Why is it hard to convict a police officer of murder? (op-ed)

Why is it hard to convict a police officer of murder?

The answers are simple, they’re just hard to accept.

On duty a police officer can make a rapid decision and use deadly force, but that doesn’t mean the trigger was pulled with intentions to commit a crime. The absence of malicious intent reduces murder to manslaughter.

Sometimes, in high profile cases, the prosecution charged murder when they should have charged manslaughter. A lot of times the prosecution can’t secure a conviction due to insufficient evidence, but in the trial of Michael Slager, the former police officer who shot Walter Scott multiple times in his back, the prosecution had overwhelming evidence for a conviction.

Michael Slager’s defense said Slager and Walter Scott scuffled over Slager’s Taser and Slager feared for his life, but the shooting didn’t occur during the scuffle, it happened while Walter Scott ran away without the taser.

The prosecution had witnesses from the police department. These officers were asked about their training. One explained there are six levels of force they are allowed to use and the sixth is deadly force.

During cross-examination, another officer was asked if they were trained to shoot people in the back while running away. This officer stated he would be justified depending on the situation because officers are trained to end the threat.

But the prosecution had video footage of this particular situation.

 

It appeared Slager immediately applied the sixth level of force when there was a comfortable distance of 15 to 20 feet between the two men. That meant the defense had to convince the jury that “running away” was a serious enough threat to Slager’s life that he was justified to leap five preliminary levels of force to the most lethal.

The defense didn’t even try.

Michael Slager was put on the stand to defend himself. Slager told the 911 dispatch, “Shots fired … Subject down … He took my taser.” After reviewing the video footage the prosecution asked, “So would you agree that at this time he is not armed and he’s running away from you?”

Slager said, “At the time I would say no, but after watching the video, yes.” Then Slager revealed during the shooting he didn’t know his taser was behind him.

The video footage also contained what happened after the shooting.

Slager retrieved his taser and placed it near Scott’s body. During his testimony Slager said he must have dropped it by Scott because he didn’t remember doing it.

The prosecution met its burden of proof.

But the ultimate reason why it’s hard to convict a police officer of murder is because the police profession has a built in benefit of the doubt with some jurors.

The jury foreman stated, when the jury received the initial charges of murder, they decided that wasn’t something Slager did. The jury acknowledged Slager did do something, but based on the law he didn’t commit murder because there was nothing malicious. With the manslaughter charge the foreman said the jurors had a lot of questions. The final breakdown of the jury was 10-2 in favor of voluntary manslaughter.

The foreman said, “The two individuals were not willing to compromise or look at any more evidence.” So the judge declared a mistrial.

The foreman concluded, we can read books and watch all these law shows, but we don’t have a good understanding of the law.

Trials don’t determine justice they determine whether or not the accused is guilty of the charges, and in the end all participants hope justice was served, and if it’s a mistrial the case will be tried again.

There’s an old saying justice delayed is justice denied.

Hopefully, in this case, justice will only be denied for the short time period it has been delayed.

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 12/14/17