A FEDERAL JURY in the US has convicted five current or former police officers of involvement in deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.
All five officers were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. Local news station WDSU reports that four of the defendants were convicted of civil rights violations.
Two people were killed and four were wounded in the shootings on the Danziger Bridge in the city just days after the hurricane.
Prosecutors contended during the five-week federal trial that officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning on 24 September 2005, then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.
Defense attorneys countered that the officers were returning fire and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to another officer’s distress call less than a week after Katrina struck.
Convicted were former officer Robert Faulcon, Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and retired Sgt. Arthur Kaufman.
Faulcon, Gisevius, Bowen and Villavaso were convicted in the shootings and with taking part in the alleged cover-up. Kaufman, who investigated the shootings, was charged only in the alleged cover-up.
The trial was a high-profile test of the Justice Department’s effort to clean up a police department marred by a reputation for corruption and brutality.
A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes. Most of the cases center on actions during the aftermath of the 29 August 2005 storm, which plunged the flooded city into a state of lawlessness and desperation.
No justification
Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore Carter said in closing arguments earlier this week that police had no justification for shooting unarmed, defenseless people trying to cross the bridge in search of food and help mere days after Katrina struck. he said:
It was unreasonable for these officers to fire even one shot, let alone dozens.
Defense attorneys argued, however, that police were shot at on the bridge before they returned fire.
“None of these people intentionally decided to go out there and cause people harm,” said Timothy Meche, Villavaso’s lawyer. He said they did their best, operating under “terrible, horrible circumstances” after Katrina.
Faulcon, the only defendant to testify, said he was “paralyzed with fear” when he shot and killed a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, Ronald Madison, as he chased him and his brother, Lance Madison.
Faulcon didn’t dispute that he shot an unarmed man in the back, but he testified that he had believed Ronald Madison was armed and posed a threat.
Prosecutors contended at trial that Kaufman retrieved a gun from his home weeks after the shootings and turned it in as evidence, trying to pass it off as a gun belonging to Lance Madison. He also is accused of fabricating two nonexistent witnesses to the shootings.
-Additional reporting by AP
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