The other NOPD witnesses described how the officers who fired guns that day took part in writing the police reports about the shootings, all huddling around a supervisor’s laptop to make sure the stories held tight. They described how when Sergeant Kaufman, the supervisor on trial, went out to the scene to investigate, he failed to collect a single piece of evidence and instantly decided the police shootings would be ruled justified. Lehrmann recounted that meeting, of shooters and supervisors, at the gutted-out police quarters.
“And what the meeting was, it was, basically, ‘Okay, this is the story, everybody read the report, everybody know what you’re going to say, so we can put it on tape and take the statements,’” he told jurors.
“Tell us about collection of evidence that day at the scene,” prosecutor Chung asked him.
“There was none.”
“How was that going to be explained?”
“Hurricane.”
“Who decided that?”
“Archie.”
In its bid to craft a believable cover-up, Lehrmann said, the department changed its story so often he lost count.
“It happened all the time,” he said. “I mean, the lies changed whenever we needed to change them.”
“Did it matter what really happened?” Chung asked.
“No, ma’am,” Lehrmann said.
“Why not?”
“Because from the outset, we were going to cover up to make sure the officers were okay,” he replied.
Defense attorneys grilled these witnesses. Timothy Meche, representing accused officer Villavaso, drilled into an early police report on the shootings listing only black officers, including his client, as striking victims with bullets.
“Officer Faulcon is gone. He is in Houston. Officers Villavaso and Barrios are from the 5th District. So here, isn’t what you’re doing, you’re blaming it on the other guys, the outsiders?” Meche asked Lehrmann.
“Archie wrote that section. You gotta ask him,” the witness said.
“That’s not my question. Isn’t what’s going on here you’re blaming it on the outsiders?”
“I can’t speak to that. I didn’t write that.”
HUNTER, THE OFFICER TOTING his own personal AK-47 in the days after Katrina, took the stand. Prosecutor Bernstein had Hunter step out of the witness box and demonstrate for the judge, jury, and courtroom how Bowen stomped on a wheezing Ronald Madison after the gunfire. Hunter stepped outside the box, looked down at the courtroom floor, and raised his right leg. He stomped down hard with his heel. Bernstein showed jurors a picture of Ronald Madison, lifeless, a boot print on his back.
Bernstein asked Hunter about the rally, organized by the police union, days after the officers were charged with murder in state court. Supporters hoisted signs that day. “Heroes,” they said.
“Were you a hero, Mr. Hunter?” Bernstein asked.
“No,” he replied.
“Why are you not a hero?”
“There’s nothing heroic about shooting unarmed people that are running away.”
Prosecutor Carter asked Officer Ignatius Hills the same question. Were you a hero? “No,” the officer said. Why not? “There wasn’t anything heroic about what transpired on the bridge that day to be declared a hero,” he told the courtroom.
FBI agent Bezak contributed the back story of the federal inquiry—describing how the government, at just the right moment, wanted it known the investigation was in full bloom. Bezak rarely telephoned the subjects in his sights, choosing instead to show up at their homes unannounced.
“So by popping in they can’t avoid you, they’re forced to talk to you. And also, if they did have something to hide, I thought by popping in it wouldn’t give them the chance to talk to anybody else to try and get their stories straight,” he said.
“Pressure is a good thing.”
A firearms specialist with the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory in Baton Rouge told jurors that, after comparing the cache of weapons used by officers on the bridge with spent casings and shotgun shells, he was able to link bullets to specific weapons. Nine casings matched Villavaso’s AK-47. Another nine matched the AK-47 Bowen used, and two other casings matched Bowen’s Glock pistol. Four shotgun shells matched the Mossberg shotgun Faulcon used, forensic scientist Patrick Lane concluded. Another five casings could have come from an M4, the type of weapon Gisevius used that morning—but never turned in to NOPD investigators who collected guns. At least three weapons matched bullets lodged into James Brissette’s body: Bowen’s AK-47, a shotgun like the one used by Faulcon, and an M4 assault rifle, Lane testified.
