Citing gross and severe malicious prosecution by the Eric Holder “Civil Rights” DOJ in their efforts to prosecute law enforcement following Hurricane Katrina, a federal judge has thrown out the convictions and ordered new trials.
(New Orleans)  For many metro area residents, the day when former police officers were convicted for their roles in gunning down unarmed people on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina marked a cathartic moment.

On Tuesday, however, a federal judge toppled those hard-won convictions, not citing faulty evidence, but because of the “grotesque” conduct of prosecutors who never even talked to the jury.
In an order upending one of the region’s most important civil rights cases in years, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt granted a new trial for five former New Orleans Police Department officers convicted in the Danziger Bridge shooting and the subsequent cover-up.
In a 129-page order that blasted former prosecutors in then-U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office, Engelhardt pointed to “unprecedented events and acts” that “has taken the court on a legal odyssey unlike any other.”
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The order granted a new trial for former police officers Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso as well as Arthur Kaufman, who was convicted of orchestrating the cover-up after being assigned to investigate the shooting.
All were tried and convicted of civil rights violations for their roles in the Sept. 4, 2005, shooting, following a weeks-long trial in 2011 that included emotional testimony of a man who watched his brother lay dying on the U.S. 90 bridge where people had sought shelter days after the storm.
Attorneys for the officers celebrated the ruling Tuesday as a step toward justice.
“The government was determined to get convictions in this case and did anything and everything ethical or not in their attempt to reach their desired verdict,” said Villavaso’s attorney, Roger Kitchens, echoing comments from other defense lawyers.
The Department of Justice in a statement said: “We are disappointed with the court’s ruling. We are reviewing the decision and considering our options.”
Relatives of Ronald Madison, one of two men killed at the bridge, were dismayed.
“This decision re-opens this terrible wound not only for our family but our entire community,” said Madison’s brother, Romell Madison, in a statement. “We urge the Department of Justice to appeal Judge Engelhardt’s decision. Our fight for justice continues.”
The former officers sought a new trial last year, citing among other examples the revelations that prosecutors in Letten’s office had authored disparaging comments on NOLA.com about defendants in several criminal cases, including the Danziger case.
Those revelations, and other instances of alleged misconduct, prompted Engelhardt in late 2012 to call for a criminal probe of former prosecutors Sal Perricone and Jan Mann. Tuesday’s order, however, revealed new instances of misconduct.
Engelhardt wrote that Karla Dobinski, a veteran trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., had also posted online comments during the trial. The order also cited testimony by Mann that she told then-U.S. Attorney Jim Letten that she had posted online comments, shortly after the scandal over Perricone’s posts began in March 2012.
That’s the first indication that Letten may have known about the misconduct months earlier that he has publicly acknowledged. Letten did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
“The case started as one featuring allegations of brazen abuse of authority, violation of the law, and corruption of the criminal justice system,” Engelhardt wrote in his decision alluding to the Danziger prosecution. “Unfortunately, though the focus has switched from the accused to the accusors, it has continued to be about those very issues. After much reflection, the court cannot journey as far as it has in this case only to ironically accept grotesque prosecutorial misconduct in the end.”  (read more)