The 2009 shooting death of Oscar Grant certainly looked like murder. With Mr. Grant flat on his belly, his arms pulled in behind his back, officer Johannes Mehserle pulled his gun and fired. Mr. Grant died in the hospital several hours later.
At trial, Mehserle said he mistakenly drew his pistol when he meant to use his stun gun.
That could be true. Radley Balko of Reason Magazine, argues persuasively that the jury got it right this week when they found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
But Balko isn’t calling this an innocent mistake. Police officers are trained to leave their weapons holstered unless a life is on the line. That rule applies to tasers, not just firearms. Whenever a weapon is unholstered something tragic is likely to happen. Sometimes there’s no alternative. This wasn’t one of those times.
Blogger Eddie Griffin, like most African American bloggers, calls the killing of Oscar Grant cold-blooded murder.
A number of videos taken from several different angles have been circulating on the web for a year and a half now and both Balko and Griffin’s articles contain appropriate links.
The racial divide over this issue was created by yet another jury that looks a lot more like the police officer than the shooting victim. The Los Angeles jury that convicted Mehserle this week contained not a single African American. Would the outcome have been different if the jury didn’t contain a single white person?
Whenever possible, at least 33% of jurors should look like the defendant. There is much to be said for random jury selection; but the perception of fairness is lost when a racially charged case is tried by a jury with no racial balance.
I always believed that O.J. Simpson was guilty of killing his wife, Nicolle. Nonetheless, the jury got it right. The prosecution failed to make its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The dream team did it’s job well. Had Mr. Simpson been represented by an over-worked and underpaid public defender, the trial would have been profunctory, the verdict guilty and the sentence death.
I generally favor conservative verdicts. The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is intentionally high. The fact that juries are often far too easily convinced by weak cases doesn’t justify a harsh sentence in a case like this.
I have a hard time believing that Officer Mehserle intentionally killed a young man in his custody with dozens of cameras flashing in his face.
That in no way justies his actions, of course. He had no business pulling a weapon of any kind and must suffer the consequences of his unwarranted actions.
If African Americans refuse to accept this verdict it is because low-status black defendants and police officers typically receive two very different kinds of justice. Mr. Mehserle got the verdict he deserved. If young black men received the same kind of even-handed treatment from juries, we wouldn’t be hearing such an anguished outcry over this verdict.
Friends of Justice 
I’m not sure the jury got it right. I can agree with you when you say, “I have a hard time believing that Officer Mehserle intnetionally killed a young man in his custody with dozens of cameras flashing in his face.” But I have a hard time imagining what was going on in the officer’s mind anyway. Does he not know where his gun is holstered? Can he not tell the difference between his fire-arm and his stun gun? Or was he so angry that he didn’t care? I can see how a jury could have reached a verdict for a higher level of homicide. Having said all that, I’m not disappointed in the outcome. For a jury to convict a LEO for killing someone while on duty is extremely rare. As a felon, the officer will no longer be employable in LE, and may have a difficult time with employment anywhere.
I don’t believe the jury got it right. The rage of police officers is well known in the African American community. They feel and experience it everyday. A lot of white folks have no concept of what people of color are forced to put up with from law enforcement on a daily basis. We cannot even imagine what it is like to walk in the shoes of a person of color.
Maybe it is because of my years of experience representing defendants in the criminal system, but personally, I find it hard to believe the defense argument, that oops…….he used his revolver and thought it was his stun gun. What I don’t find hard to believe is that an all white jury bought the argument. It happens all the time. The police ARE NOT held accountable often because white juries CANNOT identify with the reality of how the police too often perceive and treat persons of color.
I can only hope and pray that Oscar Grant is in a better place where racism, bigotry, and police violence do not exist. May he RIP.
In one of the videos, the officer in question can be seen looking down at his weapon as he draws it from the holster.
I’m pleased, not with the precise verdict of the jury, but that they did come in with a guilty plea. Only extremely rarely does a grand jury indict, or a petit jury convict, a law enforcement officer who kills someone in the line of duty. The jury was pretty lenient to be sure. It stretches the imagination to think the officer mistook his revolver for his taser. And if Mr. Grant was lying on the ground face down why should he have been tased anyway, unless it was just to “teach him a lesson?” But the jury might have acquitted him altogether. And the officer is guilty of a felony, which will deprive him of the right to be a LEO again (at least it would in Texas–not sure about CA).
Tom Coleman was convicted of aggravated perjury over the Tulia fiasco. He got probation, which was understandably disappointing to those whose lives had been thrown out of kilter by the Tulia Drug Sting. But the prosecuting attorney reminded us how exceedingly rare it is in Texas for a LEO to be convicted of perjury regarding testimony in a criminal case. And ol’ Tom really did not get off lightly. He has to answer to a PO for ten years; he can never again be employed in law enforcement in TX, and gun-nut Tom can never again legally have a firearm in his possession.