Prosecutors brought the courtroom behind the scenes of their investigation, playing a series of conversations that had been secretly tape-recorded in 2009 between Lehrmann and Gisevius, including snippets from the three-hour session at Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar & Restaurant in downtown New Orleans.
Someone’s talking, Gisevius told the detective, wearing a wire.
“Who the fuck do you think the leak is?” Gisevius asked.
Lehrmann suggested it could be Kaufman. Gisevius wasn’t buying it. “He would not sink his own ship,” he said, in a statement now played for all, including Kaufman, to hear.
On July 21, 2011, three weeks into trial, the government called its last witness, Lesha Bartholomew. Like their nephew Jose Holmes, the Bartholomew family fled New Orleans after the shootings on the bridge and moved to Georgia.
As they lay on the ground cowering, Lesha could see her mother’s right arm being held together by skin. “And you moved closer to protect her?”
“Yes.”
“With your body?”
“Yes.”
“To prevent her from being shot again?”
“Yes.”
“What happened as you laid there trying to protect your mother?”
“I kept hearing shots. I felt a shot in my butt.”
“Did anyone say, ‘Police’?”
“No.”
“Did anyone say, ‘Show me your hands’?”
“No.”
Reading another police report justifying the shootings, a prosecutor asked Lesha whether it was the truth. “It’s a lie,” she said.
With those words, Bernstein turned toward the judge. “Your Honor, at this point the government rests.”
On July 26, 2011, a month into the trial, jurors stepped out of the courtroom for a visit to the crime scene, the Danziger Bridge, walking over the ground that six years earlier had been covered with bullets, bodies, and bloodshed. State police and federal officials closed off the bridge from traffic, allowing jurors to walk up and over the overpass, retracing the steps of the police pursuit and the residents under fire. One juror stood at the base of the bridge, where Little Leonard Bartholomew had sprinted to escape the gunfire, and peered up to the overpass. Prosecutors Bobbi Bernstein and Cindy Chung watched the jurors retrace those steps, taking mental notes as defense attorneys also took in the scene. Judge Engelhardt stood back from the fray, watching the scene unfold, donning sunglasses, a beige summer jacket, a powder blue shirt, and his trademark bow tie instead of his judicial robes.
The defendants sat in the courtroom, day after day, and heard their crimes recounted in precise detail. Only one would take the stand.
Instead, the defense zeroed in on the police turned witnesses, particularly Hunter. Defense attorneys seized on his record of police insubordination, his early discharge from the marines, and his history of lying—even to his bosses—to protect himself. The NOPD had twice suspended him, police files show, once for a lack of “truthfulness.”
“There was a time that I would have lied to just about anybody,” Hunter admitted under drilling by attorneys for the defense.
“That’s apparent,” defense attorney Hessler shot back.
Other strategies crumbled on the stand. As part of their defense, attorneys hired a private investigator who, indeed, found a Lakeisha Smith who lived just near the bridge in 2005. The PI even took t
he stand and showed a copy of Lakeisha’s driver’s license. Bernstein ripped the theory to shreds, putting the woman on the stand. Yes, her name was Lakeisha Smith. But, no, she was not in New Orleans during Katrina—and she never spoke to a police officer about the shootings. She was in Mississippi at the time. The fictitious eye witness remained just that.
Finally Faulcon took the witness stand, presenting the morning through his own eyes over several hours of testimony.
“It’s a call that you never want to hear,” he said of the 108 dispatch that sent them barreling to the bridge.
Racing to the Danziger, he said he heard gunshots being fired even before the truck came to a halt. And, he swore under oath, he saw two men up ahead with guns. He never named them, but the figures he described were Jose Holmes and JJ Brissette.
“I’m human, I have feelings too. So my heart goes out to the people that were hurt. My heart goes out to the families of the victims,” he told his lawyer from the stand. “But at that time when I saw guns, I just thought my actions were justified based on what I saw in that split second. I feel horrible because of the fact, you know, in that split second when I saw guns, I might have been right or I might have been wrong; but if I had known that those civilians were unarmed, I would have never fired my weapon at unarmed civilians.”
