Prisons Louisiana

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.

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.

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.

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.

Problem inmates who throw food at guards at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola may soon be served splatter-proof meals. Under a plan submitted by state officials to a federal judge, all ingredients in meals at the prison's discipline camp would be mixed together and baked into a loaf.

Nearly 600 state prison inmates were given their freedom just after midnight Thursday under pressure from the federal courts to ease overcrowding in Louisiana's lockups.

A new $17-million federal prison was dedicated Monday in this western Louisiana town, replacing the detention center that rioting Cubans burned in a night of terror 13 months ago.

A man armed with a shotgun walked into a sheriff's office Sunday and killed a radio dispatcher, then freed two prisoners in the lockup, authorities said.