• Former New Orleans police officer
David Warren has been acquitted of the shooting of Henry Glover, 31, in the
days after Hurricane Katrina
• Warren had been found guilty in 2010
and sentenced to nearly 26 years
• Last year an appeals court ordered a
new trial after ruling he should have been tried separately from officers
charged with covering-up the death
• An ex-colleague said Warren told him
shortly after the shooting that he believed looters were 'animals' who deserved
to be shot
• After the verdict was read, Glover's
sister, Patrice, started wailing and had to be carried out of the courtroom
• Warren's family embraced each other
and fought back tears
• On his release Walker said: 'We have
spent years talking about something that lasted seconds'
By Daily Mail
Reporter and Associated Press
A former New
Orleans police officer whose 2010 manslaughter conviction was touted as a
milestone in the city's healing after Hurricane Katrina was acquitted Wednesday
by a different jury of charges he fatally shot a man without justification
during the storm's chaotic aftermath.
David Warren
spent more than three years behind bars after he was charged in the September
2005 death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, whose body was burned in a car by a
different officer after a good Samaritan drove the dying man to a makeshift
police compound.
Leaving the
courthouse a free man, Warren, 50, was reunited with his wife and five children
after jurors acquitted him of a civil rights violation and a firearm charge.
Warren told
reporters that he 'took the action that I had to take' when he shot Glover once
with a rifle from a second-story balcony at a strip mall he was guarding.
'We have spent
years talking about something that lasted seconds,' he said.
Warren's
trembling relatives wept and embraced each other after the verdict, which
jurors delivered less than two hours after they informed a judge they were
struggling to reach a unanimous decision.
'Oh my gosh, I
can't even get it in my head,' his wife, Kathy Warren, told a supporter.
Her husband had
been in custody since June 2010, when he surrendered to authorities following
his indictment.
On the other
side of the courtroom, Glover's sister, Patrice, slumped over and wailed so
loudly that U.S. District Judge Lance Africk paused as he spoke to jurors.
After a man carried Patrice Glover out of the room, several jurors wiped away
tears as they filed out.
Friends and
relatives tried to console Patrice Glover as she sat in a chair in the lobby of
the courthouse.
'He was a good
child,' she said of her brother. 'That was my baby.'
U.S. Attorney
Kenneth Allen Polite Jr. said in a statement that prosecutors were disappointed
by the verdict but thanked jurors for their 'attentive service.'
His
predecessor, Jim Letten, said after the 2010 verdict that it marked a 'critical
phase in the recovery and healing of this city, of the people of this region.'
Africk had
sentenced Warren to nearly 26 years in prison after the jury in his first trial
convicted him and two other former officers of charges stemming from Glover's
death.
But an appeals
court overturned Warren's convictions and ordered a new trial last year.
A three-judge
panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit ruled that Warren should have been tried
separately from four other former officers charged in an alleged cover-up of
Glover's death.
The panel
agreed with Warren's lawyers that the 'spillover effect' of evidence about the
cover-up, including testimony about the burning of Glover's body and photos of
his charred remains, denied him a fair trial.
A different
officer, Gregory McRae, was convicted in 2010 of burning Glover's body. The 5th
Circuit upheld McRae's convictions.
The jury for
Warren's retrial was barred from hearing any testimony about what happened to
Glover in the aftermath of the shooting.
On Monday,
Warren testified that he feared for his life when he shot Glover because he
thought he saw a gun in his hand as he and another man ran toward the building
he was guarding.
Prosecutors,
however, said Glover wasn't armed and didn't pose a threat.
Defense
attorney Richard Simmons said the case was always about 'a policeman's worst
nightmare, that split-second decision.'
'The benefit of
the doubt has to go to the officer,' Simmons said, adding that 'there's no
winners or losers, there's just survivors.'
Warren and
another officer, Linda Howard, were guarding a police substation at the strip
mall on the morning of Sept. 2, 2005, when Glover and another man pulled up in
a truck.
Warren said he
screamed, 'Police, get back!' twice after Glover and his friend, Bernard
Calloway, exited the truck and started to run toward a gate that would have
given them access to the building he was guarding.
Calloway,
however, testified that Glover was standing next to the truck and lighting a
cigarette when Warren shot him. Howard testified Glover and Calloway were
running in different directions when Warren opened fire.
Jurors also
heard testimony from a former officer, Alec Brown, who said Warren told him
shortly after the shooting that he believed looters were 'animals' who deserved
to be shot. Warren denied saying that.
Earlier on the
same morning as Glover's shooting, Warren had fired what he called a warning
shot at a man who had been riding a bike near the mall.
Warren said he
knew officers aren't allowed to fire warning shots, but was worried the man
intended to do 'something stupid' because he had circled the mall several
times.
Warren was one
of 20 officers charged in a series of federal investigations of alleged police
misconduct in New Orleans.
His December
2010 conviction was touted as a major milestone in the Justice Department's
ambitious efforts to clean up the city's troubled police department.
The same jury
that convicted Warren and McRae also convicted a third former officer, Travis
McCabe, of writing a false report on the shooting.
Africk later
ordered a new trial for McCabe based on new evidence that surfaced after the
trial: a different copy of the report that McCabe is accused of doctoring.
The jury at the
first trial also acquitted two other former officers of charges related to the
alleged cover-up.
