The Story of Dan Bright: Crime, Corruption, and Injustice in the Crescent City

The Story of Dan Bright: Crime, Corruption, and Injustice in the Crescent City

The Story of Dan Bright: Crime, Corruption, and Injustice in the Crescent City

The Story of Dan Bright: Crime, Corruption, and Injustice in the Crescent City

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Overview

Everybody knows New Orleans, but nobody knows this New Orleans. At sixteen years old, Dan Bright was the head of a New Orleans drug empire. As his operation grew, it was only a matter of time before he attracted the attention of the criminal justice system, which would stop at nothing—including framing Dan for murder—to get him off the streets. Dan's capital murder trial lasted only one day. The District Attorney's office used false testimony and fabricated evidence to lead the jury to their ultimate conclusion: Daniel Bright was guilty and deserved the death penalty.
This incredible true story unflinchingly shows the injustice of the legal system, as well as the base corruption on display at Angola prison, where Dan spent ten years fighting his wrongful conviction and struggling for a right supposedly guaranteed to all Americans: a fair trial.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781608011247
Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
Publication date: 11/01/2016
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 1,058,993
Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Dan Bright spent nine years in prison, four of them on death row, before his sentence was overturned in 2004. He lives in New Orleans.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter Four

King of the Projects

A few days after I returned from that first trip to Miami two boxes arrived at my apartment. There were 30 ki's in each box, at $15,000 a ki. After a few months, 30 turned to 40. We opened up shops. Then we opened up more shops. Shops were usually in somebody's house. We started getting other people to sell for us. At that time my routine was get up and check the books, make sure my money was in order, see who owed me what, then go out and collect it. I dropped things back off, restocked, and checked to make sure everyone was staying out of trouble and not doing anything that would bring us attention.

Our customer base would surprise people. I had lawyers as clients, musicians, professional athletes, rappers. On the weekends these people liked to party. When big people from out of town came for a game or concert, we hooked up with them. Afterward everyone went to the clubs, Rumors, Discovery, The Bottom Line, Club Nexus, Crystal's, Club Atlantis. We had graduated on from our little neighborhood clubs. These were high roller clubs. The clientele included drug dealers, ball players, entertainers, lawyers, bail bondsmen. No tennis shoes, no T- shirts. We wore Christian Dior suede sweat suits with some Gucci loafers. Lucky, Romeo and I had matching sweat suits in different colors.

They pat you down when you entered these clubs, so everyone left their guns on top of their tires. But some people got hip to that, and walked around the parking lot taking all the guns. Then guys started hiding their guns under the hood, but I stopped doing that after the gun of some guy I knew went off and hit him in the shoulder. What happened is the gun had gotten hot, from being so close to the engine, and it misfired.

Lucky and them hit these clubs on a regular basis, but I only went every few months. Lucky liked the attention. He was always jumping into photos, but not me. I didn't like taking photos because I didn't like people to know who I was. Once someone knows what you look like, then they can spot you. You become vulnerable. When you're out like that, it's real easy for your enemies to find you. I was too focused on business to be spending time at these clubs.

I spent years watching the older guys in the Projects, and watching the mistakes they made. I learned that in New Orleans, as long as there's no killing, you can make money. The New Orleans police only get involved when they have to, crimes against old people, crimes against kids, crimes that bring political attention, or media attention. For powerful street-level organizations, war is bad. No one makes money and both sides lose people. Plus you expose yourself to the federal government. My idea was always to come up with a solution where both sides could keep making money.

Say you try to move into my area and open a shop. We can't allow that to happen, but let's sit around and talk. Maybe we figure out that you're not selling what I'm selling. If you give me a little bit of your area, I'll give you a piece of my area, and we both benefit. If you don't like that solution, then give me 10 or 15 percent of your profit. There's always a way to negotiate. If someone in another part of the city was selling the same thing, then our plan was to bring them in with us and we'd supply them. We had a better product, and we had no middlemen. Other people had to go through somebody to go through somebody to go through somebody. Thanks to Goldy's connection, our stuff was coming straight from the source.

At that time, we were making money but our people were still suffering. I recall walking across the Projects and looking into one woman's house, I could look clean through to the other side, because she didn't have any furniture. People were hurting. In wintertime or when school started, women lined up to tell us their kids didn't have nothing. "Okay," I said. "We'll take care of it." We got them clothes, we got them books. But I realized passing out gifts wasn't going to cut it. We had to do more.

The pool in the Projects had become a cesspool. The city had stopped maintaining it, and the water was green and there were tadpoles and frogs in there. It looked like a canal. This was a nice-sized pool, maybe four feet deep in the shallow end and 12 feet in the deep end. We fixed it up, and the pool became a big scene. Kids swam in the morning and afternoon, but when the sun went down the pool was for adults. It was like a fashion show, who had the best body, the best bathing suit, all of that. Most women didn't go in the pool. They just walked around the side. They didn't want to get their hair wet. Then you had the shelter house, where the changing rooms were at, and where most of the sex went down.

