Joe Steel
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2007
- Messages
- 3,054
- Reaction score
- 560
- Location
- St. Louis, Missouri, USA
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Very Liberal
Former SC police officer Michael Slager will not be convicted of murder for shooting Walter Scott. That's what Tom Nolan writing at The Daily Beast says.
That makes sense to me. It's one thing to watch dash cam and cell phone video over and over until we can conclude the shooting wasn't necessary. It's quite another to have to decide in a split-second on the street. Holding a police officer to an impossibly high standard doesn't serve the community and we shouldn't do it.
Section 16-3-10 of the South Carolina Code of Laws defines murder as “the killing of any person with malice aforethought, either express or implied.” The prosecution in the Slager case will face formidable obstacles in convincing a jury that the officer acted with express or implied malice, particularly given the broad discretion and latitude afforded to the police in Graham, and, to a lesser extent, Garner. Slager’s defense counsel need only demonstrate that Slager was confronted with a situation whose exigency required split-second judgments in a tense and rapidly evolving set of circumstances that was fraught with uncertainty, peril, and danger.
The very nature of so-called “reasonableness” is inherently subjective and easy fodder for defense counsel at trial. Slager’s attorneys will portray him as a courageous, selfless, dedicated, even heroic police officer, one who unflinchingly faced danger on a daily basis, and one who may have made a mistake, but a flawed human like the rest of us who is certainly no murderer full of malice.
I am as sickened and as outraged as most who saw the tragic video of Walter Scott’s final moments, but of this I have little doubt: Michael Slager is not going to prison for killing Walter Scott. ...
Michael Slager Is Not Going to Prison for Killing Walter Scott: Here
That makes sense to me. It's one thing to watch dash cam and cell phone video over and over until we can conclude the shooting wasn't necessary. It's quite another to have to decide in a split-second on the street. Holding a police officer to an impossibly high standard doesn't serve the community and we shouldn't do it.