NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A New Orleans police officer lied under oath to conceal that he shot a man in the back and left him to die outside the city’s convention center in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday at the start of a trial for the officer and his partner.
Officer Ronald Mitchell, who shot and killed 45-year-old Danny Brumfield with a single shotgun blast, and Officer Ray Jones aren’t charged with the shooting itself. They are charged with obstruction of justice and perjury for allegedly lying about it during depositions for a civil lawsuit filed by Brumfield’s widow.
“This case is about lies, plain and simple,” Justice Department attorney Christopher Lomax said in his opening statements.
Mitchell’s lawyer, Kerry Cuccia, told jurors they will hear conflicting eyewitness testimony about the circumstances of the shooting and its aftermath. Cuccia said prosecutors can’t prove Mitchell intentionally gave false testimony to affect the outcome of Deborah Brumfield’s lawsuit.
“A lie is not an inaccuracy. A lie is not a mistake,” Cuccia said.
Jones’ attorney, Eric Hessler, said his client truthfully answered all the questions that a lawyer for Brumfield’s family posed to him during his 2008 deposition. Hessler questioned why prosecutors believe the officers lied when their own witnesses can’t agree on what happened during the deadly encounter.
“It’s about as arbitrary as a game of duck, duck, goose,” he said.
On Sept. 3, 2005, Mitchell and Jones were patrolling near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where thousands of residents were stranded for days after Katrina’s landfall, when Danny Brumfield approached their vehicle. Armed with a shotgun, Mitchell shot Brumfield in the left rear shoulder after he either jumped on the hood of the car Jones was driving or was struck by the vehicle and landed on the hood, according to the officers’ six-count indictment.
Prosecutors say Mitchell lied during his 2007 deposition when he said he shot and killed Brumfield after he lunged at him with a shiny object. Mitchell said he thought the object was a knife, but it turned out to be a pair of scissors.
One of Brumfield’s relatives had given him a pair of scissors so he could cut pieces of cardboard for children in their group to sleep on outside the convention center, according to Lomax.
Lomax said Brumfield tried to flag down the officers to ask them when buses would be coming to evacuate people. He jumped up just before the car hit him and he landed on the hood, the prosecutor said.
“All of a sudden, ‘Boom!’ A shot rings out,” Lomax said.
Lomax said Brumfield was still on the hood when Mitchell shot him. Christopher Howard, a Brumfield family friend who witnessed the shooting, testified Tuesday that Brumfield was rolling off the car with his feet in the air when he was shot.
Mitchell also allegedly lied when he said he left the patrol car to check Brumfield for a pulse. Howard said the officers didn’t get out of the patrol car after the shooting.
“They just kept going,” he said.
Jones isn’t accused of lying about the shooting, but prosecutors said he lied when he said he stopped the patrol car and got out while Mitchell checked on Brumfield.
Prosecutors also claim the officers lied when they said they heard gunfire after they left the car. Cuccia and Hessler asked for a mistrial after Lomax echoed that claim in his opening statements, but U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance rejected their request.
The defense attorneys argued Lomax’s statement was improper because they said the officers aren’t specifically charged in the indictment with lying about hearing gunfire. Prosecutors said they are.
In July 2008, the Brumfield family settled their lawsuit against the city for $400,000.
The case against the officers is one of several Justice Department probes of alleged misconduct by New Orleans police officers following the 2005 storm.
In December 2010, a federal jury convicted three officers and acquitted two others in the death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, who was shot and killed by an officer outside a strip mall before a different officer burned his body in a car.
In August, five current or former officers were convicted of civil rights violations stemming from deadly shootings of unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Katrina. Five other former officers pleaded guilty to participating in a cover up that included a planted gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports.
The department reassigned Mitchell and Jones to desk duty following their indictment last year. Their trial is expected to last about a week.
 
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