Prisons Louisiana

Presumed innocent, they shuffle into the sooty, granite fortress on Tulane Avenue every morning, ankles shackled, hands chained to their hips. Every evening, at least a dozen leave Orleans Parish Criminal District Court as felons, an exodus of the desperate, foolish, heartless and addicted. In one courtroom, Donald Smith is slapped with a 30-month prison term after being caught stumbling in the shadow of the Superdome at 1 a.m. with a crack pipe in his pocket.

Michael Roy Graham Jr. walked through the Louisiana State Penitentiary gates a free man after the murder convictions that put him on death row for 13 years were dismissed, officials said. His release came one day after the state attorney general's office dismissed charges that he and co-defendant Albert Ronnie Burrell murdered an elderly couple in 1986.

About 3,000 inmates were temporarily evacuated to higher ground as waters from the swollen Mississippi River threatened to undermine a levee protecting the nation's largest prison farm. Inmates were moved to a tent city on the only bit of high ground on the 18,000-acre Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

The State Department said Sunday that Cuba has agreed to take the Cuban detainees who surrendered peacefully after holding hostages at a jail for nearly a week. There was no word from Cuba on the agreement. Government offices in Havana were closed Sunday and calls to the office of Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez rang unanswered. Five Cubans and one Bahamian gave up late Saturday at the St. Martin Parish jail, freeing the warden, a female guard and five female inmates.