American Scene

The dispute began in 2007 after a female CDC employee came to Miss Walden for advice involving a same-sex relationship and Miss Walden declined, citing her background as a devout Christian. The CDC told the contracting company that employed Miss Walden to fire her after the woman complained.

The CDC said allowing her to remain as a counselor would have alienated a significant segment of the staff and jeopardized the integrity of the program.

LOUISIANA

Ex-cops sentenced in post-Katrina killing

NEW ORLEANS | Calling the crimes inexcusable and barbaric, a judge sentenced two former New Orleans police officers to prison Thursday for their roles in the shooting death of an unarmed man whose body was later set on fire in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The 25-plus years David Warren received for fatally shooting Henry Glover, 31, was the stiffest punishment so far in the Justice Department’s investigations of post-Katrina police misconduct. Ex-officer Gregory McRae was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for burning Glover’s body after he was gunned down.

U.S. District Judge Lance Africk rejected the notion that the cases would deter officers in the future from staying after a storm to protect the public. When Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, many officers fled the city, leaving the police department with depleted forces. The National Guard was eventually dispatched to help prevent looting and control much of the city.

Warren said he thought Glover had a gun and posed a threat when he shot him outside a police substation at a strip mall. The judge called his testimony absurd.

NEW YORK

Kerik’s prison term upheld by appeals court

NEW YORK | A federal appeals court upheld the conviction and four-year prison sentence given to a former New York police commissioner who nearly became head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Bernard Kerik was treated fairly by a judge who gave him a year longer in prison than the three-year term called for by federal sentencing guidelines, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

Kerik, 55, pleaded guilty in late 2009 to charges that included tax fraud, making a false statement on a loan application and lying to the White House while he was being vetted for the Homeland Security post in 2004. He began serving his sentence last May.

The sentencing judge, Stephen Robinson in White Plains, N.Y., had said Kerik made “a conscious decision to essentially lie to the President of the United States to get a Cabinet position.”

A protege of former Mayor Rudolph Giulani, Kerik had been nominated to the post after he was declared a hero for his work as commissioner after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

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