The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
New Orleans (AP) _ Federal prosecutors are again pushing for the execution of a former New Orleans police officer and a man he hired to kill a woman who had filed a brutality complaint against the officer.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was told Tuesday that the government should be given another chance to get the death penalty against ex-officer Len Davis and hit man Paul Hardy.
U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan, who presided over the trial, ruled that a June 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision changed the guidelines for capital cases, making it impossible to resentence the men under the new rules.
The Supreme Court said that before a jury can consider the death penalty, specific aggravating elements of a crime must be spelled out in an indictment and the jury must find that those elements played a role in the crime.
The indictment against Davis and Hardy did not allege aggravating factors, although prosecutors offered evidence for them. The factors used against the pair were premeditation and specific intent to kill.
Jennifer Levin, from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told the court that the factors were proven and their exclusion from the indictment was “harmless error.”
The victim in the case, Kim Groves, was targeted by Davis because she had filed a brutality complaint against him.
Davis’ cell telephone was tapped at the time of the killing on Oct. 13, 1994, because of a drug investigation. The officer was recorded telling Hardy to kill Groves and relaying her location and description.
Davis and Hardy were convicted of murder conspiracy, civil rights violations and tampering with a federal witness. But the 5th Circuit tossed out the tampering charge in 1999 and said a jury had to reconsider the punishment in light of convictions on two charges, rather than three.