NEW ORLEANS — Three years after his manslaughter conviction, a former New Orleans police officer is getting a second chance to convince a jury he was justified in fatally shooting a man outside a strip mall during Hurricane Katrina’s chaotic aftermath.
David Warren, whose retrial is scheduled to start Monday, was one of 20 officers charged in a series of federal investigations of alleged police misconduct in New Orleans. His December 2010 conviction was proclaimed as a major milestone in the Justice Department’s ambitious efforts to clean up the city’s troubled Police Department.
Warren was one of the first to be tried. He will also be the first of several officers to get a retrial as federal prosecutors, dogged by misconduct allegations of their own, try to salvage cases that many viewed as catalysts for healing the city’s post-Katrina wounds.
Five of the 20 officers pleaded guilty and are serving prison sentences. Of the others, three were acquitted while seven had their convictions overturned and await retrials. Four had their convictions upheld. A prosecutor’s ill-advised remark led to a mistrial for another officer.
Metropolitan Crime Commission president Rafael Goyeneche, whose watchdog group frequently provides federal authorities with information about alleged police misconduct, said prosecutors’ setbacks may be only temporary.
The same jury that convicted Warren of fatally shooting 31-year-old Henry Glover also convicted another officer, Gregory McRae, of burning Glover’s body in a car after a good Samaritan drove the dying man to a makeshift police headquarters. A third former officer, Travis McCabe, was convicted of writing a false report on the shooting.
Warren was serving nearly 26 years in prison when a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that he should have been tried separately from four other officers charged with participating in a coverup to make Glover’s shooting appear justified.