Free Republic

(07-08) 14:59 PDT LOS ANGELES -- Jurors have reached a verdict in the murder trial of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shot and killed unarmed train passenger Oscar Grant on Jan. 1, 2009. The verdict is scheduled to be read in Judge Robert Perry's downtown Los Angeles courtroom at about 4 p.m. today, said a source with knowledge of the matter. Jurors were given four options during deliberations. They could convict Mehserle, 28, of second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter, or they could acquit him. The panel began deliberations Friday, but had to start from scratch Wednesday...

OAKLAND -- As the hour approaches for a jury to decide the fate of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, thousands of Oaklanders hope to experience what seemed so unlikely to them 19 months ago: Justice for Oscar Grant. But what is justice? What constitutes a just response to the killing of the 22-year-old grocery store worker, a man memorialized in hip-hop songs and murals, discussed in barbershops and living rooms as an iconic victim of police brutality that some say happens all too often? Grant was among a group of revelers returning from San Francisco on New Year's night...

LOS ANGELES — Closing arguments on both sides in the Johannes Mehserle murder trial are now complete. Judge Robert Perry will instruct jurors

The tension in Oakland is palpable as the city awaits a verdict in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, a former BART police officer charged with murdering passenger Oscar Grant in January 2009. City officials and business leaders have issued rote statements pleading for public calm in the event of an unpopular verdict. And they run the gamut from righteous to the well-intentioned to the downright ridiculous. This much we already know: What may appear as a reasonable verdict in one community may look like a travesty of justice in another. Youth Uprising, a city-funded youth center, has produced a video...

I wrote for the Los Angeles Daily News during the Rodney King riots in 1992. I remember the first time I saw the shocking videotape of a group of officers beating and kicking a lone black motorist. Then I followed the trial of four police officers, the not-guilty verdicts, the rage and the ugliness. Six days of rioting left parts of Los Angeles charred and 54 people dead. As Oakland awaits the verdict in the trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle for the 2009 New Year's Day shooting of Oscar Grant, some officials fear violence will erupt in...

LOS ANGELES - Johannes Mehserle will not be convicted of first-degree murder, a judge declared today, but jurors deciding the 28-year-old's fate will be allowed to consider every other crime, including second-degree murder, associated with a homicide. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry said evidence in the case proves that the former BART police officer did not plan to kill Oscar Grant III when he shot the 22-year-old Hayward man in the back on Oakland's Fruitvale BART station platform. Perry said, however, that there is enough evidence to allow the jury to consider whether the killing was a second-degree...

On any given day in the Bay Area, it's common to come across aspiring musicians hawking homemade music CDs on the streets of Oakland, Berkeley or San Francisco.Kazi Reeves, 25, who spends time each week outside Peet's Coffee Shop on Oakland's Lakeshore Avenue, is an easygoing pitchman who uses an iPod and headphones to offer potential customers a free sample.He is unabashedly friendly and upbeat, except when it comes to the Johannes Mehserle trial in Los Angeles."I expect an unfair verdict," Reeves said. "A fair verdict would at least be manslaughter," he said. Anything less "would be enough for me...

The Johannes Mehserle murder trial looks like it will wrap up in Los Angeles this week and that has people in Oakland bracing for possible trouble once the verdict is read. While city leaders are calling for calm, people who use Lake Merritt found messages preaching the opposite. The sidewalks that circle the lake were spray painted this weekend. Some were mundane such as "Justice for Oscar Grant." Others seemed to point to trouble with the words "LA Better Get It Right Or Else." One appeared the threaten the Mehserle's life. Workers were out Monday morning trying to remove the...

Former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle broke down and sobbed today as he described to a jury the moment he realized he had shot Oscar Grant in the back. "I didn't think I had my gun," Mehserle said. "I heard the pop. It wasn't very loud. It wasn't like a gun shot. And then I remember thinking, 'What went wrong with my Taser?' I remember looking at my gun in my right hand." Mehserle continued, "I didn't know what to think. It just shouldn't have been there." Mehserle then broke down in tears, as did his mother, who was watching...

The prosecutor in the murder trial of a former BART police officer who killed an unarmed man called a use-of-force expert to the stand today - a former cop who talked about how officers should stay calm and use as little force as needed when arresting suspects. But the most memorable part of Sean McCann's testimony came during cross-examination, when - in response to a question by defense attorney Michael Rains - he said he had once drawn his gun on a suspect during a fight without realizing he had done so. The exchange was the latest instance in which...

A jury of eight women and four men was seated Tuesday in the murder trial of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who fatally shot unarmed train rider Oscar Grant during an arrest at Fruitvale Station in Oakland on New Year's Day 2009. Opening statements in a courtroom in downtown Los Angeles - where the trial was moved to escape heavy publicity in the Bay Area - are scheduled for Thursday. On Wednesday, Judge Robert Perry plans to rule on a final round of legal motions by attorneys in the case. Six alternate jurors - five women and one man...

Behind the scenes, there's bad news for prosecutors in the upcoming murder trial of ex-BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle.The trouble comes in the form of eyewitness statements to police who investigated the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant and depositions in the lawsuit that led to a $1.5 million settlement from BART for the slain man's daughter.Mehserle has been charged with murder for shooting Grant as the Hayward man lay face down on the Fruitvale Station platform in Oakland while being detained by officers early Jan. 1, 2009. Mehserle's lawyers say he shot Grant by accident while thinking he was firing...

OAKLAND — Although changing venues for criminal trials has become a rarity in the state, a decision by an Alameda County judge last week to move the murder case against a former BART police officer was not a surprise, criminal law professors and attorneys in the field said Monday. Professors and attorneys said community outrage against the Jan. 1. killing almost assured the trial would be moved. "If there is ever a case you would expect a change of venue, it would be a case like this," said David Sklansky, a professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law....

To justify their arrest warrant for BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, Oakland police claimed that Oscar Grant's hands were "restrained" behind his back when Mehserle shot him. Alameda District Attorney was only slightly more circumspect, asserting in his indictment that: After careful analysis of the video, it is clear that both of Grant's hands were behind his back, a position hands are commonly placed in by police officers in order to handcuff individuals, when the shot was fired into his body. On the contrary, however, frame by frame analysis of the shooting video proves that Grant's hands were NOT in a...

The unarmed man killed by former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle on an Oakland train platform early New Year's Day put up a brief struggle with officers but had been restrained and had both arms behind him when he was shot in the back, police investigators said. The conclusion by Oakland police, contained in a legal filing made public Wednesday, contributed to Alameda County prosecutors' decision to charge Mehserle, 27, with murdering 22-year-old Oscar Grant of Hayward. It was an extraordinary decision. Several legal experts said they could recall no instance of a police officer in California being charged with...