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Mehserle Convicted of Involuntary Manslaughter
A year ago I was surprised that BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was being prosecuted for shooting an unarmed and restrained man in the back on a San Fransisco subway platform. Last week Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter rather than murder. So many times it is our own government that fails to hold police officers accountable for infractions or crimes. In this case it was 12 jurors who gave Mehserle a lighter sentence. Ultimately though, it's the public who lets police officers off in every case. Government officials execute our will and giving police the overwhelming benefit of the doubt seems to sadly be our will.

There are two major issues I want to discuss with regards to this case. Did Mehserle really intend to use his taser rather than his gun? If that is true, how much should it change his punishment? As to the former question, the jury believed the accused:
Their verdict suggests they believed Mehserle when he testified that he had mistaken his pistol for his Taser as he sought to subdue the 22-year-old Grant at Fruitvale Station in Oakland following a fight on a BART train, a shooting that was captured on video by five other riders as well as a platform camera.
For me that's hard to believe because I like to think that the majority of cops are highly trained in the use of firearms. More importantly, there is evidence to suggest that Mehserle lied:
Taking the stand near the end of the trial, Mehserle testified that he had decided to use his Taser on Grant because he saw Grant put his right hand in his pants pocket and believed the Hayward man might be reaching for a gun.

Mehserle said he had accidentally pulled out his pistol and fired a single shot before realizing he had grabbed the wrong weapon.

Mehserle's Taser was positioned to the left of his belt buckle. The right-handed officer's gun was on his right hip.
However:
Video footage played repeatedly in court showed that as Mehserle raised his gun, Pirone had his left knee on Grant's neck. Pirone's left hand was pressing Grant's head into the platform, and Pirone's right hand was holding Grant's right arm - the same one Mehserle said he had struggled with - behind his back.
Furthermore, another cop on the scene was fired because she wasn't truthful about the incident to investigators:
Pirone and his partner the night of the shooting, Marysol Domenici, were fired earlier this year by BART - Pirone for his actions on the train platform and Domenici for the way she reported the incident to investigators.
So Mehserle lied about what happened. Another cop wasn't truthful. Why should their version of the story be believed? Would jurors give that benefit to a civilian defendant? Police officers certainly need to be given some edge in credibility over accused criminals but if they are obviously not truthful then that edge needs to be repealed.

Let's assume that we believe Mehserle when he says he meant to shoot Grant with a taser. Should that matter? As I've said on this blog before, I believe tasers should be a substitute for deadly force. If a police officer is in a position where he or she feels anyone is threatened, and were going to use a gun, the taser is a substitute method to subdue the criminal without killing him or her. Instead, tasers are used substitutes for physically restraining someone. Tasers can and do kill people. They should only be used when someone is threatened. Grant was not threatening anyone on the platform, therefore the use of the taser was not justified.

A conviction of involuntary manslaughter was at least warranted. Why not voluntary manslaughter though? Here's the question I would ask about that situation. You know a taser is less deadly than a gun but that it can kill. What if the officer hit the criminal with a blunt object in the back of the head, not intending to kill him, but it resulted in death? What if the officer shot the suspect in the leg, not intending to kill him, but it result in death. Remember Sean Taylor? Isn't the use of force in an unjustified action subject to greater penalties than a mere accident?
I've
seen that video enough times to not believe he mistook his gun for a
taser or that Grant's death was accidental. Sorry, Officer. You killed
that guy in cold blood for no reason other than maybe because you
panicked (unjustifiably).

Posted at 7/13/2010 5:50:00 PM by Vinny


 
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