Trials, convictions rare for officers
PHILADELPHIA — In the three years since fatal police shootings of unarmed black people launched the Black Lives Matter movement, few officers have been charged and none has been convicted by juries in the highest-profile deaths that inspired protests across the country.
Experts cite a confluence of factors, including racial bias, attitudes toward law enforcement and the challenge of showing precisely what an officer was thinking in a high-pressure situation. In the end, many jurors are simply reluctant to reject the accounts provided by police.
“They just don’t want to second-guess officers in those life-or-death decisions,” said Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “They think, ‘What if that was me? What if that was my child who was the police officer?’ ”
A jury last week acquitted the Minnesota officer who fatally shot Philando Castile, whose girlfriend live-streamed the moments after the shooting on Facebook. Then on Wednesday, jurors acquitted a black police officer of first-degree reckless homicide in the killing of a black Milwaukee man who threw away the gun he was carrying during a brief foot chase after a traffic stop.
Meanwhile, a jury in Cincinnati will continue deliberations into a fifth day in a former University of Cincinnati police officer’s second trial, longer than the deadlocked jury did in his first trial. Ray Tensing, who is charged with murder and voluntary manslaughter, shot Sam DuBose, an unarmed black driver, during a 2015 traffic stop. The first trial in November ended with a hung jury.
A closer look at some factors that work against the prosecution or conviction of officers:
Racial bias: Studies have shown conscious and unconscious fear of African American men plays out in numerous ways, including in exchanges between police and blacks. “That bias makes it much more reasonable to think that the black man posed a threat,” said Georgetown University professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler.
Perceptions of law enforcement: Race also plays a role in how people view the role of police. A recent Pew survey found that fewer than half of blacks surveyed felt the police did an excellent or good job of protecting people from crime compared with nearly 80 percent of whites.
Proof versus intent: A conviction on charges of homicide or murder often requires prosecutors to establish the suspect’s intent, which can be difficult in the split-second exchanges between police and civilians. Many police shooting trials center on a self-defense strategy. Stinson found that almost 40 percent of cases in which officers were charged with murder or manslaughter since 2005 ended in mistrials or acquittals when officers testified they feared for their lives.