Mayor Nagin confirms 2008 e-mails were deleted.(E-MAIL)

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New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has confirmed that all his 2008 e-mails--sent and received--have been deleted, along with half of his 2008 calendar.

He said the messages were accidentally and permanently deleted because of a lack of storage space on the city's servers. Deleting public documents violates Louisiana law, which requires that e-mails, as public records, must be saved for three years. Deleting them is a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in jail or a $5,000 fine. According to The New Orleans Times-Picayune, state law defines the "injuring of public records" as the "intentional removal, mutilation, destruction, alteration, falsification or concealment of any record, document or other thing filed, or deposited ... in any public office or with any public officer."

Nagin's own office wrote a detailed policy recommendation in May 2008, recommending the city maintain backup tapes from its e-mail server, remove them every three months, and store that data offsite, according to The Times-Picayune. "No effort will be made to remove e-mail from the offsite backup tapes," the memo stated. The document also advised that fiscal and administrative e-mail should be retained for four years, while "general correspondence" need be kept only one year.

None of the recommendations were followed, however, according to statements made by a city attorney during a recent court hearing on a lawsuit filed by WWL-TV. The problem first came to light when the station sought copies of Nagin's e-mail and information from his 2008 calendar.

Washington told Ledet that Nagin thought the computer network had a backup system, but "that was not the case."

Ledet ruled that Nagin and City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields violated state laws "by simply ignoring (WWL-TV's) request" for almost two months, The Times-Picayune reported. The judge found Nagin and Moses-Fields' actions "not only unreasonable and arbitrary, but in flagrant violation of the law they were sworn to uphold" and fined them and the city more than $7,000. Citing the city's dire financial straits, WWL officials said they would refuse the court-ordered payments.

Further, Ledet expressed her disbelief that the e-mails could not be found and ordered the city to immediately stop deleting e-mails while continuing its search for the mayor's records. Ledet also ordered City Hall to prove that it has searched "all available media," including the mayor's Blackberry and office computers, The Times-Picayune said. She instructed Nagin to search his home and personal computers. If the records are not found, Ledet has instructed city officials to explain "the manner and method in which, and the exact times at which, the records were taken from their custody."

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