Ex-New Orleans cop gets 20 months for lying about shooting after Katrina
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A former New Orleans police officer was sentenced Wednesday to 20 months in prison for lying about the aftermath of a deadly shooting outside the city's convention center following Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance ordered Ronald Mitchell to report to prison within 30 days.
A jury convicted Mitchell in December of obstruction of justice and perjury for lying under oath when he said he left his patrol car after shooting 45-year-old Danny Brumfield and checked for a pulse.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mitchell shot and killed Brumfield with a single shotgun blast outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, but wasn't charged in the September 2005 shooting itself. A grand jury indicted him in 2010 on charges he lied about the shooting's circumstances during a deposition for a civil lawsuit filed Brumfield's widow.
Jurors acquitted Mitchell's partner, Officer Ray Jones, of related charges. They also cleared Mitchell of separate charges that he lied about the shooting itself.
Mitchell's convictions carried a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, but sentencing guidelines calculated by the federal probation department recommended a prison sentence ranging from 15 to 21 months. Vance wasn't bound by those guidelines.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mitchell is one of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers charged since 2010 in a series of probes by the Justice Department's civil rights division. Most of the investigations stemmed from actions during the aftermath of Katrina, when flooding from broken levees plunged the city into a chaotic state.
In a separate case last week, five former officers were sentenced to prison terms of up to 65 years for their roles in shootings on a bridge that killed two people and wounded four others less than a week after Katrina's landfall on Aug. 29, 2005.
On Sept. 3, 2005, Mitchell and Jones were patrolling near the convention center, where thousands of residents were stranded for days after the storm, when Brumfield approached their vehicle.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Witnesses who testified during the trial gave conflicting accounts of the deadly encounter. When Brumfield tried to flag down the officers, he either jumped on the hood of the car Jones was driving or was struck by the vehicle and fell on the hood. One witness said Brumfield exchanged heated words with one of the officers, while another said they didn't say anything to each other.
Prosecutors said Mitchell lied during his 2007 deposition when he claimed Brumfield lunged at him with a "shiny object" before he shot him. Mitchell said he thought the object was a knife, but it turned out to be a pair of scissors.
Mitchell and Jones both claimed during their depositions that they heard gunfire after they left the car.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Brumfield's family settled its lawsuit against the city for about $400,000 in July 2008.
Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas fired Mitchell on April 5.