Feds seek reinstatement of Danziger convictions
4th May 2015 · 0 Comments
Federal prosecutors have asked an appeals court to reinstate the convictions of five former NOPD officers on civil rights charges stemming from the deadly shootings of six unarmed civilians on a bridge in eastern New Orleans less than a week after Hurricane Katrina.
The shootings left James Brissette, 17, and Ronald Madison, 40, dead and wounded four others.
The Danziger case was one of several high-profile, post-Katrina cases probed by the U.S. Department of Justice that led to a federally mandated, 492-point NOPD consent decree aimed at overhauling the city’s troubled police department.
The accused officers, originally known as the “Danziger 7,” were originally indicted by then Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan in 2006 but those charges were thrown out by New Orleans Judge Raymond Bigelow.
After a series of community meetings that brought together residents impacted by unconstitutional policing and Department of Justice officials organized by Community United for Change, the DOJ launched its own investigation and filed federal charges against the officers.
Four of the men are charged in the shootings that claimed the life of a 40-year-old mentally disabled man and a high school student. A fifth police officer is charged in the cover-up that fell apart as federal investigators bore down, WWL reported.
The five defendants were convicted in 2011 with the help of five other BOPD officers who testified in the trial after accepting plea deals from the Feds.
The 2011 convictions were subsequently thrown out by a federal judge after it was discovered that several key prosecutors posted online comments on Nola.com about active DOJ cases.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors sought to convince the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the convictions should be reinstated.
The latest legal battle in the case comes just four months before the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and during a time when a national debate is being held about the use of deadly force by U.S. police departments. After a series of marches and protests in more than two dozen cities last fall in the wake of the fatal shootings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and a host of other Black men and boys, the marches and protests have been sparked again by fatal police shootings and beatings in Baltimore, Md., Charleston, South Carolina and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
After the funeral of Freddie Gray, 25, Baltimore erupted with violence, looting and arson Monday night.
As in those incidents, the victims in the Danziger shootings were Black. However, some of the officers implicated in the shootings or cover-up, including two among the five convicted at trial, are Black., WWL reported.
“The fact that some of these officers were Black has no bearing on the case,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly. ?In New Orleans and all over America, Black cops harass, profile, terrorize, disrespect, violate and murder Black and Brown people all the time. It’s that simple.”
The Danziger Bridge case dates back to Sep. 4, 2005, six days after the hurricane struck. The city remained badly flooded, with utilities out everywhere and the police force under strain.
Police said at the time that the officers were responding to a report of other officers down when they came under fire. Police also claimed one of the men, Ronald Madison, who was mentally disabled, was reaching for a gun.
Convicted in the shootings and cover-up were two former sergeants, Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, and former officers Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon.
Former Sgt. Arthur “Archie” Kaufman also was convicted in the cover-up.
Faulcon was sentenced to 65 years in prison; Bowen and Gisevius, to 40 years; Villavaso, to 38; Kaufman, to six.”
During the trial, the five former officers who cooperated with the Feds offered testimony about a cover-up designed to make the shootings appear justified.
The unarmed shooting victims that surveyed the ordeal also testified, with one of the women recounting how she lost an arm as a result of the violent shooting and young man who described how one of the officers stood over him and shot him in the stomach.
The convictions added to a list of scandals that had plagued the police department over the years, including convictions of officers for various charges of corruption and abuse of force.
As grueling and traumatic as the Danziger trial was, its guilty convictions was viewed by many as a chance for the city and the NOPD to move forward and make positive changes.
But a scandal at the U.S. Attorney’s Office undid the convictions.
Attorneys for a prominent businessman under federal scrutiny exposed U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone as the writer of anonymous posts on the Nola.com website. At least two other prosecutors eventually were implicated in online posts as well.
The online posting scandal ultimately cost former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten his post as the longest-serving U.S. attorney.
Defense attorneys argued that the posts, along with leaks to media about a pending guilty plea by an officer involved in the case, were part of a “secret public relations campaign” that deprived the officers of a fair trial.
Eventually, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt ordered the new trial, saying posts by Perricone and others contributed to a “carnival atmosphere” that tainted the case.
Prosecutors, in briefs ahead of Wednesday’s arguments, said there is no evidence that media leaks or the online posts influenced the jury and that there was no need for Engelhardt to order a new trial.
Perricone and another assistant U.S. attorney resigned after news of the online postings surfaced.
Some civil rights and grassroots community leaders wondered if the online postings might have been done intentionally to provide an “escape route” for the convicted NOPD officers.
Some of their suspicions have been fueled by the NOPD consent decree federal monitor’s failure to hold the City of New Orleans and the NOPD accountable for not complying with the federally mandated consent decree.
“There is certainly cause for concern and suspicion,” the Rev. Raymond Brown told The Louisiana Weekly.
This article originally published in the May 4, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
