NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — A man, who was found guilty of fatally shooting another man in the Tremé area in 2021, has been sentenced.
Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams announced that Barry Bowie was sentenced to life in prison on Monday, June 17.
Williams said Bowie was convicted of second-degree murder, obstruction of justice and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of Henry James in 2021.
At a Monday news conference, Williams noted that the guilty verdict came almost exactly three years later to the day that James was killed.
He also said the case was tough to prosecute because witnesses didn’t want to testify or couldn’t remember what they saw.
Due to the lack of willing witnesses, the trial team for the prosecution relied heavily upon surveillance video footage that they had assembled from several sources in order to track Bowie’s movements, as well as a “critical” phone call made by Bowie at the jail, in which he admitted to being at the scene when the shooting occurred.
Encouraging involvement in crime solving and prevention from the community, Williams offered ways to help without being directly involved, saying, “Look, I understand you that you may not want to get involved after shots are fired. But there’s ways that you can get involved before shots are fired. That’s by getting a RING doorbell camera or having your neighborhood association invest in a real time camera or a Project NOLA camera.”
Williams said that in addition to surveillance video, prosecutors are starting to use witnesses’ social media posts as evidence in court. With those posts and surveillance video, Williams said that some witnesses “would not have to take the stand at all.”
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