Oscar Grant Killer Mehserle Testifies In His Own Defense

The murder trial of Johannes Mehserle, the white BART police officer who shot Oscar Grant to death in the back while the black man was laying on his stomach, continued last week with Mehserle testifying in his own defense.

Sobbing as he testified, a former Bay Area transit officer for the first time offered his account of how he shot and killed a 22-year-old passenger, saying he mistakenly pulled out his handgun instead of an electronic stun gun and fired a single shot before realizing his mistake.

Johannes Mehserle, 28, testified that he was having trouble handcuffing Oscar Grant III and only intended to use the stun gun to make the man comply with his orders.

"I didn't think I had my gun," he testified. "I remember the pop. It wasn't very loud, it wasn't like a gunshot, and I remember wondering what went wrong with the Taser.

"I remember looking to my right side and seeing my gun in my right hand," he said of his .40-caliber pistol. "I didn't know what to think. I just thought it shouldn't have been there."

Mehserle said he looked down at Grant, who was lying on the floor of the Bay Area Rapid Transit station platform. "Mr. Grant said, 'You shot me,' " Mehserle testified.

One member of the audience was not impressed by Mehserle's tears. Timothy Killings, 24, shouted "You should save those [...] tears, dude" and Grant family members applauded.

The jury does not have a single African-American on it, despite Los Angeles County being 10% Black and the person killed was African-American. The trial was moved from Alameda County to Los Angeles County due to concerns about pre-trial publicity influencing the Northern California jury pool.