Henry Glover’s death reclassified as a homicide

6th April 2015   ·   0 Comments

Nearly 10 years after Henry Glover was gunned down by a New Orleans cop and his remains were later burned in an abandoned car on the Mississippi River levee, Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Jeffrey Rouse has reclassified his death as a homicide.

Glover was shot and killed by NOPD Officer David Warren in the parking lot of a West Bank strip mall less than a week after Hurricane Katrina. After he was initially shot, A good Samaritan, William Tanner, gave the injured man a ride to a makeshift police station at an elementary school in Algiers in hope of getting Glover medicine attention for his gunshot wound.

Tanner testified during the 2010 trial that he and others were instead beaten by police and he was separated from Glover. That was the last time Tanner saw Henry Glover alive.

Glover’s body was burned in Tanner’s car on the levee and left there with his charred remains. At least one photo showed his skull in the burned-out car but the skill was later removed by someone and has not been returned to the family for proper burial.

The NOPD’s attempts to cover up the incident eventually caught the eye of the U.S. Department of Justice which sent officials for several years to meet with civilians whose families had been negatively impacted by unconstitutional policing in New Orleans. Those meetings were organized by community grassroots organization Community United for Change.

Over the past decade, CUC has been an outspoken critic of the NOPD’s unconstitutional policing and use of excessive force as well as the NOPD federal monitor’s failure to make certain that the department’s consent decree is fully implemented.

Several years ago, after he was convicted in 2010 in the killing, a federal appeals court granted former NOPD Officer David Warren a new trial, agreeing that he should not have been tried with the other officers indicted in the case. Warren was subsequently acquitted during the second trial.

Since his 2013 acquittal, the Glover family had repeatedly asked former Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard to take another look at the evidence in the hopes of reclassifying Glover’s death as a homicide. Minyard initially agreed to look at the case but later said ne needed additional evidence and legal counsel and asked state Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to weigh in on the case. Caldwell refused to do so, and since the case had not been reclassified as a homicide, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro could not make a decision about whether to indict David Warren.

Adding to the intrigue, shortly after agreeing to probe Glover’s death and consider reclassifying it, Coroner Minyard announced that he would not seek re-election, ending a 40-year run as the city’s coroner. Minyard also was videotaped promising Glover family members and supporters who stormed his office in December 2013 to turn over all documentation he had of the case but later reneged. When the family returned to collect the promised documents, they were locked out of the coroner’s office which was being guarded by several NOPD officers.

Through each roadblock and setback, the Glover family vowed to continue to fight for justice.

With Coroner Rouse’s announce­ment Wednesday that he has reclassified the case as a homicide, the family gathered to share its thoughts about this latest twist.

“Glory, glory. Thank the Lord,” Edna Glover, the victim’s mother, told WWL-TV.

Some family members still find it hard to believe that it took a decade for Henry Glover’s death to go from being “unclassified” to being reclassified as a homicide.

“It should have been classified as a homicide the way it happened. He was unarmed. Where did the gun come from that the officer saw? To just shoot my cousin down like a dog,” said Brandon McIntyre, Glover’s cousin. During the 2010 trial, Warren admitted shooting Henry Glover but testified that he did so in self defense and that he did not know what became of Glover after he was shot.

Former NOPD Officer Gregory McRae, who was charged with and convicted of burning Glover’s remains, is now serving 17 years in prison.

In a statement released Wednes­day, Dr. Jeffrey Rouse said a review of all available evidence and court transcripts is what prompted this reclassification.

“We know that the coroner of Orleans Parish has righted a wrong. He has corrected a mistake. It was improperly classified,” WWL-TV News legal analyst Chick Foret said.

Foret said that Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro must now decide how to proceed with the racially explosive case

“The question becomes, now what? What happens? Does the D.A.’s Office start a new investigation?” Foret said.

“I didn’t know it was coming,” Edna Glover said. “Today the coroner called me.”

“Our next step is to go back to the District Attorney’s Office. Federal Court is through with it. We’ll take it back to the District Attorney’s Office and try to get him to pick it up. God did this for a reason,” said Brandon McIntyre.

Glover’s family said it is still haunted by his death and the post-Katrina New Orleans police cover up that followed. But they told WWL that this latest development gives them renewed faith.

“It gives you hope. But I had never given up hope,” said Kawan McIntyre.

David Warren’s attorney Rick Simmons issued the following statement: “The coroner’s reclassification of Mr. Glover’s death as a homicide is not based upon any new evidence and has no effect on Mr. Warren’s prior acquittal…It is fundamentally unfair, if not a violation of the principal of Double Jeopardy, to commence a third trial of Mr. Warren.”

Orleans Parish D.A.’s Office spokesman Chris Bowman told WWL that Cannizzaro’s office has not seen a copy of the coroner’s report regarding the Glover case and declined to comment on the announcement.

“The civil rights community is happy to know that Henry Glover’s death is now officially classified a homicide,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, said in a statement Wednesday. “However, we will not be surprised it the Orleans Parish D.A. announces that his office will not convene a grand jury. Also state grand juries are racist and support these bad cops. We are not ignorant about the injustice of the white supremacist criminal justice system. Secret grand jury selection should be declared unconstitutional because they discriminate against Black people.

“We are not anticipating an indictment of the officer who killed Henry Glover because the system is racist. Until white supremacy is totally killed there will be no justice for Black people in America.”

The Henry Glover case and the Danziger Bridge shootings, during which police killed two unarmed civilians and wounded four others, were two high-profile, post-Katrina cases that led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the New Orleans Police Department, a series of racially explosive trials and a federally mandated consent decree aimed at overhauling the NOPD.

Nearly two dozen NOPD officers were indicted after Hurricane Katrina. Five of those officers, convicted in the Danziger Bridge case, were granted new trials after it was discovered that federal prosecutors were posting comments on Nola.com about active U.S. Department of Justice cases.

This article originally published in the April 6, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.