Family, grassroots leaders demand justice for Henry Glover

13th April 2015   ·   0 Comments

The family of a Black man killed nearly a decade ago by New Orleans police less than a week after Hurricane Katrina gathered Wednesday outside the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office to demand that D.A. Leon Cannizzaro prosecute the former officer who gunned down the victim in the parking lot of a West Bank strip mall.

Former NOPD officer David Warren gunned down Henry Glover, 31, while the victim was standing in the parking lot of the strip mall in Algiers. After Glover was shot, William Tanner gave him a ride to an elementary school in Algiers that was being used by the NOPD as a makeshift police station, hoping that Glover might receive medical treatment for his gunshot wound.

Instead, Tanner later testified that he and other civilians were pushed around by police and he was separated from Henry Glover in the confusion.

Glover died sometime later and his remains were burned in Tanner’s car, which was abandoned on the Mississippi River levee. A photo from the grisly crime scene showed Glover’s skull in the car with the rest of his charred remains but his skill was later removed by someone and has not been returned to the family for proper burial.

The Glover family’s latest push for justice comes a week after Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Jeffrey Rouse reclassified Glover’s death as a homicide.

The Glover family and supporters were joined by grassroots and civil rights leaders outside the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office Wednesday and demanded that D.A. Leon Cannizzaro file charges against former NOPD officer David Warren.

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder. We want justice,” Rebecca Glover, the victim’s aunt, told reporters. “We didn’t get justice in the federal court system.”

W.C. Johnson, a member of Community United for Change and host of the local cable-access show “OurStory,” said he expected Cannizzaro to be as hard on police who break the law as he has been on civilians during his time as a criminal court judge and district attorney.

“It is…not out of character for the people of New Orleans to expect D.A. Cannizzaro to be equally as tough applying the same standards he applies to civilian criminals, to be applied to fellow officers of the court,” Johnson said. “At question is whether the ‘Color of Law’ is being applied equally to the rich and poor, to whites and non-whites and civilians and police officers.”

Warren was convicted of killing Glover in a high-profile trial in 2010 but was later granted a new trial because a federal appeals court agreed that his case should have been tried separately from the other officers involved. He was acquitted after his second trial by a federal jury in 2013,

Since then, the Glover family has been trying to convince former Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Frank Minyard to reclassify the death as a homicide so that Warren could face criminal charges in Orleans Parish, After agreeing to take another look at the evidence in December 2013, Minyard decided he didn’t have enough evidence upon which to base a decision and asked State AG Buddy Caldwell to weigh in on the case. Caldwell declined to weigh in on the case and Minyard an­nounced that he would not seek re-election, placing the case in limbo.

Henry Glover’s death was initially classified as accidental by Coroner Dr. Frank Minyard, after Glover’s charred remains were found in a burned out car near the Mississippi River levee in Algiers. It was later changed to undetermined. Minyard said at the time he needed more forensic evidence to determine exactly how Glover died.

During the 2010 trial, former NOPD officer David Warren testified that he shot Glover in self-defense and that he did not know what had become of Glover after he was shot and given a ride by a passer-by, who was later identified as William Tanner.

Dr. Rouse, whose campaign was backed by his former boss after Minyard ended his re-election bid, said April 1 that his decision to reclassify the death as a homicide was “based upon the totality of the evidence, that the death of Henry Glover was due to the actions of another person.”

“We have several things that we have to look at,” Orleans Parish D.A. Leon Cannizzaro told WWL. “First of all, we are waiting on Dr. Rouse to give us the report where he has classified this death as a unclassified death to a homicide. We’re still waiting on the report from Dr. Rouse before we can get into this.”

Cannizzaro told WWL that his office will review Rouse’s report along with FBI case files about Glover’s death and federal trial transcripts. “This office has never had an opportunity to look at this case. This matter has been prosecuted by the federal government for the last 10 years.”

Cannizzaro cautioned that cases that are old as the Glover case are difficult to prosecute.

When asked if Warren could face a murder charge, “Those are really the only the charges available,” Cannizzaro said. “The charge of negligent homicide or manslaughter have prescribed because there is a six-year statute of limitations with regard to those offenses in Louisiana.”

First- and second-degree murder are the only charges that the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office could pursue, Cannizzaro said.

“We’re going to sit down with the family,” Cannizzaro said, “and we’re going to tell them that we are going to look at this case.”

Cannizzaro was sharply criticized by civil rights and grassroots community leaders after refusing to file criminal charges against City of New Orleans employee Merritt Landry for shooting 14-year-old Marshall Coulter in the head after discovering the teen in his back yard. While Landry said he shot the youth in self-defense, police said that because of the distance between the shooter and the teen, Coulter did not pose an immediate threat to Landry or his family.

“Make no mistake about it — this is a political matter,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Lou­isiana Weekly. “The D.A., like every other elected official in the city and state, plays to the crowd. He’s going to do and say whatever he needs to do and say to continue to get re-elected.

“It’s time for Black residents to become politically savvy and hold those accountable who continue to disrespect and abuse us. Like the brothers and sisters in Ferguson, Mo., we need to rise up and head to the polls with a vengeance. It’s time to clean house and send a clear message to any elected official, Black or white, who thinks he or she can play with us.”

“Many non-white residents of New Orleans are indicted and prosecuted with less evidence than surrounds David Warren,” Com­munity United for Change wrote in a letter to D.A. Cannizzaro Wednesday. “…It would be a travesty of justice for you to try and take the grand-jury route out of this very political football game. This is your defining political moment for the citizens and residents of New Orleans. ‘Equal justice under the law’ is being tested and you are the entered apprentice being weighed…

“District Attorney Cannizzaro, you have the power to ignite the torch of liberty and justice for all by saving the taxpayers’ money and skip the grand-jury process by indicting David Warren immediately…

“As people protected under the constitutions of the United States and the State of Louisiana, we are expecting swift justice in your determination to prosecute David Warren. That is the right path toward making the people and the city whole again.

“We await your actions.”

Additional reporting by Louisiana Weekly editor Edmund W. Lewis.

This article originally published in the April 13, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.