Last ex-cop in Danziger Bridge case pleads guilty to lesser charge
7th November 2016 · 0 Comments
Gerard Dugue, a former New Orleans Police Department sergeant convicted in 2011 in the high-profile, post-Katrina Danziger Bridge shooting case, appeared in federal court Friday, Nov. 4, to change his plea from not guilty to guilty to a lesser charge stemming from the deadly officer-involved shootings that claimed the lives of two unarmed Black people and left four others wounded.
FOX 8 News reported that federal felony charges against Dugue were reduced Thursday.
As a result, he faced one misdemeanor charge of “willful deprivation of rights under color of law.”
Friday’s guilty plea to a misdemeanor means that Dugue, like the other five former NOPD officers indicted in the racially charged case, will avoid a second trial.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt on Friday sentenced Dugue to a year of probation and ordered him to pay restitution, adding that he will determine the amount after civil lawsuits filed by victims’ families have been resolved.
The shootings occurred on Sept. 4, 2005, less than a week after Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans.
Dugue and four other former NOPD officers were convicted in 2011 but were granted a new trial by a federal judge after it was learned that several key prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office had posted comments online at Nola.com about several active U.S. Department of Justice cases, including the Danziger case.
As the former NOPD officers awaited new trials, they were offered a plea deal that would allow them and the victims and their families to avoid a new trial.
The plea deal dramatically reduced the sentences, in some cases, shaving decades in prison time for Kenneth Bowen, Robert Faulcon, Robert Gisevius, Arthur Kaufman and Anthony Villavaso. U.S. District Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt accepted the plea deals in federal court earlier this year.
Under the plea agreement, Gisevius agreed to 10 years, Faulcon to 12 years, Bowen to 10 years, Villavaso to seven years — each with credit for six years of time served. Kaufman agreed to three years with time served.
Initially, Bowen received a 40-year sentence, Faulcon got a 65-year sentence, Gisevius was handed down a 40-year sentence, Kaufman a six-year sentence and Villavaso a 38-year sentence. Faulcon received the stiffest sentence for shooting Madison in the back with a shotgun.
Dugue is the last remaining defendant in the case.
The AP reported that attorneys had said in earlier court records that plea negotiations were underway with Dugue, who had pleaded not guilty to obstruction of justice and other charges. His change-of-plea hearing took place Nov. 4 — three days before his scheduled trial.
The Danziger Bridge shootings was one of several high-profile, post-Katrina cases that led to a U.S. Department of Justice probe of the NOPD. After the probe, the DOJ issued a scathing report that said the NOPD was rife with “corruption” and “abuse” and imposed a federally mandated, 492-point consent decree aimed at overhauling the troubled police department.
After initially welcoming and praising the NOPD consent decree, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu sought to block the consent decree, arguing that the consent-decree negotiating process had been tainted by the involvement of the federal prosecutors involved in the online posting scandal, that the City of New Orleans could not afford to pay for NOPD and Orleans Parish Prison consent decrees and that the NOPD no longer needed a consent decree because it had begun reforming itself.
The federal courts did not buy any of those arguments and the implementation of the NOPD consent decree began in August 2013.
The Danziger Bridge shootings claimed the lives of 17-year-old James Brissette and Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and wounded four others.
With wrongful-death civil lawsuits pending in the Danziger Bridge case and the Henry Glover case, another high-profile, officer-involved shooting case, the Landrieu administration reached out to the plaintiffs in the cases last month and said it would like to reach settlements with the survivors and victims’ families by the end of the year.
In other criminal justice-related news, a former guard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola entered a guilty plea Tuesday in federal court to covering up the beating of a handcuffed and shackled inmate while he was being held in solitary confinement.
WAFB-TV of Baton Rouge reported that a sentencing date has not been set for Scott Kennedy, but the former correctional officer could face up to 10 years in prison for one count, five years for a second count, and up to $250,000 in fines for each count.
According to court documents, Kennedy is one of three guards accused of being involved with the incident, which happened in January 2014. Although Kennedy did not participate in the beating, he did plead guilty to plotting with the guards who committed the assault to cover it up.
This article originally published in the November 7, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
