Harry Connick Sr., New Orleans prosecutor criticized for overreach, dies at 97

His sudden fall seemed all the more bewildering to him because he had been one of the city's most important local rulers for years. He was elected five times to six-year terms, usually without issue, and his support was eagerly sought by powerful politicians, black and white, in New Orleans.

Yet his hands-off approach to the DA's office had become proverbial. Even before he started working once a week at a French Quarter club, following his son's blossoming international career, Connick “left the courtroom work to his assistants, a poorly paid, hard-working group, mostly men, mostly white ” wrote journalist Jed Horne in “Desire Street” (2005), a book about the case of Curtis Kyles, whose 1984 murder conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 because Mr. Connick's aides withheld evidence.

“The office locked up primarily black men, especially poor people, in a way that required them to hide the evidence they were supposed to release,” Denise LeBoeuf, a New Orleans attorney, said in an interview. “It was under his supervision. That will always remain with him.”

Joseph Harry Fowler Connick was born March 27, 1926, in Mobile, Ala., to James Connick, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Jessie (Fowler) Connick, a nurse. He grew up in New Orleans, where he attended parochial school.

After serving in the United States Navy in the Pacific during 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.