilian who was attempting to approach the office. Two other officers were accused of taking his body from his brother and another individual who were attempting to save him, and burning it. Another officer was accused of writing and filing a false police report and then lying to federal agents about it, and finally, a rank was accused off intentionally not tying the three separate incidents together and realizing it was a scheme to cover a murder. The sharpshooter was convicted, as was one of the officers who burned the body. The officer accused of the cover up for filing a false report was the third convicted, and the one whose conviction has now been overturned.

The last guy happens to be a friend of mine. His wife and I were assistant district attorneys together in the late 1990's. He was a police officer even then, which is how they met, and he actually arrested my brother-in-law once for possession of marijuana. Travis, the officer, always seemed to me to be a straight shooter who played by the rules. He certainly didn't offer any leeway for my brother-in-law after finding out who he was.

When Travis was convicted, I was upset. I could only imagine what his wife was going through, and while I could picture Travis following an order someone gave him, I couldn't imagine him intentionally doing something on his own like hiding the truth about a murder. But I wasn't there, and Katrina was an unprecedented event and I can't swear as to how anybody will act under those type of conditions.

When he was first convicted, I had to believe everything would work out. I am an appellate public defender now, an officer of the court, and probably lean a little hard on making sure individuals' rights are not violated. It's been my job for the past 11 years, so it's ingrained in me at this point.

In Travis' case, he has maintained from the beginning that he assisted a ranking female officer with the writing of the report, and the factual basis was not his own, but hers. She testified for the prosecution, changing her testimony more than once. She was caught in several lies, and given complete immunity as far as the murder. Immediately after her testimony, she took early retirement from the NOPD, for which she was still employed. One of the biggest issues was the original report that she wrote. She claimed the original report was altered by Travis, but for some reason she had not kept a copy of that original report. Soon after the trial, one of the acquitted officers submitted what he said was the original police report written by the female rank, which shows the report eventually submitted was not altered by Travis. The prosecution tried to argue the report was a fake, but offered no proof to that. The judge found that if the original police report had been provided to the jury, the jury would have acquitted Travis, which is the standard for newly discovered evidence. While the rank who eventually provided the report may have been holding out on providing the report, perhaps fearful he would be convicted and would need the report to get a new trial himself, his failure to provide the report, for whatever reason, was not the fault of Travis. Obviously, if Travis would have had access to the smoking gun that would have exonerated him, he would have used it at trial.

It so happens my mystery series revolves around a prosecutor and the dysfunction of the New Orleans criminal justice system, that somehow usually ends up rendering justice if not necessarily fairness or what is right. Obviously, the two concepts are not the same. Justice requires a trial without legal errors, not one that ultimately results in the guilty getting convicted and the innocent going free, although those should be desired results. The belief that only those, and all of those, who deserve punishment are punished, is childish. The law doesn't require perfection. It only requires that nobody cheats or makes a mistake during the process.

So seeing that two of the individuals involved were convicted and their convictions upheld, two others were acquitted by the jury, and one was convicted and his conviction set aside, all I can think is that the premise and theme behind my Crescent City Mystery Series is correct, that things maybe eventually do work out the way they are supposed to, even if sometimes they need a little help.

NiFtY interview by Beth Hull

Beth Hull has graciously interviewed me at her website, http://bethhull.com/2011/02/18/nifty-author-holli-castillo/. The interview opens with a short blurb about the second in the Crescent City Mystery series, Jambalaya Justice, which is nearing completion. Finally!!!!

The interview also mentions my tortured path to publication, and hopefully other writers who are struggling to find an agent or a publisher will be encouraged by my story. If my tale was a fairy tale, it would most definitely be one the Grimm Brothers wrote.

My mantra is, What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. That, and my husband's newest warning to me, Don't announce your plans to God.

If you stop by the interview, please leave a comment.

Holli Castillo
www.gumbojustice.net
Jambalaya Justice coming 2011

We have so much going on in New Orleans right now I am trying to figure out what to write about.

First and foremost, we have just started hurricane season June 1, and already they are watching something that has a 60 percent chance of becoming a storm in the next 2 days. This doesn't worry me so much in and of itself, because historically there is little chance of a big one hitting us this early in the season. The gulf isn't warm enough and the conditions would never be appropriate.

It does cause me pause, however, because early storms could mean a bad season, which has already been predicted. It also causes me concern because we're not sure of what effect even a small storm could have on the oil situation. How much destruction will oil being pushed into other waterways or entering the tidal surge have on our coast, our farming, our houses?

Second, five police officers, three current and two former, have just been indicted in a Katrina case where the police are accused of gunning down a man, then putting his body in a car and setting it on fire.

The story is bad; what is worse is that I know two of the current officers, and consider one a friend. In fact, he is married to a former co-worker of mine. They met at the D.A.'s Office, while she and I were both assistant district attorneys and he was an officer. He and the other officer I know are both lieutenants, and I find it extremely difficult to believe my friend would violate the law.

Not just because he's my friend and I support him, but because he is a square, a rule follower, a by the book player. He arrested my brother in law years ago for being in possession of marijuana, and I knew better than to even ask him for any kind of a break on my B-I-L's behalf, because this guy is an i-dotter and t-crosser.

I feel more bad for his wife, my co-worker and friend. She actually went to middle school with my husband, years before I knew either one of them, just to show you how small a city of a half a million people can actually be.

So I'm torn between wanting to see justice served if somehow this friend did do something he wasn't supposed to, and not believing he did it, or if he did have some part in it, there had to be a good reason.

Then the writer in me keeps thinking this needs to be made into a book or a movie, or at least included in one of my Crescent City Mystery Series novels. I am working on Jambalaya and it is all laid out so this particular scenario wouldn't fit in, but the third novel takes place during Katrina, and something of this nature was going to be included, so I could just add this in.

Then again, the entire story would make a compelling movie. I can picture it starting with the trial, and hearing each individual person's testimony, and then flashing back to what actually happened until you get the true story. Except right now I don't know the whole story. I may at some point in the future, when the legal issues have been resolved, visit my friend and see if he is interested in opening up and telling me his version of events.

Finally, I am looking forward to the PSWA writer's conference in Vegas this month, seeing familiar faces and making new friends.