Harry F Connick Sr

Harry Connick Sr., a long-serving district attorney in New Orleans whose office gained national notoriety for prosecutorial overreach that eventually resulted in many reversed convictions, died on Thursday January 25 2024 at his home in New Orleans. He was 97. His death was announced by his son, the singer Harry Connick Jr. The older Mr. Connick was a singer himself and became locally renowned for his nightclub performances in the French Quarter. But his national reputation as a district attorney was much darker. ouisiana has routinely had one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, and the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office bears much of the responsibility. According to the Innocence Project of New Orleans, which works to free the wrongfully convicted, 32 of those convicted during Mr. Connick’s time in office, from 1973 to 2003, were “factually innocent” and later exonerated. In 27 of those cases there was prosecutorial misconduct by Mr. Connick’s assistants. An overwhelming majority of those wrongfully convicted by Mr. Connick’s office, 96 percent, were Black, After serving with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific in World War II, he returned to New Orleans to attend Loyola University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree, and Tulane University, where he earned a law degree. In 1973, after working as a federal prosecutor, he ran for district attorney in New Orleans against Jim Garrison, who had received national attention for his quixotic, and unsuccessful, attempt to prove a far-flung conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In addition to his son, Mr. Connick is survived by his wife, Londa Jean (Matherne) Connick; his daughter, Dr. Suzanna Jamison; and four granddaughters.