Under Bernstein’s questioning, Faulcon acknowledged many of the statements attributed to him were not, in fact, the truth.
“Do you agree that all of these reports are false?” the prosecutor asked.
“Based on what I read pertaining to my actions, yes.”
“Do you agree that there was a cover-up in this case?”
“Based on what I learned now, yes.”
From the witness box, Faulcon was forced to admit he shot a weaponless Ronald Madison in the back as the man ran away.
“You also agree that you shot and killed that innocent man?” Bernstein asked.
“Yes,” Faulcon answered. “At the point when I felt that I was threatened for my life, when I felt he was a threat.”
“You agree that you shot him in the back?” Bernstein came back.
“Yes. Again, when I felt, at that point, where my life was in danger, and I presumed him to be a threat.”
“You agree that you never saw Ronald Madison with a gun?”
“Yes.”
“You agree that you never saw Lance Madison with a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Do you agree that you can only use deadly force if you perceive that your life or the life of another person is in imminent danger?”
“Yes.”
A few moments later, she asked, “Every time you fire your weapon you have to have a reason to fire, correct?”
“Yeah,” Faulcon replied. “I mean, your life would have to be in danger, correct?”
“So you agree that you cannot fire your weapon simply because you presume there is a threat?”
“Well, no, not presume. But if I believe that that is a threat and it’s imminent, you know, my life is in danger or others, and given the totality of the circumstances, also, has a lot to take into consideration.”
Bernstein shifted from the Madison shootings to the initial shots Faulcon fired from the other side of the bridge, where the Bartholomew family cowered for their lives.
“And then you pumped that shotgun, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you fired again?”
“Yes.”
“And you pumped it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you fired again?”
“Yes.”
“And you pumped it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you fired again?”
“Yes. Now, I don’t know how many times I fired. I’m just—I didn’t know at that time.”
The prosecutor then asked Faulcon if he had talked to the other shooters also standing trial—Bowen, Villavaso, and Gisevius—from the time of the shootings until nine months later, when Faulcon gave a statement to Kaufman.
“No, I don’t think I did,” Faulcon said. “I didn’t even have their telephone numbers.”
Bernstein promptly unfurled phone records showing that Faulcon spoke to Bowen eight times on a single day a month after the shootings. They talked for more than half an hour a month later. The same month, he talked to Villavaso for eight minutes, and then he spoke to Bowen twice more in December and January. He talked to Gisevius that December as well.
On January 25, 2006, the day many officers provided formal statements about the shootings, Bernstein’s records showed that Faulcon spoke to Bowen and Villavaso, and that he had a follow up conversation with Villavaso a day later.
Faulcon had taken the stand to save himself, but in the end, he cemented the very issues the government aimed to drive home. Officers had no legal basis to fire on the families on the bridge, and they engaged in a whitewash to conceal the truth.
On August 2, 2011, with the testimony finished, prosecutors and defense attorneys provided dueling arguments about the law and the events of that morning.
“The government’s case is built on the accomplices,” Eric Hessler, the attorney for Gisevius, told jurors. “Lohman, Lehrmann, Hills, Hunter, Barrios. Sounds like a law firm.”
Defense attorney Frank DeSalvo ripped into Hunter’s testimony recounting the horrors he attributed to DeSalvo’s client, Bowen. They were lies, DeSalvo said.
“Michael Hunter came in and said all those bad things about Sergeant Bowen. And they went for that bait like a trout, and swallowed it hook, line and sinker, because that’s what they wanted to hear,” he said of the prosecution team. “But the facts and the physical evidence tell you another story. And he was an outlier because he saw things that no one else saw, both on the east side of the bridge and on the west side, where Ronald Madison lay dead. He was the only one who said that Kenneth Bowen leaned over that barrier and fired at those people as they lay on that walkway. He was the only one that said Kenneth Bowen went up and started stomping Ronald Madison.”
