Danziger Bridge case to proceed
Hurdle lifted in Danziger Bridge trial
Prosecutors rescind judge removal request
Friday, May 09, 2008
By Laura Maggi
The Times-Picayune
The long-dormant murder case against six New Orleans police officers and a former officer could progress quickly toward a trial after prosecutors this week abandoned their bid to remove the judge from the case because of alleged conflicts of interest.
The officers, accused of shooting six people on the Danziger Bridge a few days after Hurricane Katrina, have been in limbo for months because of the prosecutors’ motion to remove Judge Raymond Bigelow from the case, citing his alleged improper connections to the police and the defense team.
Assistant District Attorney Robert White, who took over the Orleans Parish district attorney’s public corruption unit in January, said he evaluated the office’s decision last summer to seek Bigelow’s removal and concluded that the argument had little legal merit. On Thursday, White said he asked the appeals division to withdraw the appeal to the 4th Circuit.
White’s decision to drop the recusal appeal thrusts the politically explosive case back into both the courtroom and the public sphere at a time when there is great uncertainty in the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office, with an election scheduled for the fall to determine future leadership.
— Turnover affects case —
Prosecutors indicted the six NOPD officers, along with one officer who resigned from the force after Katrina, during former District Attorney Eddie Jordan’s tenure. Jordan resigned in the fall of 2007, leaving a top prosecutor, Keva Landrum-Johnson, to take the helm as interim district attorney.
The next elected district attorney, taking charge of an office long hampered by rocky relations with the New Orleans Police Department, might not be eager to continue with a case that would further antagonize the NOPD.
For his part, White said he is “absolutely” committed to the prosecution. “I’m going to treat it just like every other case, analyze it and handle it the best and fairest way I can,” he said.
White delivered the news on Thursday morning to family members of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally handicapped man who was shot seven times in the back and upper arm by a New Orleans police officer as Madison ran from a chaotic scene on the bridge over the Industrial Canal.
A 19-year-old man also was killed, and four others suffered severe gunshot wounds. The surviving victims have described the scene as an ambush by police officers who shot at unarmed people, many who were crossing the bridge to get food at a grocery store. The indicted officers have maintained that they fired only after one or more people fired at them.
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