A federal judge Monday
postponed until next month the resentencing of Gregory McRae, a former New
Orleans police officer convicted of igniting Henry Glover’s corpse in the days
after Hurricane Katrina.
McRae had been scheduled to
appear in court Tuesday to learn his new punishment, but U.S. District Judge
Lance Africk rescheduled the hearing for Aug. 15. A brief order announcing the
new date did not explain the delay.
McRae’s defense attorney, Mike
Fawer, said neither side requested the continuance but the judge wanted more
time to research the issues.
McRae, who was previously
sentenced to 17 years in prison but had part of his conviction vacated on
appeal, has insisted he did not know Glover had been fatally shot by fellow
Officer David Warren at the time he set the body ablaze in a vehicle on the
Algiers levee.
He maintains he was driven to
burn the corpse by a lack of sleep and post-traumatic stress disorder he
endured during the chaotic aftermath of the storm. Prosecutors alleged the
burning was meant to further a police cover-up.
Africk asked the U.S.
Attorney’s Office to respond by Friday to an impassioned request made by Fawer
last week in which he requested leniency on the part of McRae, the only
defendant who remains imprisoned in the Glover case. Fawer acknowledged that,
under the law, McRae faces a minimum of 10 years behind bars, but he said that
amount of time is “unwarranted.”
McRae, 53, was one of three
NOPD officers found guilty in the Glover case in 2010, while two others were
acquitted. Warren, the officer who shot Glover, initially was convicted but was
acquitted during a retrial last year. Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, decided
not to retry Lt. Travis McCabe, another officer convicted in the alleged
cover-up who later had his conviction set aside.
