The guy was on the ground and hand-cuffed and then was murdered.
Not according to the jury. They passed on the 1st degree murder
1st a little legal education.
California Penal Code Sec 187 defines murder as:
(a). Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a
fetus, with malice aforethought.
California Penal Code Sec 188 states:
Such malice may be express or implied. It is express when
there is manifested a deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature. It is implied, when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.
When it is shown that the killing resulted from the intentional doing of an act with express or implied malice as defined above, no other mental state need be shown to establish the mental state of malice aforethought. Neither an awareness of the obligation to act within the general body of laws regulating society nor acting despite such awareness is included within the definition of malice.
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So in order to convict on 1st degree murder you must show that the killer had to have formed a malicious intent to kill the victim.
And unlike what most laymen think, malice is not just shown by killing someone. You must show that there had to be a volitional act.
No one, not the witnesses, not the investigators, not even the people with Grant could show that a violitional act occured on Mehserle’s part.
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Cal Penal Code Sec 189 states that:
All murder which is perpetrated by means of a destructive
device or explosive, a weapon of mass destruction, knowing use of ammunition designed primarily to penetrate metal or armor, poison, lying in wait, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or which is committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, arson, rape, carjacking, robbery, burglary, mayhem, kidnapping, train wrecking, or any act punishable under Section 206, 286, 288, 288a, or 289, or any murder which is perpetrated by means of discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle, intentionally at another person outside of the vehicle with the intent to inflict death, is murder of the first degree. All other kinds of murders are of the second degree.
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None of these above conditions were met.
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Cal Penal Code 192(a) defines Voluntary Manslaughter as homicide commited when the defendant is provoked or during the “heat of passion.
Cal Penal Code 192(b) defines Involuntary Manslaughter as murder without malice and commited during a misdeamnor or a lawful but dangerous act.
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There was no provocation or “heat of passion” here so no Voluntary Manslaughter.
But there was a murder without malice while the defendant comitted a lawful but dangerous act ie. arresting a suspect.
And even then....I might have voted for acquital.
I know that most people’s notions of criminal law comes from television, but this is real life. The prosecution couldn’t charge 1st or 2nd degree murder because it wasn’t there. And if they did it would have been misconduct.
I know that perhaps nothing sort of a lynching would have satified you, but we are still a nations of laws and not of men.