Johannes Mehserle is alive, well and free after serving one year of a two year sentence for involuntary manslaughter. Oscar's young daughter and family are still living the nightmare of loss and justice not being served. The killing which occurred the early hours of New Years Day 2009 was witnessed by a trainload of passengers, as well as other subdued young men in custody on the platform. Multiple video recordings of the killing are available online and still, Mr. Mehserle feels he is the one wrongly charged and wanted his record cleared. He maintains the killing was an accident.
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Today's three-judge panel rejected Mr. Mehserle's appeal giving this explanation for upholding the felony conviction:
the court said there was abundant evidence that Mehserle had acted with gross negligence, as required for a manslaughter conviction.
The handgun was black and weighed three times more than the yellow stun gun, the justices noted. The pistol was holstered on Mehserle's dominant right side and had a two-step release mechanism that the Taser lacked. Mehserle had received 6 1/2 hours of training with the Taser, had drawn it twice in the minutes before the shooting, and struggled three times to get the handgun out of its holster.
"A reasonable jury could conclude a reasonably prudent person would have known he was holding his deadly handgun and not his nonlethal Taser," said Presiding Justice James Marchiano in the 3-0 ruling.
He said the jury could also have concluded that Mehserle had no need to use any weapon because the situation appeared to be under control, and none of the other six officers on the platform drew a firearm.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/08/BAHB1OV72A.DTL#ixzz1xGF61BQ5
Personally, I initially felt the incident was an accident until the actions of Merserle and fellow officers was reported. Once the facts and the video were available any "reasonable" person could clearly see the officer(s) involved were not forthcoming with the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Their actions were that of guilt and coverup. Maybe the punishment didn't fit the crime of taking a life, regardless of the circumstances. But with the court's decision to let Mehserle's felony conviction stand, they keep a man who is negligent when given lethal enforcement deputation, from being sanctioned to kill again. He may kill again, but with a felony conviction it won't be a sanctioned killing. For as sad as that sounds, this is the reality facing many disenfranchised citizens living in these United States of America today.
Oscar Juliuss Grant III, (February 27, 1986 – January 1, 2009),
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