After two days of deliberations, 12 jurors reached a verdict in the retrial of a former New Orleans police officer David Warren.
The jury found Warren not guilty on charges of violating Henry Glover's civil rights and using a weapon in a violent crime.
The jury had been initially at a standstill and told Federal Judge Lance Africk ordered the jurors to return to deliberations and said they have obligation to go back.
The jury had been deliberating for a second day. Deliberations began about 1 p.m. Tuesday.
Warren, who was guarding a police substation from a second-floor balcony, testified Monday that he feared for his life when he shot Henry Glover because he thought he saw a gun in Glover's hand. It was the second time Warren has tried to explain why he fired at 31-year-old Glover less than a week after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005.
Prosecutors argued that Glover wasn’t armed and didn’t pose a threat.
After several hours of deliberations on Tuesday, the judge met with attorneys and said the jurors would deliberate as long as necessary and would let them go if they decided to stop for the night to rest or they reached a verdict.
However around 7 p.m. Tuesday, jurors told Africk they "had not made any progress in more than two hours." Africk ordered jurors back to resume deliberations at 9 a.m.
After about an hour of deliberating Wednesday, jurors had a question about a truck's location at the Algiers strip mall. After taking measurements on the fourth floor of Federal Court, jurors resumed deliberations.
Later, jurors asked for an explanation of one of the counts Warren faced.
Warren was sentenced to nearly 26 years in prison after a different jury convicted him of manslaughter in 2010. But an appeals court overturned his convictions last year, ruling Warren should have been tried separately from four officers charged in an alleged coverup.
The alleged cover-up, which jurors didn’t hear about, involved the burning of Glover's body in a car found along the Algiers levee. The car belonged to good Samaritan William Tanner. Tanner said he heard the shot and stopped to get Glover medical attention.
Warren, Gregory McRae, former Lt. Robert Italiano, Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann and Lt. Travis McCabe were charged with crimes in connection with the Sept. 2, 2005, shooting and killing of Glover.
The retrial sprang up from an appeals court ruling in December 2012. The ruling also reversed and vacated two convictions related to McRae -- while letting stand two other guilty verdicts against McRae. The court, as part of its findings, did vacate all of the sentences for McRae.
The judges found that the government presented insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction on the counts in question against McRae.
The appellate court heard arguments from prosecutors and defense attorneys in July 2012.
Italiano and Scheuermann were tried and acquitted in a federal court; though convicted of writing a false report. McCabe had already been granted a new trial.
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http://www.wdsu.com/news/local-news/new-or...
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Thursday, December 12th 2013 at 12:18PM
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