Cop Serves 220 Days For Killing Unarmed Black Man

Johannes Mehserle claimed that he shot Oscar Grant by mistake,
using his gun instead of his Taser, and a jury with no Black members agreed

The former BART police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black man while holding him restrained face down on the ground on New Years Day 2009 has been released from prison this morning after serving an astonishing (and sickening) 220 days in prison after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter (as I blogged about last fall).

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

E-mail and phone notifications made at 12:01 a.m. today said Mehserle had been released, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's online inmate locator also said he had been freed.

[...]

Mehserle, 29, was sentenced to two years for shooting Oscar Grant in the back while the 22-year-old Hayward man lay face down on the platform at Oakland's Fruitvale BART Station after being pulled from a train.

Mehserle has been imprisoned in Los Angeles County Jail since being convicted July 8. He was eligible for release with credit for time served before his trial and what is known as "good time" credit: one day for every day spent behind bars.

[...]

Mehserle testified that he had thought he was firing his Taser stun gun instead of his pistol as he was trying to arrest Grant for allegedly resisting an officer. The case drew widespread outrage, prompting the trial to be moved from Alameda County to Los Angeles. The jury there acquitted Mehserle of murder.

[Mehserle's attorney] Rains said at least eight other law-enforcement officers across the country have similarly mistaken their Tasers for their service weapons and were never criminally charged "and, in some cases, not even disciplined."

On Sunday, several hundred protesters marched peacefully from the Fruitvale BART Station to 14th Street and Broadway in downtown Oakland.

The saddest part of this case is that it must be considered progress that Mehserle was even charged with murder, since as the lawyer says, this was one of the rare times that the "peace officer" offending actions were caught on video and a public outcry finally lead to a criminal prosecution for murder.