I’m tired, ya’ll. Too tired to be angry. So tired of all this shit. The tiredness won’t last forever, of course; I’ll rebound, as I must. But I need a break.
In the meantime, though — I’m cautiously heartened by this.
Mehserle was arrested in the New Year’s Day shooting of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old supermarket worker from Hayward who was lying facedown after being pulled off a BART train by police investigating a fight. An Alameda County judge signed an arrest warrant alleging murder, and Mehserle surrendered without incident, authorities said.
The shooting, which was recorded by passengers in videos widely circulated on the Internet and television, prompted public outrage, and some viewers said that the shooting appeared to be an execution.
Sources said Mehserle was in Nevada because he feared for his safety after death threats were made against him. Douglas County is 15 miles south of Carson City in northwestern Nevada and includes part of Lake Tahoe.
Mehserle’s attorney, Christopher W. Miller of Sacramento, confirmed early today that his client was arrested on suspicion of murder. He said he would not comment further until a news conference today.
I’m waiting to hear the charges. If they’re anything less than first-degree murder, I’m going to feel very tired again.
If anybody’s going to the protest today in Oakland, can you report in on how it went, in the comments?
IANAL, but usually (and apparently in California) first-degree murder requires premeditation, which doesn’t seem to be an element of this crime. Sorry. If someone heard Mehserle say he was going to shoot the next guy he handcuffed, or something, that would contribute to a first degree charge, but it looks like it’ll be another level of murder.
Double post-posting so i can report it to mods.
I had to come home early from my office in downtown Oakland this afternoon because I’m afraid I will get hurt if/when the demonstrators start breaking windows and trashing property. Again.
No big deal. I guess. Except that I really do have work to do, and maintaining an office is part of that. I didn’t shoot anybody, and I don’t support or approve of the guy who did. I really don’t see how endangering me, or breaking my windows, will further justice in this case.
All I’m trying to do is make a living. I guess that makes me an oppressor, huh, and I deserve whatever I get.
I’m not sure why stuff crossposting from ABW to here keeps double-posting. Sorry about this.
Susan,
You might need to make that case to the mostly-white Maoists who instigated the last riot. Hopefully they aren’t involved in this protest, especially given that they seem to have targeted mostly PoC for their violence.
Emphases mine. The comments here are also telling.
Apparently they think everyone is part of the system.
Nojojojo, I’m curious why you want him charged with murder in the First Degree? Even Burris seemed, at least last I saw, to be arguing for Second Degree (even though, according to my web-fu, they are the same thing and it’s just a matter of how much prison time you want the guy to get).
Why not Voluntary Manslaughter, which seems (in my ultimately unqualified opinion of the footage) to be more accurate and, probably, more likely to be proven?
I mean, by setting it up to be First Degree, aren’t we, who think that this crime should not go unpunished, actually asking for the system to let him go when a sympathetic jury agrees that “it really was an accident” and First Degree is unwarranted and clearly politically motivated (which is what his lawyers will, not unreasonably, argue)?
Don’t get me wrong. I think that there should be a special law set aside for those who commit crimes as a police officer wherein they either a) get charged with an extra crime (maybe we call it “Abuse of Police Powers” or something… make it worth an EXTRA 5-10 years), or b) are mandated to suffer the maximum penalty of any and all other crimes they committed while under the aegis of their badge.
But trying to charge a man with premeditated murder with malice in a case that most juries are likely to agree only that the footage proves negligence that resulted in death? That’s asking for the jury to set him free.
Now that I’ve calmed down.
I do have some sympathy – quite a lot of it, actually – for people who try to organize peaceful, effective protests. It must be a high art. There are always people whose goals are quite the contrary, anarchy or the equivalent, not to mention just plain thugs who like to break things. I can’t imagine how one could keep elements like this under control. MLK seems to have managed it on several occasions; I assume that was a result of sheer moral force, but he must also have had “foot soldiers” who mixed with the crowd and kept order.
As for the charge, degree of murder or manslaughter or whatever, MisterMephisto is right on. Charging first degree murder – any crime in excess of the proof, really – where the evidence shows only manslaughter can get the guy released, which I for one don’t want. Are we thinking that he pre-meditated this shooting, that is, planned it in advance? That seems highly unlikely to me, and it would be the very devil to prove it. Beyond a reasonable doubt, remember.
The prosecutor will bring the highest charge he or she thinks can be made to stick. Perhaps we ought to allow this expert to do his or her job.
ashworks,
Sorry, you’re right — IANAL either, but I know that much from years of watching “Law and Order”. =P I got it wrong. Second degree sounds about right to me.
MisterMephisto,
I withdrew the First Degree bit; moment of stupid there. But I don’t think it should be manslaughter, which implies a degree of accident, neglect, or cluelessness. He’s a cop; he should be held to a higher standard because he’s been trained not to be clueless with a gun. A trained police officer should know that there are specific situations in which drawing (let alone using) a gun is acceptable, and dealing with an unarmed subject already on the ground is not one of those situations. Mehserle did not trip and fall, causing his gun to jostle out of its holster into his hand, and his finger to accidentally squeeze the trigger. He willfully drew his gun, and used it.
Now, I hear there’s speculation he could be mentally ill, or that he mistook his gun for his taser, but thus far that’s just rumors, because the man has refused to explain himself. So we have no choice but to judge on the facts. He drew his weapon, which he had been trained to use only in threatening situations, and used it to kill a man who was no threat. (There wasn’t even any point in tasering the guy; he was down.)
That’s not manslaughter, in my book.
What also gets me is that the cops in the area ran around confiscating cameras and cellphones, immediately afterward. That suggests to me that they knew it was a bad shoot.
