Battle of Algiers

Three convicted, four acquitted

The three-week trial in Dallas of seven New Orleans police officers for violating the civil rights of four witnesses under interrogation would have set any jury's heads spinning. The prosecution laid out allegations of almost gestapo-style brutality; the defense countered with a description of police behavior that approached textbook perfection. Last week the jury in effect delivered a split judgment. While they found four officers innocent of all charges, they said three were guilty of both conspiracy, a felony, and beating a black witness under interrogation, a misdemeanor.

The case began on Nov. 8,1980, when a white police officer, Gregory Neupert, 23, was found dead, shot in the neck in a predominantly black neighborhood of the Algiers section of New Orleans. The police mounted a furious probe, in the course of which four blacks were killed by investigators under circumstances that are still not entirely clear. Then Police Superintendent James Parsons resigned. Grand juries were convened to investigate the killings and consider allegations of police beatings of three blacks and one white in order to obtain leads and evidence in the Neupert case.

In July 1981, a federal grand jury in New Orleans voted indictments of seven officers. Last month in Dallas, where the trial had been moved on a federal judge's orders, two former Algiers residents, Robert Lee Davis, 20, and Johnny Brownlee, 23, told of being handcuffed, then beaten by New Orleans police with a hardback city directory; of being suffocated with a plastic bag; and of being taken out to a wooden bridge over a levee and having a shotgun put to their heads. One New Orleans detective, a black who had been given immunity from prosecution, corroborated some elements of the government's case. More than 20 other police officers, however, denounced the testimony of the accusers. "There are high-pressure salesmen and there are low-pressure salesmen," said Detective Dale Bonura, a 14-year police veteran. "We're not high-pressure salesmen. We like to kill them with kindness."

But the jury did not believe Bonura, 34, or Sergeant John E. McKenzie, 40, or Detective Stephen Farrar, 30. They will now appeal their convictions, which could lead to eleven-year sentences. Said Government Prosecutor Michael Johnson: "This civil rights case sent a message to New Orleans that they have a problem, or that they had one in November of 1980." Others would just as soon forget the Algiers tragedy. Said Joe Giarrusso, president of the city council: "This case ought to be put to rest and not be a thorn in the community's side." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.