Jury Convicts Three New York City Cops Of Conspiracy In Abner Louima Torture Case

Jet, March 20, 2000

Three White officers were convicted recently of conspiring to cover up an officer's role in the precinct house torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima.

A federal court jury reached its verdict on the fourth day of deliberations in the second trial stemming from the 1997 assault that horrified an already race-conscious city. The case went to the jury less than a week after four White officers in a separate case were acquitted in the February 1999 shooting death of African immigrant Amadou Diallo (JET, March 13).

Former officer Charles Schwarz, 34, and officers Thomas Wiese, 37, and Thomas Bruder, 34, were found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice because they had claimed that Schwarz was not present during the attack on Louima. They could be sentenced to five years in prison.

Schwarz already faces a possible life sentence for his 1999 conviction for violating Louima's civil rights by holding him down as officer Justin Volpe sodomized him with a broken-off broom handle in a Brooklyn stationhouse bathroom on Aug. 9, 1997. Volpe was sentenced to 30 years after pleading guilty to the attack (JET, Jan. 10).

Louima, who suffered severe internal injuries and spent two months in the hospital, was not in the courtroom for the verdict.

"What Abner Louima wants more than anything else is for what happened to him to never happen to anyone else's children," Sanford Rubenstein, an attorney representing the Louima family, said.

Schwarz's attorney said an appeal was planned.