NYC officer convicted of manslaughter in stairwell shooting
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| Police Officer Peter Liang, center, enters the courtroom after the lunch break in his trial on charges in the shooting death of Akai Gurley, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016, at Brooklyn Supreme court in New York. Jurors are scheduled to start discussing their views of Liang’s actions as soon as Tuesday. Closing arguments are expected in the morning, and deliberations are likely to begin in the afternoon. |
NEW YORK
(AP) -- A rookie police officer who shot an unarmed man dead in a
darkened public housing stairwell was convicted Thursday of manslaughter
in a case closely watched by advocates for police accountability.
The
courtroom audience gasped and Officer Peter Liang, who had broken into
tears as he testified about the 2014 shooting of Akai Gurley, buried his
head in his hands as the verdict came after 17 hours of jury
deliberations. Liang, who remains free on bail, left the courthouse
without comment.
The manslaughter charge, a
felony, carries up to 15 years in prison. While Liang awaits sentencing
April 14, he was dismissed from the New York Police Department right
after the verdict, department spokesman Peter Donald said.
But
an uncertainty remains: Brooklyn state Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun
has yet to rule on Liang's lawyers' request to dismiss the charges;
Liang also was convicted of official misconduct, a misdemeanor. The
request was made before the verdict.
Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson said "justice was done" for Gurley.
"He
was an innocent man who was killed by a police officer who violated his
training," said Thompson, whose mother was a police officer.
But
Liang's lawyers said they struggled to understand how the jury could
find him guilty for a shooting he said happened accidentally in a
totally dark stairway.
"If that's not a time to pull out your gun, I don't know when is," said defense lawyer Robert Brown.
The
shooting happened in a year of debate nationwide about police killings
of black men, and activists have looked to Liang's trial as a
counterweight to cases in which grand juries have declined to indict
officers, including the cases of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric
Garner in New York. Like Gurley, Brown and Garner were black and
unarmed.
Thompson cautioned that Liang's case
shouldn't be commingled with others. But relatives of other New Yorkers
killed in police encounters had joined Gurley's family outside court
during the trial to call for police accountability.
"I
just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone," Gurley's
mother, Sylvia Palmer, said after the officer's conviction.
Meanwhile, supporters of Liang, who is Chinese-American, have said he has been made a scapegoat for past injustices.
Deliberations
stretched into Thursday evening, after jurors asked to review the New
York Police Department firearms guide late in the afternoon. Earlier,
they had reheard testimony from Liang and other witnesses.
Liang
was patrolling a public housing high-rise in Brooklyn with his gun
drawn when he fired; he said a sound startled him. The bullet ricocheted
off a wall and hit the 28-year-old Gurley on a lower floor.
Prosecutors
said Liang handled his gun recklessly, must have realized from the
noise that someone was nearby and did almost nothing to help Gurley.
But the defense said the shooting was an accident, not a crime.
The
28-year-old Liang said he had been holding his weapon safely, with his
finger on the side and not the trigger, when the sudden sound jarred him
and his body tensed.
"I just turned, and the gun went off," he testified.
He
said he initially looked with his flashlight, saw no one and didn't
immediately report the shot, instead quarreling with his partner about
who would call their sergeant. Liang thought he might get fired.
But
then, he said, he went to look for the bullet, heard cries and found
the wounded Gurley, with his weeping girlfriend trying to tend to him.
Liang
then radioed for an ambulance, but he acknowledged not helping Gurley's
girlfriend try to revive him.
Liang explained he thought it was wiser
to wait for professional medical aid.
"I was
panicking. I was shocked and in disbelief that someone was hit," said
Liang, who said he was so overcome that he needed oxygen as he was taken
to a hospital for ringing in his ears.
While
Liang's trial unfolded, two other New York police officers, Patrick
Espeut and Diara Cruz, were shot and wounded during a similar stairwell
patrol in a different public housing complex. The gunman later killed
himself. The judge barred any mention of those shootings in Liang's
trial.
