2 New Orleans police officers indicted in 2005 Treme beating death
Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 12:14 PM Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 1:29 PM
Two New Orleans police officers face federal charges in the July 2005 death of a Treme man who died from various injuries, including a ruptured spleen, after police dropped him off at Charity Hospital.
Officer Melvin Williams was charged in a federal grand jury indictment with deprivation of rights under the color of law, resulting in the death of Raymond Robair. The charge alleges that Williams beat Robair with a baton, using unreasonable force.
Because Robair died as a result of the alleged beating, if convicted Williams faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
A second count charges Williams and Matthew Dean Moore with obstruction of a federal investigation, saying they wrote false statements in their reports about how Robair was injured, writing up the case as merely a “medical incident” involving a man they encountered on Dumaine Street.
Both officers failed to tell medical personnel at Charity Hospital that Robair had been hit with a police baton by Williams, according to the indictment.
A third count charges Moore with making false statements to a federal agent on March 11 and March 16 of this year. Moore told FBI agents that Williams never harmed Robair, according to the indictment.
The charges against Williams and Moore means that federal prosecutors have now charged 18 New Orleans police officers with civil-rights offenses in recent months. Until now, all of the charges involve violence that took place in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina. However, Robair’s death occurred a month before the storm.
The death of the 48-year-old Robair was investigated by the New Orleans Police Department soon after the incident, but the internal investigation cleared both Moore and Williams of wrongdoing before Katrina struck the city in late August. The FBI also began a parallel investigation of the incident in August 2005, but the case faltered over the years, apparently picking up steam in recent months.
While witnesses in the neighborhood said they saw the officers beat Robair, the police report told a different version of events. In a report, Williams and Moore maintained that they encountered an unknown man sbumgling around at North Robertson and Dumaine streets. The man needed medical attention — he was holding his chest — and the officers put him in a car to take him to the hospital, according to the report. Williams also claimed to have found a clear plastic bag nearby containing smaller baggies of cocaine.
