NEW ORLEANS -- Ingrid Leverett's troubles began when she evicted a woman who hadn't paid rent for months. Things got worse when she inspected her Gretna rental and found all her appliances missing.
Leverett promptly filed theft charges against her former tenant Robin Murray.
That's when Leverett’s headache turned into a full-blown nightmare. Four days after Murray was arrested by Jefferson Parish deputies, she turned around and pressed charges against Leverett for theft of a computer.
"I informed the detective that I did not steal the laptop out of the back of her car," Leverett said. "She was just an angry tenant who had been arrested four days prior for stealing my appliances out of my house."
New Orleans Police Detective Kevin Bell was assigned to the case. But Leverett said Bell wouldn't listen to her alibi, refusing to look at documents showing she couldn't have committed the crime.
"He goes, ‘You ever been to Orleans Parish Prison?’ I said, ‘No sir, I've never been to jail in my life.’ And he goes, ‘Well, you're fixing to go there because you're lying to me.’ I said ‘I am not lying to you. I was nowhere near that woman. Did not see her today. Was not even in Orleans Parish.’"
Papers from Leverett's work as a real estate appraiser appear to show she was in Marrero at the time of the alleged theft. And a bill of sale shows that the car Murray accused Leverett of driving had been traded in a month earlier.
"It's a traumatizing experience to be put in jail, to be stripped down in an orange jumpsuit and shackled at your hands and your feet," she said.
Leverett spent 27 hours in Orleans Parish Prison before her boyfriend posted bail. She described it as one of the worst experiences of her life.
"I didn't sleep that night. I couldn't go to sleep because I was so upset. And there was a lady next to me and she was sick and she was up and she was talking to me. She pretty much kept my sanity. If I didn't have her to talk to then I probably would have lost it,” Leverett said.
That was just the start of Leverett's frustrations. She tried to complain about Detective Bell to his supervisors, but they didn't respond. She filed a complaint with the NOPD Public Integrity Division, but they put her case on hold. Then she hired attorney Rick Teissier to get her case thrown out. That finally happened, but it took three months and thousands of dollars.
Here's how Teissier described the case: "On a scale of 1 to 100 on flimsy, minus 99."
Who dropped the ball?
"They need a lot of balls because they were dropped all over the place. Whoever the police officer is should be reprimanded or fired for the way he handled it. And the DA's office didn't handle it much better," Teissier said.
District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office issued a statement, pointing out that in this type of case - a felony with a defendant out on bond - the law requires them to accept or refuse a charge within 150 days. In this case, it took 88. Cannizzaro’s office added it would rather prosecutors "make the correct decision than a quick one."
There is one other piece of information that investigators should have found. At the time Robin Murray filed her complaint against Leverett, she was on probation for a 2009 conviction for making false statements to authorities. Court records show that in an application to work at a casino, Murray failed to disclose several prior arrests.
Reached by phone, Murray declined to comment.
But as soon as we asked the police department about this case, they re-opened it. Deputy Chief Marlon Defillo said the department has revived Leverett's public integrity complaint. Police also are investigating whether Murray filed a false police report.
"At this stage in the investigation," Defillo said, "we want to have an opportunity to go back and look at this case and determine whether the officer did what he was supposed to do back in March of this year. And to also look at whether the victim actually falsified a document to render charges against a person unjustly. So there are multiple stages that are currently underway."
Leverett said she will continue to monitor the case every step of the way.
"If you get railroaded once, it could happen again. It's just hard to believe this even happened to begin with. But it could happen to you. It could happen to your mom, your sister, your aunt. Anybody," Leverett said.
Defillo offered no timetable on the new investigation, but it appears the department is taking it seriously. The new chief of public integrity, Arlinda Westbrook, is now personally handling Leverett's complaint.
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