The protest was mostly peaceful. A small splinter group did some window-breaking. For once the local media actually reported it in that way, rather than implying that the lawless were characteristic of the protesters.
Driving toward downtown Oakland tonight, I saw seven helicopters hovering over the area. Reports from friends who live in the area suggest that they felt cautious and concerned, but were rooting for the protest to be powerful and well-recieved.
Elusis,
Thanks for sharing this. I’m curious about the splinter group; did they seem to be part of any organization? What’s your estimate on the crowd size?
All murder which is perpetrated by means of a destructive
device or explosive, a weapon of mass destruction, knowing use of
ammunition designed primarily to penetrate metal or armor,
Sailorman posted a bit of the California code on murder in an earlier link, including this fragment about what makes a murder first degree. If the police are using armor piercing ammunition then it was first degree murder regardless of Mehserle’s intent.
I hadn’t heard the rumors that he might be mentally ill before. Don’t the police have any mechanism for screening candidates for mental illness? Or dealing with officers who become mentally ill?
The period of “forethought” which is the language used in California can be very, very short before the act of killing.
I don’t know if he was mentally ill. Most major departments have psychological screening but there’s behaviors deemed desirable in law enforcement including dominance and vigilance which themselves could be part of mental illnesses if ramped up, i.e. paranoia and/or anti-social personal disorder. A department like BART might not have the resources to hire trained medical personnel to do adequate or any mental health screening. Background checks, again another huge expenditure that often gets cut back during fiscally difficult budget years is supposed to help in the screening. But officers with mental health issues get through and policing can aggravate any that are there. Depression, PTSD and anger issues are some examples. Domestic violence, alcoholism, suicide, drug addiction (illegal, legal and steroids) and divorce rates are all higher and in some cases quite a bit higher than the average population.
Mental health is available while they are working but unless they’re forced to go (i.e. as part of a 72 paid admin. leave after a shooting or onduty death), they won’t because they’re considered if it gets in their jacket, it will stigmatize them and their careers. This fear is very pervasive.
I think some departments hide their officers who have really strong anti-social issues in places like narcotics and other units. I was watching three detectives impound a car and arrest some men who are Cop Watchers and I had seen the young woman before at meetings, so I stayed with her while she got the paperwork on the car. The detectives all knew me, were on their best behavior when I was there (but apparently might not have been earlier) and they released the men who came to this meeting. One of them asked who I was and then told me that the detectives were arguing while he was being cited whether they hated me or liked me. To do that while they’re supposedly citing someone struck me as a bit strange except that it fits them based on what I know about them going back through nine years of experiences with them. I wonder what they were like when they started out.
And it makes you think among other things, what’s going on between the ears of the officers that are out there? Sometimes talking from the mental health angle, it’s very sobering. But mental health didn’t pop up for me in that case. I wonder if they were referencing some case of PTSD? Depression? Anger management issues?
Juries rarely convict police of onduty shootings, and it being videotaped won’t make the difference many people think it will. Videotapes indict but they don’t convict and sometimes too much reliance is put upon them by prosecutors (i.e. King, Donavan Jackson in Ingewood, Elio Carrion in Chino).
I sat through one trial of a LE officer on trial for an onduty shooting and it was actually a solid first degree murder case, the officer lied initially and good witnesses but the jury bought some excuse of accidental discharge and bought it giving him involuntary manslaughter. This was really bad b/c they had to go against the fact that the driver window was 2/3 up and a shell casing was found in the car b/c the S&W used ejects casings to the right so the gun had to be in the vehicle when it was discharged. And it did just that, ejected to the right in 700 trials done by the defense to try to prove it could also eject forward but it did that only eight times and you know what? All eight times they had to force it to do so in some weird way that couldn’t have happened in that case and all eight times the casing “stove piped” meaning it got stuck in the gun and couldn’t eject at all.
Jury still bought it hook, line and sinker. The scary thing is this guy couldn’t even keep himself composed on the witness stand and when he got angry, he got cold, as in cold blooded. The transformation was really chilling. I think that’s what happened that day.
At an earlier demonstration, the pictures of protesters dancing on police cars were Whites. Unfortunately, some times groups of Whites show up and do vandalism and window breaking and when the police come after them, they disappear into the crowds while the police go after any Black and Latino marcher in range. Why should they care about Black-owned businesses if they don’t care that they’re leaving other people to be beaten, tased or pepper sprayed or shot at with less lethal munitions in their stead?
Second degree murder is and included offense for first degree. By that I mean that the elements of second degree murder are identical to those of first degree murder, and taht first degree merely adds MORE requirements.
And can i highly recommend that those who want to know what the statute says, read the statute? I posted it in the other thread. There’s no need to guess what premeditation means when you can see it in black and white.
Having been involved in a few demonstrations back in the Vietnam war days when I was a lot more limber and had faster reactions and could avoid nightsticks/batons and tear gas I can tell you that you can organize and initiate a demonstration with the best of intentions only to see it taken over by a group of people with a much different agenda, especially if that agenda is to commit violence and vandalism under cover of a crowd.
Which I hereby nominate for run-on sentence of the day.
My point is that many people think in California that it means a drawn out planned murder and that’s not the case. It can be a brief period of time, sometimes nebulous. Surprised me in some of the murder trials I’ve sat through. But the advantage is the included lessors, which provides options of which the jury may or may not exercise or even might outright reject if this case goes to trial.
And with cases like these, the law’s not enough no matter how it’s defined though what’s in writing does stack the deck against convicting LE officers for onduty actions. A lot of it is what’s going through the jury’s mind about their perceptions and belief about LE.