Jury convicts 5 officers in post-Katrina shootings

A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

The verdicts close one of the darkest chapters of police abuse in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The five current and former New Orleans police officers were accused of wrongfully shooting six unarmed civilians, two fatally, on the Danziger Bridge several days after the storm hit New Orleans and then "staging an elaborate cover-up to justify the shootings," ltv.com reported.

Defendants Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso were found guilty of the shooting of civilians and participation in the cover-up. Sergeant Arthur Kaufman was found guilty of the cover-up, including the planting of a gun on the bridge and writing a false police report with phony witnesses.

Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso were accused of shooting the unarmed men and women on the Danzinger Bridge after responding to police reports that shots were being fired there.

"Prosecutors contended that Faulcon fatally shot Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, in the back with a shotgun as he fled from the bridge, and Bowen was accused of stomping on Madison as he lay dying at the foot of the bridge. James Brissette, 17, was also killed on the bridge.

Defense attorneys attempted to justify the use of deadly force that left Madison and Brissette dead by painting a scene of officers rushing to the bridge on Sept. 4, 2005 around 9 a.m. to assist police who were under fire, ltv.com reported."

Jurors did not find that the killing of Ronald Madison rose to the level of murder, the AP reported. And jurors only found Kenneth Bowen guilty of shooting and killing James Brissette. The trial was a high-profile test of the Justice Department's effort to clean up a police department marred by long-term corruption and brutal killings in the chaos following the August 29, 2005 hurricane. 

A total of 20 New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes, the AP reported. Most of the cases centered on violence and cover ups during the aftermath of Katrina, which plunged the flooded city into a state of lawlessness and desperation.

"This was a critical verdict. I cannot overstate the importance of this verdict. The power, the message it sends to the community, the healing power it has," U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said after the verdict.

Sentencing was tentatively scheduled for Dec. 14. Kaufman remains free on bond until he is sentenced; the other four officers already are jailed.