White ex-cop gets 20 years for Walter Scott slaying
CHARLESTON, S.C. — One by one, relatives of the late Walter Scott urged a judge to mete out a significant punishment for Michael Slager, the white former police officer who fatally shot Scott, an unarmed black man, in the back after a 2015 traffic stop.
Through tears, Scott’s family told Slager they felt sorrow for him and the loss his young children would feel in his absence. In the end, a judge sentenced Slager to 20 years in prison, giving the Scott family the justice they had sought ever since a stranger came to them with the shocking video of Scott being killed.
“I forgive Michael Slager. I forgive you,” Scott’s mother, Judy, said as she turned toward her son’s killer. “I pray for you, that you would repent and let Jesus come in your life.”
Sitting just a few feet away, Slager wiped tears from his eyes and mouthed: “I’m sorry.”
The punishment wrapped up a case that became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. Slager, 36, is one of only a few police officers to go to prison for a fatal shooting, and his sentence is by far the stiffest since the shootings came under extra scrutiny in recent years.
Attorneys for the former North Charleston officer said he shot the 50-year-old Scott in self-defense after the two fought and Scott grabbed Slager’s stun gun. They said race didn’t play a role in the shooting and Slager never had any “racial animus” toward minorities.
Still, Slager pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Scott’s civil rights. As part of a plea agreement reached in May, prosecutors dropped state murder charges.
“This is a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened,” U.S. District Judge David Norton said.
Slager apologized to the Scott family, calling Scott’s mother and brothers by their names.
“Even on the worst day of my political life, I feel like it’s all been worth it,” he said.
Franken’s departure, which he said would occur in “coming weeks,” made him the latest figure from politics, journalism and the arts to be toppled since October. That’s when the first articles appeared revealing sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein and energizing the #MeToo movement in which women have named men they say abused or harassed them.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton will name a temporary successor, who will serve until a special election next November.
Franken’s comments appended a melancholy coda to the political career of the one-time TV funnyman who became one of his party’s most popular and bellicose liberals.
Just two days earlier, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., a civil rights hero who’d been the House’s longest-serving current member, resigned after facing sexual harassment allegations of his own. The two departures underscored the party’s determination to show no tolerance for such behavior, a strategy that can bring stunningly fast conclusions to political careers but that party leaders believe could give them high moral ground on a subject that’s shown no sign of fading.
On a 2005 audio tape released shortly before last year’s presidential election, Trump is heard talking about grabbing women, and several women accused him of sexual assaults. Women in Alabama have accused Moore of unwanted sexual contact and pursuing romantic relationships when they were teenagers and he was in his thirties during the 1970s.
Asked about Franken’s comment about him on Thursday, Trump merely replied, “I didn’t hear it, sorry.”
At least eight women had accused Franken of inappropriate sexual behavior. Until this week, he’d said he’d remain in the Senate and cooperate with an investigation into his behavior.
The breaking point came Wednesday, when a former Democratic congressional aide said he forcibly tried to kiss her in 2006, an accusation he denied. Hours later, another woman said he’d inappropriately squeezed “a handful of flesh” on her waist while posing for a photo with her in 2009.