NEW ORLEANS (AP) For the second time in three years, a federal jury is deliberating whether fear or malice drove a former New Orleans police officer to fatally shoot a man outside a strip mall less than a week after Hurricane Katrina's landfall.
At the conclusion of David Warren's retrial Tuesday, a prosecutor said the rookie officer shot and killed 31-year-old Henry Glover because he hated looters and thought nobody would care during the chaotic aftermath of the 2005 storm.
"He shot Henry Glover because he could," Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracey Knight said during her closing arguments. "It was Katrina, and no one was watching."
Warren's lawyers urged jurors to consider the hazardous conditions that police officers had to endure after broken levees flooded most of the city and left many desperate residents fighting for survival.
"It was a frightening time, and you'll never be able to put yourself in the situation of David Warren," said defense attorney Richard Simmons. "They did the best they could under those trying circumstances while everybody else was watching on TV."