The mark on Madison’s back was not from a boot, DeSalvo told jurors, but was a smudge mark from the fender of a nearby Chevy van he must have brushed up against as he fell to the ground. The lawyer said physical evidence contradicted Hunter’s contention that Bowen sprayed gunfire at residents.
As DeSalvo sat down, Bernstein rose from her seat and turned toward jurors. “Everything Bowen says is a lie,” she said. The sergeant, she said, fired repeatedly at “unarmed defenseless people on the walkway.” The officers “assumed that everybody out on that bridge was going to be a bad guy, when in fact it was two good families,” she said. “Two good families, minding their own business.” Bernstein’s final words returned jurors’ attention to the two families on the bridge. “All of those victims who told you what happened to them that day. Remember them, remember what they said.”
On August 3, 2011, following more than five weeks of trial testimony, jurors stepped out of the federal courtroom and began deliberating the evidence they had absorbed. At 2:00 p.m. the next afternoon, jurors were clearly debating the most serious question—whether the officers, in particular Faulcon in his shooting of Ronald Madison, committed murder. “Could the judge please come in and explain ‘murder’ to the jury. We are having difficulty in understanding the definition,” the jury foreman asked, pointing to the charge specifically against Faulcon. Judge Engelhardt referred jurors to his legal instructions, already provided.
JUST BEFORE NOON ON AUGUST 5, 2011, six years to the month after Katrina recast the history of New Orleans, jurors returned with a verdict.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. The officers were convicted of violating the civil rights of every victim on the bridge, including the two men killed and the two men falsely charged; of unlawfully unloading their weapons; of making false statements in their reports; and of obstruction of justice by launching a cover-up to mask the truth.
The prosecutors won on most counts, but not every s
ingle one.
Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, and Villavaso were found guilty of violating James Brissette’s civil rights, and jurors decreed that the violation resulted in the teenager’s death. Yet jurors said the four “Did Not” cause the death of James Brissette—a mixed verdict that haunts JJ’s mother, Sherrel Johnson.
“I just sat there frozen in my seat,” she later said. “He’s dead because they had weapons. He’s dead because he was shot. But their actions did not cause his death? It just doesn’t make sense. And if it doesn’t make sense, it’s not true.”
“My child is dead and you’re going to say your actions did not cause his death?” she continued. “You don’t have to put a name on the bullet. You’ve got five. Pick one.”
Sherrel will never recover from the loss of her son, or come to understand how the police officers could do what they did that Sunday morning. “You robbed my child of his life in broad daylight. He had nothing to hurt you with.”
The jurors ruled that Robert Faulcon “Did” cause the death of Ronald Madison. But they did not agree the shooting constituted murder. That split verdict could well spare Faulcon life in prison.
On every other of the twenty-five counts brought to trial, jurors marked a big X by “Guilty.” They convicted the officers for falsely prosecuting Lance Madison and Jose Holmes Jr., and jurors ruled that Kenneth Bowen violated Ronald Madison’s civil rights by kicking his limp body.
For the families who had so long pushed for justice, the August verdict shone like a beam. Outside the courtroom, prosecutor Bernstein clasped her hands together in a quiet moment of reflection and put her head down, her eyes shaded with dark sunglasses. To her right, Lance Madison embraced prosecutor Cindy Chung, savoring the moment the family had worried might never arrive. Bernstein, the face and leader of the federal government’s team, put both arms around Lance Madison’s neck; Lance embraced the civil rights prosecutor, his eyes closed, the six years of pain washing over him and turning, finally, to relief. Romell Madison stepped into the bright August day and was instantly surrounded by friends and supporters stretching their arms to take him in.
Sherrel Johnson wiped her tears with a white handkerchief as Jim Letten, the local US attorney, spoke about the verdict just rendered. Supporters put their hands on her back, a literal support beam, as officials held a press conference to discuss the historic verdict just announced.
Shots on the Bridge Page 19