MIAMI - Three Miami police officers were convicted Thursday of charges that they joined a coverup after guns were planted near the bodies of two robbers fatally shot by police.
During the four-week federal trial, the jury wasn't told that another panel deadlocked on the same charges nearly a year ago in the city's biggest police corruption scandal in a generation. Eleven officers were tried, and two others got plea deals and agreed to cooperate.
The first jury convicted four officers, acquitted three others and hung on another on charges that undercover officers planted guns after four police shootings from 1995 to 1997. Three men were killed and one was wounded.
Lt. Israel Gonzalez and Officer Jorge Garcia face up to 10 years in prison for perjury before a grand jury, obstructing justice by lying in sworn depositions and conspiracy. Sgt. Jose Quintero faces up to five years for conspiracy for planting one of the guns. They will be on house arrest until sentencing July 2.
The verdict came on the third day of deliberations by a reconstituted jury. After U.S. District Judge Alan Gold denied defense mistrial motions, the panel started from scratch five days into deliberations when two alternates took the place of two jurors sent home after other jurors reported they were making prejudicial comments during deliberations.
The three officers' retrial centered on the most dramatic of four shootings outlined in a 2001 federal indictment.
Four robbers being pursued by police on Nov. 7, 1995, jumped out of their moving car. One was arrested, another got away, and Antonio Young and Derrick Wiltshire took their chances jumping 20 feet off a highway overpass.
Young died of bullet wounds below the bridge, and Wiltshire fell mortally wounded in the alley. Both robbers were hit in the back in shootings justified under a state law allowing police to shoot at unarmed fleeing felons.
But the guns recovered near them had no fingerprints, and one was loaded with the wrong ammunition. Neither had been fired.
All 13 officers charged in the shootings belonged to elite plainclothes units when the department was under international pressure to halt a string of deadly tourist robberies. The scandal over the shootings rocked the department and scarred its image, ushering in a new police chief, new shooting policies and a civilian review board.
