WBRZ - Baton Rouge

NEW ORLEANS - Jurors have returned for a second day of deliberations in the trial of five current or former police officers charged in deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

The jury deliberated for several hours Wednesday without reaching a verdict. Deliberations resumed Thursday morning.

Prosecutors contend the officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning on Sept. 5, 2005, killing two and wounding four others, and then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.

Defense attorneys counter that the officers were returning fire on the city's Danziger Bridge and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to a distress call less than a week after Katrina's landfall.