At an emotionally charged post-conviction hearing on Wednesday, prosecutors for the Orleans parish district attorney’s civil rights division presented evidence in court that linked the 1994 murder to disgraced former police officers Len Davis and Sammie Williams. Records revealed the pair were the first officers present at the scene of the shooting.
Prosecutors also unveiled additional evidence of innocence, involving the testimony and credibility of the lone eyewitness to the shooting, which had been withheld from the defense at trial.
Davis, who is currently on federal death row after being convicted on multiple civil rights charges, became a key target in an FBI undercover operation in the mid-90s as it emerged the patrolman was a lead enforcer in a protection racket for city drug dealers operated by corrupt police officers. During the investigation, Davis was recorded on a wiretap commissioning a hit on a woman named Kim Groves, who had filed a brutality complaint against his partner Williams. Groves was murdered less than two months after the Santinac killing.
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