Serious question - has any law enforcement officer in the USA ever been tried and found guilty following the death of someone he or she killed while in uniform? I’m aware that crooked cops get arrested all the time for actions they’ve taken off-duty, but following the deaths of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, I’ve started to wonder how many of these deaths have happened where the cop is found not guilty. Are there any figures on this?
While the trial hasn’t happened yet look at the case of Randall Kerrick killing Jonathan Ferrell:
…
He is only being charged with voluntary manslaughter.
Craig A Peyer. Gerard John Schaefer, Jr…
But there’s a fair number:
Most of the time thats the best you are going to get involving an on duty police officer. The vast majority of the time we are talking about the shooting of someone they first encountered a matter of minutes or seconds before the shooting took place. Proving premeditation is difficult in the killing of someone who they had no way to predict they would encounter this person, nor are they lying in wait for the opportunity to strike a random individual…
A few years ago, a BART officer shot a )prone, handcuffed behind his back) “suspect” in the back.
He claimed he thought he had his Tazer.
The charge was changed to murder after original arraignment (IIFR) - it sounded to me like one of the trainful of people recording the scene had gotten an angle showing him releasing the safety.
Another good reason cops should use Glocks - no safety releases.
Not really what you’re talking about but a woman was found murdered in a church parking in my home town many years ago. When they rolled her body over there was the name tag of one of the officers who had responded to the scene. And his was missing from his uniform. He had killed her earlier in the shift. I’m pretty sure he is doing life.
I think the OP will probably want to split the question into two cases: Cops who were illegal predators, picking on women on bogus traffic stops & such, versus the case I suspect he’s actually interested in: cops who encounter more-or-less legitimate suspects in typical random cop-on-perp encounters and then end up killing the suspect with seriously insufficient legitimate reason.
Are you sure it was BART?
http://www.theppsc.org/Archives/Less-lethal/Fresno_Taser_Mistake.htm
It was BART. The officer concerned, Johannes Mehserle, was charged with murder and convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
The Fresno case was several years earlier; the officer, Marcie Noriega, was not criminally charged.
The cop who shot Sammy Yatin in Toronto last year is being charged with murder.
Here’s a link to the video showing the shooting (make sure the sound is on).
ETA: I only now noticed that you wanted “in the USA”. Well, close enough, eh?
The killing of Malice Green saw 4 officers indicted. I had charges dropped, one was acquitted of assault, two were found guilty of second degree murder. After appeal overturning the convictions both were later convicted of involuntary manslaughter instead of murder.
I’m confused why releasing the safety was relevant. Tasers have safeties. Was located in an entirely different position than the one on the Taser?
The problem with that wikipedia category for this purpose is that it does not include the *while in uniform *stipulation of the OP. That being said, Craig Payer looks to fit the OP’s requirements, but Schaefer had been fired and stripped of his badge by the time he committed the murders he was actually convicted of. It seems probable that some of the many he murdered over the years were killed while he was in uniform… but he wasn’t convicted of murder for those killings, just the ones that took place after he was no longer a uniformed police officer.
It’s not completely clear from the accounts whether Antoinette Frank was in uniform when she committed the murders she was convicted of, but she at least seems to have been on duty (or claimed she was on duty).
The safety was the only guess I had as to why the charge was upgraded to murder - there was something, apparently, in a new video which convinced the Prosecutor to go for the Murder charge.
The Judge was reported as “skeptical” at the original “I thought it was my Tazer” defense.
There was something on that particular video which was quite damning.
How much weight difference is there between a 9mm and a Tazer?
Maybe the new video had him looking at what he was holding? Maybe he got caught racking a round?
The Craig Peyer case was not a killing in the line of duty. It was clearly a murder of a young and beautiful college co-ed. He had stopped her on a lonely off ramp near Poway, CA, at night and when she refused his advances, he murdered her. That asshole is still in prison and hopefully will be there for the rest of his life. I remember that story well.
Frank was not on duty at the time of the murders; she was out of uniform and had to identify herself to the restaurant owner when she returned pretending to be responding to the 911 call.
Perhaps it was not ‘in the line of duty’, but it would be a no true scotsman fallacy to discount any actual murder because that sort of action is not ‘in the line’.
Peyer was ‘on duty’ (i.e. on the clock for his job as a police officer) and in uniform at the time of the murder, which matches what the OP was asking for.