Cops and Courts

As Mehserle trial ends, legal labyrinth begins

By Holly Kernan on July 14, 2010 - 3:22pm
Flickr photo by Keoki Seu. http://www.flickr.com/photos/keokiseu/4776185645/
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Sentencing has been postponed for former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. Last week, Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter with special circumstances for using a gun in the shooting death of unarmed Oscar Grant on January 1, 2009 at the Fruitvale BART station. Judge Perry was originally scheduled to sentence Mr. Mehserle on August 6, but that has now been postponed until later this year.

We wanted to understand the complicated issues and the legal wrangling around the sentencing, so we asked Kara Dansky, the Executive Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, to help us sort through the questions.

Discussion

Crosscurrents Producer's picture
By Crosscurrents Pro... on July 15, 2010 - 11:49am.

KALW News received this voicemail from Marianne McKerney:

"In my view, it's the only possible thought about the verdict that a person who was not on that jury should have is to say that they don't know because they weren't on that jury. If you weren't on the jury, you don't have the facts on which to base an opinion about the right or wrongfulness of that decision."