Celine Dion, call your office.*

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Looters given 15-year terms

A judge handed down the maximum sentence allowed by law Wednesday to three Kenner residents convicted last month of looting a Metairie grocery store in the days after Hurricane Katrina.

Coralnelle Little, 36, Rhonda McGowen, 42, and Paul C. Pearson, 36, received 15-year sentences from Judge Hans Liljeberg of the 24th Judicial District Court, who said he wanted to send a message to looters that the crime would not be tolerated.

While numerous looting cases have been resolved in recent months, this was the first post-Katrina jury trial in Jefferson Parish involving looting. A jury convicted the three May 2 of attempting to leave the Sav-a-Center at 3711 Power Blvd. with 27 bottles of liquor and wine, six cases of beer and a case of wine coolers, six days after Katrina made landfall.

They were convicted on a portion of the state's looting law that took effect two weeks before the Aug. 29 storm. The amended law set a three-year minimum sentence and a maximum of 15 years in prison for looting during a declared state of emergency.

* As I noted on September 6, 2005, Canadian humanitarian and chanteuse Celine Dion begged America to just let the looters be looters, apparently because she was under the mistaken impression they had never cradled a bottle of booze lovingly in their arms:

"Oh, they're stealing 20 pair of jeans or they're stealing television sets. Who cares? They're not going to go too far with it. Maybe those people are so poor, some of the people who do that they're so poor they've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once."