KENNER, La. - Merlene Maten undoubtedly stood out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, spent two weeks among hardened criminals. Her bail was a stiff $50,000.

Her offense?

Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.

Family and eyewitnesses insisted Maten was an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat only to be mistakenly arrested by tired, frustrated white officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store.

Despite intervention from the nation's largest senior lobby, volunteer lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a private attorney, the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get her freed.

Maten's diabetes, her age, not even her lifelong record of community service could get the system moving. Even the store owner didn't want her charged. "She has slipped through the cracks and the wheels of justice have stopped turning," her attorney Daniel Beckett Becnel III said, frustrated.

Then, hours after her plight was featured in an Associated Press story, a local judge on Thursday ordered Maten freed on her own recognizance, setting up a sweet reunion with her daughter, grandchildren and 80-year-old husband.

Maten must still face the looting charge at a court hearing in October. But the family, armed with several witnesses, intends to prove she was wrongly arrested outside the hotel in this New Orlean's suburb where she had fled Katrina's floodwaters.