Jury acquits officer in motorist’s killing
Protesters block traffic on interstate
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota police officer was acquitted of manslaughter Friday in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, a black motorist whose girlfriend streamed the aftermath live on Facebook.
Jeronimo Yanez was also cleared of two lesser charges in the July traffic stop in a St. Paul suburb. Jurors deliberated for 29 hours over five days before reaching the verdict in the death of Castile, who was shot just seconds after informing Yanez that he was carrying a gun.
Castile’s family members reacted angrily to the acquittal, with his mother, Valerie, standing and swearing as the verdict was read. She and other family members immediately tried to leave the courtroom, and did so after security officers briefly barred the way.
Outside the courthouse, Valerie Castile said Yanez got away with “murder,” noting that her son was wearing a seatbelt and in a car with his girlfriend and her then-4-year-old daughter when he was shot.
“I will continue to say murder,” she said. “I am so very, very, very … disappointed in the system here in the state of Minnesota. Nowhere in the world do you die from being honest and telling the truth.”
“He didn’t deserve to die the way he did,” Philando Castile’s sister, Allysza, said, through tears. “I will never have faith in the system.”
Prosecutor John Choi, who made the decision to charge Yanez, said he knows the acquittal is painful for many people, but that the verdict “must be respected.”
“I don’t doubt that officer Yanez is a decent person, but he made a horrible mistake from our perspective, and that’s what this case was about. I know that if he could, he would take back what he did, and we all wish, and he would too, that this never happened,” Choi said.
Thousands of people gathered Friday evening at the nearby state Capitol to protest the verdict, and began a march that organizers said was headed for the St. Paul Cathedral. The mixed-race crowd, including many people with children, carried signs that read “Unite for Philando” and “Corrupt systems only corrupt.”
The protest was peaceful as darkness fell, but a smaller group splintered off and walked down an entrance ramp to block Interstate 94, quickly snarling traffic and leading to the freeway’s shutdown in both directions.
City officials in St. Anthony said they would offer Yanez a “voluntary separation” because they had concluded “the public will be best served” if he is no longer an officer there.
Yanez, who is Hispanic, testified that Castile was pulling his gun out of his pocket despite his commands not to do so. The defense also argued Castile was high on marijuana and said that affected his actions.
Yanez stared ahead with no reaction as the verdict was read. Afterward, one of his attorneys, Tom Kelly, said the defense was “satisfied.”
“We were confident in our client. We felt all along his conduct was justified. However
that doesn’t take away from the tragedy of the event,” Kelly said.
Castile had a permit for the weapon, and prosecutors questioned whether Yanez ever saw the gun. They argued that the officer overreacted and that Castile was not a threat.
Juror Dennis Ploussard said the jury was split 10-2 early this week in favor of acquittal. They spent a lot of time dissecting the “culpable negligence” requirement for conviction, and the last two holdouts agreed Friday on acquittal. He declined to say whether he thought Yanez acted appropriately, but said the jury sympathizes with the Castile family.
“We struggled with it. I struggled with it. It was very, very hard,” Ploussard said, adding that he thought the jury delivered the right verdict.
He would not identify the two early holdouts, but said they were not the jury’s only two black members. The rest of the jurors were white. None was Hispanic.
Castile’s shooting was among a string of killings of blacks by police around the U.S., and the livestreaming of its aftermath by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, attracted even more attention. The public outcry included protests in Minnesota that shut down highways and surrounded the governor’s mansion. Castile’s family claimed he was profiled because of his race, and the shooting renewed concerns about how police officers interact with minorities.
Yanez had been charged with second-degree manslaughter and faced two lesser counts of endangering Castile’s girlfriend and her then-4-yearold daughter for firing his gun into the car near them.
Yanez testified that he stopped Castile in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights because he thought the 32-yearold elementary school cafeteria worker looked like one of two men who had robbed a nearby convenience store a few days earlier. Castile’s car had a faulty brake light, giving the 29-yearold officer a legally sufficient pretext for pulling him over, several experts testified.
Squad-car video played for the jury shows a wide view of the traffic stop and the shooting, with the camera pointed toward Castile’s car. While it captures what was said between the two men and shows Yanez firing into the vehicle, it does not show what happened inside the car or what Yanez might have seen.
The video shows the situation escalated quickly, with Yanez shooting Castile just seconds after Castile volunteered, “Sir, I have to tell you, I do have a firearm on me.” Five of the officer’s seven shots struck Castile. Witnesses testified that the gun was in a pocket of Castile’s shorts when paramedics removed him from his vehicle.
On the squad-car video, Castile can be heard saying, “I’m not pulling it out,” as Yanez opened fire. Prosecutors said Castile’s last words were, “I wasn’t reaching for it.”