Five ex-New Orleans police officers, who shot and killed unarmed residents on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina, will spend the rest of their lives in jail.
STORY: New Orleans Police Officers Convicted In Cover Up Of Hurricane Katrina Shootings
The former officers were sentenced to 6 to 65 years for shootings of unarmed residents after Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt handed down a stiff sentence on the five former cops who were convicted last summer.
The four defendants convicted of participating in the shootings themselves, which claimed the lives of two civilians, and badly injured four others, all face prison terms of more than 30 years.
According to Nola.com:
Robert Faulcon Jr., 48, was sentenced to 65 years in prison. Faulcon is the only officer tied to the second of the two fatal shootings on the bridge — that of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally challenged man. Madison was felled by a shotgun blast to the back fired by Faulcon on the western side of the bridge.
Former Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, 38, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Bowen sat in the front passenger seat as a Budget rental truck full of officers sped to the bridge on the morning of Sept. 4, 2005.
Prosecutors said Bowen jumped out of the truck and sprayed an AK-47 at a concrete barrier where civilians were hiding. The jury also convicted him of stomping on Madison as he lay dying, though Engelhardt later threw out that conviction, citing a lack of physical evidence.
Former Sgt. Robert Gisevius Jr., 39, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Gisevius was one of several officers who rode to the bridge in the back of the Budget truck.
He opened fire with an M-4 rifle after jumping out the back of the truck, and later, with Bowen and the investigators, helped orchestrate a years-long cover-up to hide what actually happened on the bridge.
Anthony Villavaso II, 35, was sentenced to 38 years in prison. He, too, rode in the back of the Budget truck, and then jumped out and fired an AK-47 at unarmed civilians on the bridge. Nine casings matching that AK-47 were recovered by investigators.
Former Sgt. Arthur “Archie” Kaufman, 55, who was convicted on 10 counts related to the cover-up of the shootings, was sentenced to six years in prison.
Kaufman was the only one of the five defendants sentenced today who was not already incarcerated. Engelhardt ordered him to report to prison on May 23.
The wounds of Hurricane Katrina will never fully heal, but at least a chapter has been closed on the senseless murder of innocent victims.
SOURCE: Nola
