Post-Katrina police shooting case goes to jury

(Reuters) - Prosecutors told a New Orleans jury on Tuesday that testimony showed police officers had gone on an "an unjustifiable rampage" when they shot civilians in the chaotic 2005 aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Prosecutor Theodore Carter, in closing arguments in the federal civil rights trial of five officers charged in the case, said the killing of James Brissette, 17, and Ronald Madison, 40, "was murder, plain and simple".

Carter told the jury that immediately after the shootings, in which four other civilians were also seriously wounded, police began concocting stories to make their actions appear justified.

Officers Kenneth Bowen, Robert Faulcon, Robert Gisevius and Anthony Villavaso are charged in the shooting, and along with former detective Arthur Kaufman, are also accused of conducting a lengthy cover-up.

The shootings occurred when a dozen officers responded to a radio call that police had been fired on and that the shooters were headed toward the Danziger Bridge, when much of the city was still underwater from the storm.

A dozen officers who heard the call jumped into a rental truck and sped toward the bridge. Witnesses have said that when the police saw a group of civilians walking on the bridge, officers jumped out and began firing indiscriminately.

Multiple witnesses, including several officers who have pleaded guilty to roles in the incident, have said all the victims were unarmed.

Defense lawyers, however, have tried to cast doubt on the premise that the shooting victims were unarmed and raised the possibility that persons not involved in the trial may have fired guns from the ground near the bridge.

"Prosecutors made a classic rookie mistake. They developed a theory of the case and went about trying to prove it," defense lawyer Paul Fleming told jurors, adding that the government ignored evidence that didn't fit its theory.

DEFENSE CITES POST-STORM CHAOS

The prosecution asked the jury to consider how reasonable officers would have behaved when they saw members of the Bartholomew family walking up the bridge that day. Carter asked why police hadn't pulled up close to the civilians, showed their guns and shouted "Freeze. Police."

"Is there anybody here who doubts that, if they had done that, the Bartholomews would have stopped and put up their hands?" he asked.

Paraphrasing officer Ignatius Hills, who pleaded guilty to participating in the shooting and testified at trial, Carter said: "You shot these people to smithereens. Where are the guns?"

Defense lawyers repeatedly noted that fear and chaos reigned in New Orleans at the time, and that officers were under severe stress after evacuating their homes and spending days rescuing people from the flood waters.

"I ask you to look at this to see what kind of men these men are," lawyer Lindsay Larson said.

Noting that the defendants had remained on the job when some officers fled the city, he said: "Robert Faulcon didn't even know what happened to his pregnant wife for three weeks, but he stayed and did his job."

Villavaso's lawyer Timothy Meche told the jury that what happened to all the victims that day was "a terrible tragedy," but he asked the jury to understand that officers "were operating in terrible circumstances and they were doing the best they could."

Lead prosecutor Barbara Bernstein took issue with that in her rebuttal.

"They assumed that everybody they saw on the bridge that day was going to be a bad guy," she said. "Confident that nobody would question them, they went out there and delivered their own sort of post-apocalyptic justice."

But it wasn't bad guys on the bridge, she said. "It was two good families minding their own business."

The judge will give the jury their instructions on Wednesday morning and they will immediately begin deliberating the guilt or innocence of the defendants.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston)