DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Mistrial declared in black motorist's shooting

So this guy gets to enjoy Christmas with his family for murdering someone.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/deliberations-resume-trial-black-motorists-death-074617910.html

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina judge declared a mistrial Monday after a jury deadlocked in the murder trial of a white former police officer charged in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist.

A panel of one black and 11 white jurors — who had seemed close to a verdict to convict Friday, with apparently only one holdout — said Monday they were unable to reach a unanimous decision after deliberating more than 22 hours over four days.

"We as a jury regret to inform the court that despite the best efforts of all parties we are unable to come to a unanimous decision," said Circuit Judge Clifton Newman, reading a note from the jury before declaring a mistrial.

Former patrolman Michael Slager was charged with murder in the April 4, 2015, shooting death of 50-year-old Walter Scott. The judge had said the jury could also consider a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

Cellphone video taken by a bystander that showed Scott being shot in the back five times was shown widely in the media and on the internet and shocked the country, inflaming the national debate about how blacks are treated by law enforcement officers.

After the video went public, Slager was fired by the police department and charged with murder. Scott's family called for peace in the North Charleston community. Their calls for calm are believed to have helped prevent the kind of violence that erupted elsewhere when black men were killed in encounters with law enforcement.

It's the second time in recent weeks a jury has deadlocked in an officer-involved shooting. A mistrial was declared Nov. 12 when a jury in Cincinnati couldn't reach a verdict in the case of a former campus police officer who was also charged with shooting a black motorist.

The video in the Scott slaying renewed debate about how blacks are treated by white law officers. There have been similar debates over race and policing in places from New York to Ferguson, Missouri, and from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to North Carolina.

Slager's wife, Jamie, cried after the jurors were dismissed and briefly put her head on the bench in front of her. She said "thank you for everything" to the defense lawyers as they left the courtroom. She did not respond when reporters asked if she wanted to comment.

One female juror wiped away tears with her hands and a tissue as the attorneys addressed them and thanked them for their hours of work.

There were no outbursts in the courtroom. Slager's lawyer, Andy Savage, did not comment.

Scott's mother and brother said outside the courthouse that justice will eventually prevail.

"I'm not sad because I know justice will be served," Judy Scott said.

Scott's family also called for peaceful protests.

"We're not going to tear up this city," said Scott's brother, Anthony. "We're not happy. But we're not sad."

Asked whether he could forgive Slager, Anthony Scott said he could eventually "find the peace" to forgive the ex-officer but not before justice is served.

"He gets to spend Christmas with his family," he said of Slager.

Wilson praised Scott's family for their patience and understanding.

"They have not received the credit they deserve in their calm leadership for the community," she said in a statement. "The Scotts have been a sterling example of dignity and grace in extraordinary circumstances."

Slager also faces trial next year in federal court on charges of depriving Scott of his civil rights.

While Slager is white and Scott was black, the video, not the races of the men, dominated the trial.

Scott was pulled over in North Charleston for having a broken taillight on his 1990 Mercedes and then fled the car, running into a vacant lot. Family members have said he may have run because he was worried about going to jail because he was $18,000 behind on child support.

The prosecution argued that the 35-year-old Slager let his sense of authority get the better of him.

The defense maintained that the two men wrestled on the ground, that Scott got control of Slager's stun gun and then pointed the weapon at the officer before the shooting. The defense also contended there was no way the officer could tell if Scott was unarmed.

Last year, the city of North Charleston reached a $6.5 million civil settlement with Scott's family. In the wake of the shooting, the city also asked that the U.S. Justice Department conduct a review of its police department policies with an eye toward how the department can improve its relationship with residents.

This is sickening .. remarkable .. dude was shot while running away ... INCREDIBLE one dude held this up ..

Rumor has it he wouldn't convict a cop cause off all they do for us .. if thats true, he must have LIED his ass off during jury selection ...

Personally .. if thats true, I think they should put that juror on trial for not doing his job ...

Hopefully they re-try this one .. not sure how this dude wasn't convicted ...

HORRIBLE .. makes me sad ...

The way I was trained to find solutions to problems is to look for the "Root Cause" of any incident. Like the root of a tree that grew from nothing and spread out to cover the sky.

What do you think was the Root Cause that caused this incident to take place and end so tragically?

The officer deciding that shooting somebody in the back 8 times and dropping a taser near his body to cover his tracks.

That's a pretty good root cause. Covering tracks.

White guy shooting a black guy in the back while running away ... i'm going with dude is a racist that may have had friends, family in the KKK back in the day ...

What would u say the root cause was based off what we know 40? .. this oughta be interesting ..

The root cause was a strange, over the top reaction by a motorist during a simple traffic stop. It all escalated from there.

Remove that reaction from the incident and the rest never happens.

Unbelievable... So sad...

40 is such a great troll.

Most of us have been saying it for awhile now, you must change how the police are trained. An officer shouldn't turn into a vigilante just because he can't handle a simple traffic stop.

