Julianne Hing at RaceWire is covering the trial of former Bay Area Transit cop Johannes Mehserle, who is accused of shooting Oscar Grant last New Year's Day. The shooting occurred while Grant was already restrained, face-down on the floor, and with another cop's knee in his back. A clear cell phone video of it was broadcast and posted online soon after the incident.
Mehserle's defense attorneys are trying to argue that Mehserle was reaching for his Taser gun rather than his real gun, and the shooting was accidental. They're also planning on bringing up Grant's arrest history to show he had a history of resisting. Court cases have a way of sometimes complicating seemingly straightforward events, you could argue that that's the defense's only real strategy in this case, but the prosecution's case right now seems on track:
To that end, [ADA David Stein] attempted today to convince jurors that the firearms and holsters BART officers are equipped with have multiple safety features that prevent them from accidentally reaching for their guns; they’ve got to make a conscious decision to do so.
Much attention was paid to the fundamental safety rules police officers are taught in basic training: cops must treat every gun as a loaded weapon. And they must never point their guns at anything they do not want to destroy. Stein called up four witnesses, most of whom are or were officers who trained other BART cops.
The defense attorneys started to pick at that, trying to show that Mehserle was not at some of the relevant trainings, but it doesn't matter. The point is that it's hard to imagine someone accidentally pulling out his gun and shooting someone in the back. It's hard to imagine it because it doesn't seem reasonable. And that's the standard jurors will hopefully apply.
-- Monica Potts