We did other things around the Projects. We put new swings up, merry-go-rounds, installed lights that went off at a certain time. We put in a football field, a basketball court. We made a real park. Everyone could come out and enjoy themselves. Kids could go for a swim, play ball, swing on the swings. Older women could sit on their stoops and gossip without worrying about getting shot. On weekends we brought DJs into the courtyard. And no one was allowed to sell drugs in this park. We called it the no-fly zone. We had a commission made up of the top people in our organization. If anyone got caught selling drugs in the no-fly zone, the commission held a vote to decide the penalty. Usually the person would be banned from selling drugs in our Projects. I witnessed some of the older gangsters sell drugs to pregnant women, but we never did that. I witnessed them sell drugs to kids, we never did that. The commission came up with laws, like our very own constitution. We took care of the neighborhood.

For kids age 12 to 15, we started a football league. Every Project had their own team, and some Projects had two or three teams. Football was an escape from reality, something to get kid's minds off the streets. But it was also a chance for people to flex their financial muscles. Most owners were drug dealers, and each owner was trying to outdo the other. We had nice uniforms with sneakers and helmets, coaches, assistant coaches, gyms. Practices were held in the park. Just like in a regular league, sometimes the games were home, and sometimes they were away games. We rented a van for the equipment and drove uptown, or across the river, to the Fischer Projects. These games were real big events. We would have a DJ spinning music, and everyone from the projects would come out to watch. Players on the winning team got a trophy, a gold chain with a football on it, and $100.

For the elderly folks, we gave them money for bingo. Every month we put addresses in a bag and picked two to get free rent. At Christmas we'd go somewhere like Kmart and buy 50 bikes. As we got stronger we bought more: 100 bikes, 200 bikes. For Thanksgiving, we got the elderly turkeys. One Mother's Day we had a commission meeting and brainstormed. They had this little carnival in the Gentilly area and me and Lucky went there and gave them $10,000 to come set up their entire operation. We had tables all around the park, food, rides, popcorn machines, merry-go-rounds, Go Karts, the Dumbo elephant that goes up and down. We had this guy who owned horses come and kids could ride around the park. Another area was nothing but games for adults. We made sure no one had to pay for anything.

Some people might wonder, how do you attend a fair sponsored by drug money? But our neighborhoods don't think like that. Our kids don't have many positive things, so anything fun that comes their way, they are going to accept. No kid's going to get off a ride because it was bought with drug money. Our plan was to build up our community, and whether it was with drug money or not, we were going to do it. People in our neighborhood had become accustomed to poverty. It's what they expected. They were used to the pool being broken, the basketball court being broken, the lights being broken, and them not being able to do anything about it. City Hall didn't fix these things. The Housing Authority didn't fix these things. We did. And because of that, people in the Projects respected us. It got to the point where I'd pull up in my car and the kids would rush me. We became celebrities.

Our improvements attracted the politicians. One day I came into the neighborhood and there were cameras and reporters there talking about the Projects being fixed up. The Housing Authority had a big press event, and they had taken the credit for all our work. Romeo wanted to rip it all down, but who are you hurting if you rip it down? "Let them take the credit," I said. Our people knew we did it, that's all that mattered. The government had failed them, and we became their government. But there was responsibility that came along with that. People got used to us, and they started expecting things of us. They depended on us, for financial stability, and also for security.

I recall one incident with a guy who beat his wife. I knew something was wrong because she never came the normal way to the store. She came the long way. She was always bruised up and didn't want anyone to see her. We asked her what happened and she wouldn't talk, but everyone knew. One evening we caught her man coming home from work and told him that if he put his hand on her again we'd inflict the exact same damage on him. Another time this guy came in the Projects and tried to grab a little girl. Her mama started hollering and half the Projects chased him down and beat the crap out of this guy. With sticks, pipes, anything they could get their hands on. They whooped him half to death. When the police finally came, they threw him in the car and booked him. No one asked any questions.

The thing about cops and politicians is that they actually don't care if you're selling drugs, as long as you keep the violence to a minimum, the robbery and killing and raping. Even the cops know this city needs drugs to survive. If there are no drugs in New Orleans, no one is going to come here to party, and this city survives off the parties. So they have to keep the drugs flowing, but the police didn't like us showering money around the neighborhood like that, and they got back at us in their own way. We were a cash cow.

Anytime someone got murdered in the Projects, the 5th District cops picked us up and took us down to the station. The 5th District covers the entire 9th Ward, including the Florida and Desire Projects. Half the time we wouldn't even know what the hell we had been arrested for until we had been booked. We never knew what happened, and a lot of the times I don't think anything had happened, they just made it up. "You all committed a robbery," the cops would say. I'd be like, "Man, you know full well we didn't commit a robbery!" It was a setup, a nice little scheme so the police, the judge, and the bail bondsman could make some money.

What would happen is a trial date would be set, bail would be set, and we'd pay the bail bondsman. He'd give a cut to the judge, and later he'd also contribute to the judge's campaign. We'd get out on bail, and the trial would never go to court. When they needed more money, the police brought us back in. They ran this scheme time and again.