The problem is that 40 is not a troll, he honestly thinks this way. I used to bang my head against the wall over it, but now I find it kind of fulfilling. It's just like looking out the door and seeing the last of the coo coo birds taking a crap on your lawn, all the while not realizing it is all but extinct...

What's this troll garbage?. Stop calling peoples names. We have standards around here.

I didn't call anybody a troll, donkey. lol

Not you but you were just next in line.

All good. I knew what ya meant.

I'm usually for the cops in these things and I love 40 like a Brother but I think the Cop is dirty on this. but what if the Black guy didn't run and then want to fight?

He would be sitting in jail for owing back child support.

Thanks Duty.

I'm not taking sides on the story, I figure the cop is guilty on this one. Five shots in the back is a difficult one to explain. 40 has his point of view and because he's willing to express it doesn't make him a troll.

At Dawg Talkers it does. I have lost count of how many times it does, but thanks Tulsa.

Nevermind.

I wish to expect more out of you, but apparently that can't ever be the case.

Wow, Gumby would be proud of that stretch...

Not everybody responds perfectly in every situation... you don't shoot a guy in the back for running away from a routine traffic stop. That's MURDER no matter how you look at it.

I don't know if the guy is just a major racist or if he is just poorly trained or what the "root cause" is and quite frankly, I don't care. Because to be perfectly honest, you can't say for 100% certain that he wouldn't have been shot if he had obeyed every single thing the cop told him to do...

Now to the positive side of the story.. big props to the Scott family for staying on the high road in a terribly difficult time.

He's a sociopath. Not sure why you engage in discussion with him.

*Cue Vers to say I'm instigating*

It's that whole optimism thing.

Yes, and there is the problem.
Did I even comment on if I thought it was a justified shooting or if it was murder? No. Read what I posted and I said nothing on the case.
I pointed out what I see as the cause of this whole mess and if people don't learn what starts these confrontations and leads to these shootings, they are doomed to repeat them.
Time after time I watch them on the News and nothing ever changes. Simple traffic stop turns into a shooting. Why?

I will leave you to figure it out. I will watch the News and see as it happens again and again and again.

Oh, and bye the way, it is refreshing to be called some new names as Homophobe, Xenophobe, Racist and Bigot were getting old.

Putting myself in your shoes, I bet it is getting old.

Yeah, I agree this is a shocking outcome. I've always been one to say we need to wait for the facts to come out because that's where we get clarity, but there was nothing I saw come out that justified this shooting.

Shooting someone i the back is not automatically murder or unjustified. If someone is shooting at me and turns and runs and are still armed, they are still considered an active threat to the public at large. Heck, for all I know the suspect could just be heading for cover to continue shooting.

But nothing about this case suggests anything close to my example.
-Mr. Scott jumps and runs... not a deadly threat.
-Mr. Scott fights when the cop catches him... not a deadly threat in of itself, but if he actually got the taser and used it, incapacitating a cop to that degree will generally be considered deadly because the once incapacitated, the suspect is likely to get your gun and use it.

But even if the suspect tried to use it, according to the video the cop had retrieved it because he clearly drops it next to him. So the cop clearly knew there would be no threat of being incapacitated by his own taser...

The defense IS correct that there was no way to know if Mr. Scott was armed... but he made no actions that would indicate he might have a deadly weapon.

From what I see of this... this should have ended in a conviction and hopefully still will.

If what Diam has heard about this one juror refusing to convict the guy for any reason, I hope he soon realizes he hasn't done me or my brothers and sisters in blue any good. If you want to show your support, buy me a cup of coffee. Don't let someone with a badge get away with murder.

40 is correct with what he is saying. Just about every well publicized death at police hands in the past few years have started off the same way. The person that wound up dead resisted the cop at the beginning of the stop. It's almost as if some of the population has been convinced they should resist the police no matter what, and they keep dying for it.

Please include the cops that resist their accusers in your "some of the population".

You know... part of the population of cops that loose their temper, shoot to kill unarmed men, then plant false evidence at the scene. Don't pretend that never happens.

Fair enough. What I see as another big cause of this mess is black people being afraid of cops due to 100+ years of unequal treatment and horror stories that are passed around in their community and within their family.

When you go into a situation, like a traffic stop, not certain if you are going to be treated fairly, not certain if you are going to be dragged out and cuffed and sat on the side of the road while your car is searched, not certain if you looking at the cop the wrong way is going to be considered an act of aggression for which you might be beaten... then you might not respond the same way a white guy, like yourself, who feels perfectly comfortable around the police is going to react.

So it is understandable that you don't know why everybody who encounters a police officer doesn't respond exactly the way you would respond. I don't know either, it seems natural for me, if stopped by the police, to be hyper-cooperative... but then I didn't grow up in a community where my friends and family were harassed, stopped, questioned, and looked at with suspicion all the time... so I don't fully "get it" either, but I'm trying to understand that there is more than one side to the root cause of this problem.

But before you can say we need to change how we are trained, you have to have knowledge on how we are currently trained.

You say "simple" traffic stop, but there's a lot more to it then simply walking up to a car and tapping on the window.

Not trying to jump on you man. But more/better/different training has become a generic solution and response when people see an incident that either doesn't look good or they simply don't understand.

40 isn't correct.

Resisting doesn't equal an automatic death sentence.

Some of you guys have been really disappointing lately.

No it sure shouldn't automatically equal a death sentence.

That said, if I am faced with being arrested, I am not going to resist, and I am not going to run. Why put myself in jeopardy for no good reason?

In this particular case, from what I have seen and read, it sure seems fairly open and shut that the officer killed that man with no justification whatsoever, and that he should be punished for committing that murder.

I am glad that he is going to be tried again.

But resisting arrest doesn't qualify you for the death penalty.

It's easy to say that though.

When somebody grabs me by the arm, my natural reaction is to yank my arm away.

It doesn't matter if it's my homeboy or a cop. That's a natural reaction.

And at the end of the day, the cops life wasn't threatened at all. So the guy didn't put himself in a position to be shot multiplie times with a taser planted next to his body.

I'm always skeptical of video. Especially inflammatory video like this.

But the cop didn't even refute the video, right?

To me it seems a combo of two things:

1) "Street code" dictates that you run. I'm sure Scott did it all his life and usually got away.

2) Slager was a bad cop. Poor judgement, bad temper, itching to use his weapons training.

Verdict: He's guilty of some sort of manslaughter charge, right?

Street code dictates you run only if you truly have something to lose.

This guy dodged his child support. Of course he's taking off.

Again, not a death sentence though.

And.....I'm sure Devil will get a kick out of this:

I applaud the justice system. It actually worked. The failure came from some jury guy who seem like he wouldn't convict a cop under any circumstances. That's not the fault of the system, or the prosecutors.

So....hopefully they get it right next time. At least the guy got charged. It's a start.

Not all resisting is the same.. you can resist by fighting with the cop or charging the cop, you can resist by running away. If you are fighting with or charging the cop, I'm a lot more lenient on the cop using force.. if you are running away and you are a non-violent offender, that is something completely different, which is the case here.

I'm not a fan of 40's comment because I think he's purposefully baiting, but I don't think anyone is saying resisting should equal an automatic death sentence.

I do however believe there is a point to be made about people who choose take certain actions that turns a situation in to more than it needs to be.

A little story:

One night I went to a group home for teenage boys because one of them was ticked off at the rules and walked off. I found him, walked him back, and the staff asked me if I could talk to another one of their boys who seemed to think going to prison would be a cool thing. I said sure.

At this time all the boys staying there happened to be black. The one they wanted me to talk to was about 16 or 17yrs old. He was loud, clearly loved to be the center of attention, and had one of those charismatic personalities that the other boys were drawn to. The kind of personality that if he ever had the right mentor, could do something with his life.

Initially he kept talking over me and talking about how he could handle prison. The other boys thought it was funny when I told him all he'd be doing is picking up the soap and eating bologna sandwiches.

Then he asked me about a shooting we had locally. I simply told him "Well, when you're going to make it look like you're pulling a gun on someone, you're going to get shot". Simple as that.

He then puts his hands down the front of his pants and asks "Would you really shoot me for doing this?"

I said "Naw man, I ain't gonna shoot you for playing with your ding a ling".

That broke the ice and that's when he started to listen.

I asked him in turn "We're just sitting here talking..why would you make it into something other than that? Why would you put me in to a position where I have to decide in a split second if you're going to hurt or kill me? We're just talking."

I went on to tell him even if it were out on the street and he got caught doing wrong, or if even he just happened to be in the area of someone doings something wrong and we were making sure he had nothing to do with it... why would he do something like that and turn those encounters in to something it didn't need to be?

I don't know if that ever sunk in with him, hopefully it did. I haven't seen or heard from him since.

If someone gets pulled over and they want to get belligerent, or jump out of the car yelling WTF?!, or run, or resist or fight... they have to take ownership of the fact that they contributed to turning that situation in to something it didn't have to be.

It doesn't necessarily justify or excuse what happens next, but it increases the odds that something will go wrong.

I know the whole "Just do what the cop tells you" rhetoric chaps your ass and I'm not a fan of it either. I don't want to be viewed as someone that you have to bow to just because I walk by. But in the course of my daily interactions with people, I generally expect people to act with the same level of decency, manners, and consideration as they expect from me.

In the end I think this guy will get convicted and should.

I dunno man, you might be surprised at how many people run and don't actually have a reason to. You ask them why and they say cuz they thought they might have warrants. When you ask them what for, they say "I dunno, I just thought I might" lol It doesn't happen often but it isn't all that rare.

I guess I should have clarified it as not an automatic death penalty. Actually I believe if someone goes to the measures you described, the charges would be more serious than simple resisting arrest though. Resisting would be one of the charges but I believe there would be more severe charges added on.

No it doesn't, and I didn't say that it did. I merely stated that several of these high profile incidents started with resisting arrest. Please stop reading your already concluded opinion into what I write.

What the video doesn't show is what should be of interest. Did the guy grab at his weapon, and did he fight with the cop? That would be the difference between a murder charge and manslaughter, and that is not shown. The rest of it looks bad for the cop.