NEW ORLEANS — In a verdict that
brought a decisive close to a case that has haunted this city since most of it
lay underwater nearly six years ago, five current and former New Orleans police
officers were found guilty on all counts by a federal jury on Friday for
shooting six citizens, two of whom died, and orchestrating a wide-ranging
cover-up in the hours, weeks and years that followed.
The defendants were convicted on
25 counts, including federal civil rights violations in connection with the two
deaths, for the violence and deception that began on the Danziger
Bridge in eastern New Orleans on Sept. 4, 2005, just days after Hurricane Katrina hit and
the levees failed.
“The officers convicted today
abused their power and violated the public’s trust during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
exacerbating one of the most devastating times for the people of New Orleans,”
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said. “I am hopeful today’s verdict
brings justice for the victims and their family members, helps to heal the
community and contributes to the restoration of public trust in the New Orleans
Police Department.”
In a grisly account, prosecutors
said four of the defendants — Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Sgt. Robert Gisevius, Officer
Anthony Villavaso and former Officer Robert Faulcon — had raced to the bridge
in a Budget rental truck that morning, responding to a distress call from
another officer.
There they poured out of the truck
and opened fire, without pausing or giving a warning, on members of the
Bartholomew family, who were walking to a grocery in the largely abandoned
city. James Brisette, 17, a friend of the family, was killed, and four others
were gravely wounded by the police, who kept firing as the Bartholomews raced
for safety.
Several of the officers then
chased Ronald and Lance Madison, two brothers, to the other side of the bridge,
where Mr. Faulcon shot Ronald, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, in the
back. Sergeant Bowen was convicted of stomping him on the back as he lay dying.
No guns were recovered at the
scene, and witnesses — both officers and citizens — testified that the victims
were unarmed.
The cover-up began immediately,
prosecutors said, and the jury found all of the officers, as well as retired
Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, guilty on charges of obstructing justice, fabricating
witnesses, lying to federal investigators or planting a firearm at the scene to
bolster a made-up story.
While the jury convicted on all
counts, it stopped short of considering the killing of Mr. Madison to be murder
in connection with a firearms charge. Such a finding would have affected the
sentencing range, though four of the defendants are nevertheless faced with
potential life sentences. Mr. Kaufman faces up to 120 years. Sentencing is set
for Dec. 14.
On the insistence of Judge Kurt
Englehardt, the courtroom was nearly silent as he read guilty pronouncement
after guilty pronouncement.
Family members of the defendants
sobbed quietly. Outside the courthouse, Bobbi Bernstein, a deputy chief of the
Justice Department’s civil rights division and the hard-charging leader of the
prosecution, was in tears as she hugged Lance Madison, who was arrested during
the cover-up of the shooting that left his brother dead. “I am thankful to have
some closure after six long years of struggling for justice,” Mr. Madison said
quietly.
The verdict was long in coming,
and followed a problem-plagued attempt by the Orleans Parish district attorney
to prosecute the officers for murder, an effort that ended in a judge
dismissing all charges in 2008.
The federal prosecution began
shortly afterward, and the Police Department as a whole began coming under more
scrutiny. At one point there were at least nine federal criminal investigations
into the Police Department’s actions, some of which are continuing; four have
already led to indictments and three, including the Danziger case, to
convictions.
In May 2010, the Justice
Department announced a federal civil investigation into the department, an
inquiry that has produced a scathing report on its practices and will
eventually lead to a consent decree, a legally mandated blueprint for reform.
Around 60 witnesses were called
over the course of the monthlong Danziger trial, including victims, one of whom
was unable to raise her right hand to swear in because she lost it as a result
of the shootings on the bridge, and several officers who had been involved in
the shootings and the police investigation and later pleaded guilty.
The trial was not only about these
five officers but also about what exactly happened in the weeks after the
hurricane, a sort of judgment on the initial widely held belief that the authorities
were trying to control elements of a citizenry run rampant.
In the years since, that narrative
has been qualified. While some people did turn to crime and violence, it has
become apparent that some of the bloodshed and chaos was brought about by
members of the long-troubled Police Department.
In opening and closing arguments,
prosecutors portrayed the Danziger victims as people merely trying to survive
when they were descended on by the police. Instead of assessing the threat when
they arrived on the scene, prosecutors said, these officers tried to send a
harsh lesson to people they had wrongly suspected of firing at the police.
“They thought they could do what
they wanted to do and there wouldn’t be any consequences,” said Theodore
Carter, an assistant United States attorney, in his closing statement. “This
led to their crime, it led to their brazenness. It never occurred to them they
were shooting up two good families.”
While some of the defense lawyers
argued that the citizens were in fact armed, or that other people in the
vicinity were shooting at the victims, their main argument was that the
officers’ actions must be judged in the context of those first horrible days
after Hurricane Katrina, when New Orleans was a city on the verge of anarchy.
As in a similar trial of the
police last year, defense lawyers said that the officers should be considered
heroes for staying in the city when so many others left and that, given the air
of imminent and omnipresent danger in those days, their instincts should not be
criminalized.
“He has to decide and act in a
split second, a nanosecond, to make a life or death decision,” said Paul
Fleming, who represented Mr. Faulcon. Given the circumstances, he said, “It is
a decision that is reasonable, it is a decision that is justifiable and it is a
decision that is not a crime.”
Jim Letten, the United States
attorney for Louisiana’s Eastern District, said that was exactly wrong. It is
in situations like the anarchy after Hurricane Katrina, he said, when it is
most crucial that the police be depended upon to protect citizens.
“Who can we count on when our
society is threatened?” he asked. “If we can’t depend on them, who can we
depend on?”
[KLW: Sadly, blacks, latinos, and
most lower income people have long known they can't count on the police to
protect them. Although paid by our taxes, their mind-set is that they are
serving the white upper class....There are notable exceptions, of course, but
they are, unfortunately, exceptions, not the rule.]