There were other things on my mind. One day I came into the projects and there she was, sitting on the stoop with her girlfriends. Thelma was 21 years old, five years older than me. She had a college degree, a job, owned her own car, owned her own home. She had straight, clean, pretty white teeth, long silky hair, dark skin and she dressed nice. She brought something to the table. She didn't have her hand out all the time. She was independent. The stuff I had and who I was didn't excite her, she had her own stuff and her own life. She was complete, and she was different than any other woman in the Projects. She was the woman I was looking for. Born in the Projects, she moved to New Orleans East and when I met her was back in the Projects seeing some old friends. I got out of my car and asked a cousin of hers who she was.

"You don't recognize me?" said Thelma.

"No," I said. She was disappointed.

I asked her if she wanted to get a sno-ball.

"Why'd you want to get a sno-ball with someone you don't know?"

"You're one of those stuck up women, huh?" I said. "I ain't used to kissing ass, I'm used to getting what I want."

"That's your problem," she snapped back.

Eventually, she decided to walk with me but was perfectly clear, "Don't think us getting this sno-ball means I'm going to have sex with you!"

After that we talked on the phone, and if we didn't talk she came to the Projects to check up on me, to make sure nothing had happened. Most of the women in the Projects that I dealt with, I hate to say this, but their vocabulary wasn't too satisfying, it wasn't up-to-date. Thelma spoke well, she didn't curse. She didn't have tattoos. I didn't like women with these big tattoos all over their necks and legs. That wasn't classy. She had a good job at a nursing home, and she had other jobs too. Most importantly, I could trust Thelma. I didn't have to worry about going to sleep and not waking up, or someone coming in the back door. I knew she wouldn't cross me.

Lucky and Romeo started seeing her around. "What are you doing getting serious with her?" they asked me. I tried to play it off like the relationship with Thelma wasn't important. For a long time I denied how much I really cared about her. But these guys were my best friends. They could see what was happening. As far as Romeo went, as long as she wasn't trying to hurt me or set me up, he was cool. And as far as Lucky went, as long as she didn't interfere with business, he was cool.

Thelma came from a good family, a classy and respectable working family. She had been married before, to someone in the gangster life, and he had been brutally murdered, shot up and stabbed. Thelma had always been attracted to that type. She had two kids, an 8-year-old girl named Ebony, and a 5-year-old boy named Nick. Ebony was this little pretty black-haired girl. She was a real skinny kid and had long hair, all the way down to her butt. Me and Ebony got along. I'd come and she'd be hiding behind the door, jump on my back, ask me to take her to the store. We went for little rides. If Thelma was gone I'd cook the kids dinner. They loved creamed corn and white rice. Or we snuck out and went to Shoney's or Burger King. Thelma's girlfriends asked her, "You not scared to be around him?"

"Hell no," said Thelma.

"How ou go to sleep at night?" one girl asked.

"I close my eyes and sleep," Thelma said.

Her family was tight. That confused me sometimes, and frustrated me, because her mother and brothers were always there. She was the only girl and had three brothers. Thelma's mother had a good heart, and she was street smart. She knew what I was doing, because she had been married to an older gangster herself. Thelma's father had a real bad gambling problem, dice games. Not at casinos, but these little gambling shacks and private gambling halls. You go there and they buzz you in. He'd lose 30 grand then make it up then lose it again.

Thelma and her mother were best friends. They could talk about anything. Her brothers stayed with her mama too, not because they couldn't get their own places, just because their family was so close. Eventually Thelma and I moved into a spot in the East together, and her mother moved there, too. I was trying to figure out how to get away from these people, and here they all come. Thelma sat me down and tried to tell me how it was, but I wasn't used to that. I'd come home, see them and immediately want to get out of the house. But Ebony would be watching me leave. "Where you going, Dad?" I couldn't leave with that happening, and would give her a nod, "Come on, let's go." We might go to the lakefront, or the park, get something to eat. Ebony loved taking a ride.

We became like a real family. Thelma came home after work and cooked dinner, though most of the time I couldn't make it. I'd come home from a day on the streets and my food would be on the stove, and she'd be asleep. I'd take a shower and get in bed. If I had to stay out real late, if something came up, I'd call her to say I'd be late. I was living two lives, family life and street life. The family life was comfortable, it was stable, it was love, the life I wanted. But I wanted that other life too.

Table of Contents

Forward (Clive Stafford Smith)
Introduction
Chapter One - The City Explained
Chapter Two - Mentorship
Chapter Three - Welcome to Miami
Chapter Four - King of the Projects
Chapter Five - Getting Shot
Chapter Six - In Love with Two Women
Chapter Seven - Hustlers and Addicts
Chapter Eight - Anything Goes for New Orleans Cops
Chapter Nine - Super Bowl, 1995
Chapter Ten - Harry Connick and Orleans Parish
Chapter Eleven - The Trial, Before Lunch
Chapter Twelve - The Trial, After Lunch
Chapter Thirteen - Angola
Chapter Fourteen - Life on Death Row
Chapter Fifteen - Enter Clive and Ben
Chapter Sixteen - A Beautiful Day
Chapter Seventeen - Coming Down

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