Federal judge recuses herself from ex-cop Len Davis’ case
21st December 2015 · 0 Comments
U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan on Monday recused herself from the death penalty case against former NOPD Officer Len Davis, more than two decades after she began overseeing the high-profile proceedings.
Davis was convicted of ordering a hit on New Orleans resident Kim Groves in a case that led to a NOPD consent decree in the 1990s.
The New Orleans Advocate reported that in a one-page order Monday, Judge Berrigan didn’t provide a reason for recusing herself from the case against Len Davis, who was sentenced to death for arranging a woman’s 1994 murder. Berrigan instead cited a law that requires judges to disqualify themselves if their impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.”
In 2014, a federal prosecutor had asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reassign the case to a different judge. But a three-judge panel from the court denied the request in October, so Berrigan could have continued to handle it, according to The New Orleans Advocate.
Len Davis was convicted in 1996 of directing a drug dealer, Paul Hardy, to shoot and kill Kim Groves after she filed a brutality complaint against him. Berrigan, who sentenced Davis to death for a second time in 2005 after the 5th Circuit reversed his initial sentence, was still handling his post-conviction proceedings.
The cases against Davis and Hardy were reassigned to U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle.
Berrigan agreed to let Davis represent himself during his post-conviction proceedings, but she appointed “standby counsel” to assist him. In 2012, without Davis’ permission, those attorneys filed motions to vacate his convictions and sentence. Their court filing argued that Davis has a serious mental impairment that rendered him incompetent to stand trial.
In a court filing last year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McMahon argued that Berrigan erred by “usurping” Davis’ right to control his legal strategy and allowing his standby lawyers to “raise issues that Davis has specifically rejected.”
“These decisions could cause an objective observer to question the district court’s ability to act as an impartial and neutral arbiter,” McMahon wrote.
The 5th Circuit panel rejected McMahon’s argument, saying that the panel was “not persuaded that reassignment is needed to preserve the appearance of justice.”
Prosecutors said Davis recruited Hardy, a drug dealer he protected in exchange for favors, to kill Groves. Groves had filed a complaint against Davis after she saw his partner pistol-whip somebody in her neighborhood.
Although Hardy was initially sentenced to death for killing Groves in October 1994, Berigan ruled in 2010 that Hardy is mentally retarded and isn’t eligible to be executed. She sentenced him to life in prison in 2011.
Damon Causey, a third man convicted in Groves’ killing, is also serving a life sentence.
The chilling evidence in the murder case made national headlines two decades ago.
FBI agents had tapped Davis’ phone as part of an undercover drug investigation and taped his order to Hardy to shoot Groves. The agency also recorded Davis’ joyful reaction to news that Groves had been shot.
The New Orleans Advocate reported that in 2005 the family of Kim Groves wrote a letter to the DOJ that urged it to halt its efforts to carry out a death sentence for Davis and Hardy and accept a life sentence for both of them so it wouldn’t prolong the family’s ordeal.
“The family believes that the death penalty would in fact be the lesser of the punishments and that the finality and duration of a life sentence would be much more difficult and severe to Mr. Davis in particular, than death,” they wrote.
Former New Orleans Mayor Marc H. Morial has said more than once that the NOPD was well on its way to being reformed by the consent decree that followed the case but that the overhaul of the troubled department was undermined by the administration of his successor, former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
This article originally published in the December 21, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
