Former New Orleans cops plead guilty to bridge shootings

Five former New Orleans police officers pleaded guilty today in shootings that occurred on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina hit that town back in September 2005. The officers—Kenneth Bowen, Robert Faulcon, Robert Gisevius, Anthony Villavaso and Arthur Kaufman—were convicted back in 2011 but a federal judge set aside the jury verdict. The charges the officers pleaded to today were reduced and as a concession, the officers’ jail time will be reduced. According to NPR:

”The punishments are markedly less severe than those the officers received four years ago: While their previous sentences had carried a collective weight of more than 200 years in prison, the plea deal reportedly reduces that to less than 45 years in total.

When they were initially found guilty, Bowen, Faulcon, Gisevius and Villavaso were all sentenced to more than 30 years in prison. Faulcon got the most time: 65 years for "killing [a] mentally ill man with a shotgun blast to the back," … His new prison sentence would be for 12 years.

Both Bowen and Gisevius went from facing prison terms of 40 years each to 10 years; Villavaso, from 38 years to seven.

Kaufman initially was ordered to spend six years in prison for covering up the others' actions; today, he reportedly agreed to a three-year sentence.

All of the former officers' arrangements with prosecutors give them credit for time served and include five years of supervised release.”

The convictions of the former officers had been set aside, according to District Judge Kurt Engelhardt, because some federal prosecutors “posted extensive and largely negative online comments about police in the Danziger Bridge case and other criminal cases, using anonymous accounts on the local news website NOLA.com.”