New Orleans' longtime vaunted district attorney and the father of one of the city's more famous musicians died Thursday at age 97. Harry Connick Sr. died peacefully at his home in New Orleans with his wife, Londa, and children—Suzanna and musician and actor Harry Connick Jr.—by his side, according to an obituary distributed by Harry Connick Jr.'s publicist. A cause of death was not provided, the AP reports. Connick dethroned an incumbent prosecutor, Jim Garrison, in a 1973 election. He won reelection four times, and successfully built biracial support as the city's political power base shifted to African Americans.
Connick remained undefeated, and retired in 2003. But he was attacked by anti-capital punishment groups for his insistence that prosecutors often seek the death penalty, and was later dogged by questions about whether his office withheld evidence that favored defendants. The issue came to the forefront with a 2011 US Supreme Court ruling in a lawsuit filed by John Thompson, who was exonerated after 14 years on Louisiana's death row for a killing he didn't commit. In a 5-4 decision, the high court overturned a $14 million award for Thompson, ruling that the New Orleans district attorney's office shouldn't be punished for not specifically training prosecutors on their obligations to share evidence that could prove a defendant's innocence. In a scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg decried "Connick's deliberately indifferent attitude."
The issue was revived in 2014 when a murder conviction against Reginald Adams was reversed. Attorneys for the Innocence Project New Orleans presented evidence that detectives and prosecutors in the case had withheld critical information before Adams' 1990 conviction. Adams later received $1.25 million in a court settlement. Connick, who was also acquitted in 1990 of racketeering and aiding a sports-betting operation, in 2012 defended his legacy in an interview with the Times-Picayune. Connick, a Navy veteran who served in the South Pacific during World War II, for years performed weekly at French Quarter nightclubs and nurtured his son into becoming a jazz piano prodigy, partly by arranging for the boy to sit in with New Orleans Dixieland players and legends such as pianist Eubie Blake and drummer Buddy Rich.
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New Orleans' current district attorney, Jason Williams, expressed condolences to Connick's family. "Mr. Connick remains the longest tenured District Attorney, serving from 1973-2003. Such a longstanding public servant gives an enormous amount of themselves to their community—as do their families. Our thoughts are with the Connick family during this difficult time," he said in a statement.
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