Unequal justice
17th August 2015 · 0 Comments
By Edmund Lewis
Editor
Last week, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro could not hold back his outrage and frustration when asked by the media to react to the news that Rogers LaCaze, one of two people convicted in a grisly multiple-murder in eastern New Orleans 20 years ago, is getting a new trial.
LaCaze was convicted of participating in the robbery-murder plot that was allegedly masterminded by former NOPD Officer Antoinette Frank and resulted in the death of her partner Officer Ronald Williams II and two members of the family that owned the restaurant where the shootings occurred.
D.A. Cannizzaro clearly doesn’t think LaCaze deserves a new trial despite what appears to be an impropriety in the jury process that did not indicate that one of the jurors was a law enforcement officer.
The district attorney last week threatened to appeal the decision to grant LaCaze a new trial in part because of the toll it would take on the family of the slain officer.
But what about the families of unarmed Black people murdered or wounded by NOPD officers almost a decade ago? Where was his outrage when the family of Henry Glover repeatedly begged the D.A. to file charges against former NOPD Officer David Warren? What about the toll the Glover family’s ongoing ordeal and quest for justice continues to take on them?
A decade after the horrific, officer-involved Henry Glover and Danziger Bridge shootings, the victims’ families are still screaming out for justice but those screams have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
Where was the district attorney’s outrage when a Faubourg Marigny homeowner shot a 14-year-old Black boy in the head for trespassing in his yard, even though the police said that the homeowner was not in imminent danger? Rather than file charges against the homeowner, Merritt Landry, the district attorney’s office did absolutely nothing and was let off the hook when someone clearly tricked the brain-damaged teen into taking the keys out of another Marigny homeowner’s mailbox and entering his home.
Where was the district attorney’s outrage when five cops who slaughtered 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison had their convictions overturned because several top prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana were illegally posting online comments about several active U.S. Department of Justice cases?
Where was his outrage when then Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard refused to classify the death of 31-year-old Henry Glover as a homicide so that former NOPD Officer David Warren, the cop who shot Glover, could be tried for murder in Orleans Parish after his federal conviction was overturned?
Henry Glover, you may recall, was the West Bank resident who was shot by Warren less than a week after Hurricane Katrina, was subsequently brought to an elementary school being used by cops as a makeshift police station and his remains were later found burned in an abandoned car on the Mississippi River Levee. Glover’s skull was later taken from the grisly murder scene by someone and has not been returned to the family 10 years later for proper burial.
Where was the district attorney’s outrage when former NOPD Officer Josh Colclough entered into a Gentilly home filled with young children and shot a shirtless and unarmed 20-year-old Wendell Allen in the chest as he stood on the stairwell of the home, and where is Cannizzaro’s outrage now that Colclough is trying to get a reduction in his four-year sentence for taking an innocent human life?
To the best of my knowledge, now that Orleans Parish coroner Dr. Jeffrey Rouse has classified Henry Glover’s death as a homicide, Mr. Cannizzaro has shown no signs of rushing to file charges against David Warren for firing the shot that ultimately led to Glover’s death.
He doesn’t appear to be moving in that regard with a sense of purpose the way he did when he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to cancel a $14 million settlement against the City of New Orleans for Mr. John Thompson after the NOPD and Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office framed him for murder and sent him to death row. Even though it was former D.A. Harry Connick and not Mr. Cannizzaro who sent Thompson to death row, Mr. Cannizzaro convinced the Justices that the City of New Orleans could not afford to pay such a hefty fine for violating this innocent man’s constitutional rights.
The family of Officer Ronnie Williams deserves justice, peace of mind and closure, as do the families of the Henry Glover and Danziger Bridge shooting victims.
It’s nice that D.A. Cannizzaro is concerned about everything that the family of slain Officer Williams will have to go through with a new trial for Rogers LaCaze, but what about the families of Henry Glover, James Brissette, Ronald Madison and the four others wounded on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans less than a week after Hurricane Katrina?
With a U.S. Attorney’s Office that appears to be more interested in posting comments online than getting rid of homicidal cops who murder unarmed Black civilians, and a district attorney who picks and chooses when he becomes outraged by some unjust decision or hiccup in the criminal justice system, who’s going to actively secure justice for Black New Orleanians and the poor in this city?
Who’s going to make sure that the police don’t continue to get away with murdering innocent people and that the local affiliate of the U.S. Department of Justice does its job?
So many questions, so few answers.
This article originally published in the August 17, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
