Experts point to several factors, including laws that protect an officer’s right to use force, benefits from powerful police unions, prosecutors who may experience a conflict of interest, and even jury pools that tend to align themselves with the police.
“This is rare because the juries are very reluctant to guess the actions of conscript police officers during violent encounters,” said Philip Matthew Stinson, a professor of criminal law at Bowling Green State University. police crime.
Stinson, who collects and traces data from news reports and court records across the country with his team at the Henry A. Wallace police crime database, began locating in 2005. At that time, the team’s data revealed that at least 140 law enforcers had been arrested on charges of murder or manslaughter in connection with service attacks in the US.
Out of the pool, about a third were convicted on any charges. Seven officers – just 5% – were convicted of murder during the same time, according to the same research. Because the researchers’ data is based on cases reported in the media, it may not be complete or representative, but it does take a snapshot to indicate how rare charges can be for these offenses.
The current standard for the use of force by the police is the ruling of the US Supreme Court in 1989, which states that violence must be ‘objectively reasonable’, and that officers are often forced to make judgments in a second – in conditions that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving – about the amount of power needed in a particular situation. ”
According to Brandon Garrett, professor of law at Duke University School of School, the standard, which is under the federal constitution, has influenced some lawmakers in the state to interpret their constitutions in the same way. Law and Faculty Director of the Wilson Center for Science and Justice.
“These cases are never in nice, neat packages. The facts are always bad for both sides,” Stinson says of most cases involving police officers. “Here are facts that benefit the defense, and here are facts that benefit the prosecution. None of them have a case that is in absolute certainty to the extent that you could have something like that in a jury trial.”
Police officers on trial benefit from reasonable doubt
According to Garrett, police officers facing charges of murder or manslaughter have a unique set of benefits that make a criminal conviction less likely.
“In this country, a lot of violent abuse is not crime, criminal charges are rare, and we’ve seen big juries go to trial in high-profile cases,” Garrett said. “Unlike the vast majority of criminal cases found guilty by convictions, many police officers do not plead guilty and are successful in the trial.”
In recent weeks, there have been several sensational cases of police killings that illustrate how the use of lethal force by the police “is far more common than it should be in this country,” Garrett said.
Former Brooklyn, Minnesota police chief Tim Gannon said Potter, who was charged with second-degree manslaughter in Wright’s death, misjudged her gun as her Taser. In Chicago, Toledo was shot after he was seen holding a gun at the end of a foot chase in a dark alley. The boy is seen raising his hands as the officer fires his weapon, according to the camera footage.
In many states, attorneys for police officers argue that their use of force and action was justified under “seconds of a second,” which refers to rapidly evolving police encounters, according to Garrett.
Officers select for trial
Police accused often refuse plea offers in the knowledge that their defense is likely to succeed during the trial. Officers often secure defense attorneys just hours after the incident, and they have a high-level union representation from the outset to advise on their strategy, experts say.
“The quality of the legislation is very different from ordinary criminal cases,” Garrett added. “For the typical criminal accused, it’s incredibly risky to be tried.”
Patrick Thomassey, Rosfeld’s defender, told CNN this week that juries in criminal trials involving police are often torn apart because they know officers are legally authorized to use lethal force when confronted with it.
“People on the outside do not understand what the law is. There is training and use of force laws that determine when the police can use lethal force,” Thomassey said. “You have to see if he had the right to use it when he used it.”
And it understands more than not the scope of the law. Accused by the police also benefit from jury members sympathy due to the public perception that their work is inherently dangerous, which can increase their range of self-defense arguments.
“Officers know they have legal defenses that would not otherwise be available because they have a professional role in which they are empowered to use force that no one else is,” Garrett said. “It makes a whole different case.”
On the same day the jury acquitted Rosfeld of all charges, seven bullets were fired at Thomassey’s law office in Monroeville, Pittsburgh.
“There’s always so much emotion involved in these cases,” Thomassey said. “It’s the hard part of a defensive position and a prosecution attitude. You just hope people listen to the law, put emotions aside, follow the law and make the right decision.”
Derek Chauvin’s trial stands apart
Chauvin’s actions prompted law enforcement to violate the so-called ‘blue wall of silence’, with no one’s evidence shining a bigger spotlight than that of the Minneapolis police chief, saying the former officer violated the department’s policy and the use of force was unfair.
The almost unprecedented departure from the unwritten code shows how some police officers condemned Chauvin’s actions and how unique the trial became.
Chief Medaria Arradondo testified that Chauvin should have stopped kneeling on George Floyd’s neck when he stopped resisting and stopped responding, saying Chauvin was wrong to ‘apply that level of force to a outspoken person, handcuffed behind their back ‘.
In earlier cases, the ‘blue wall of silence’ provided cover for an officer accused of using lethal force, which prevented police from speaking out against others in their police department, Garrett said.
“Hopefully, this will set a precedent that agencies will not hold the worst behavior of their officers,” he said. “If jurors are not sure what police officers are or are not supposed to do, they can see that the police front reflects that the person’s behavior should have been appropriate police behavior.”
Garrett said there are hundreds of cases where police use lethal force each year, but despite the fatality, very few of the incidents result in an officer being prosecuted.
In the wake of Chauvin’s conviction, Garrett believes there will be a ‘reconsideration’ of how and when officers should be held civilly and criminally liable when they cause a death. The problem is that there is very little data available on lethal violence used by the police.
In police brutality cases, the question of whether the officer accused of misconduct acted ‘reasonably’ and their conduct was necessary under the circumstances – but how ‘reasonable’ is defined, remains largely elusive.
“There are so few cases that tell us what is reasonable, and therefore a conviction in the Derek Chauvin trial will set a standard for reasonable that we have not had before,” said Gloria Browne-Marshall, professor of constitutional law. to John, said. Jay College of Criminal Justice and Attorney for Civil Rights.
The Chauvin trial is a rare example of ‘zealous prosecution’ in hundreds of years where prosecutors have not prosecuted white people for crimes against black people, Browne-Marshall said.
Despite viral images of police using excessive force according to some, most are considered reasonable by prosecutors and grand juries, either because the officer’s actions are justified or there is not enough evidence to file criminal charges.
Sam Aguiar, one of the lawyers representing the family of Breonna Taylor, said he was all too familiar with the sting that a family feels if the police are not charged, and prosecutors could have done more.
Aguiar said the difference between his case and the Chauvin trial is that Minnesota state prosecutors are not asked to go after police officers every day.
‘These prosecutors use a cost-benefit analysis and that is: we go after a police officer who is criminal conduct, and we diligently pursue the case and get our conviction and take the risk of getting the support of our key witnesses to lose hundreds of others. matters, or we do the matter basically, ”Aguiar said. “If you bring in an independent body to go into and basically put all the resources in charge to hold the officer accountable, you’ll actually get a situation where a trial is put together that presents all the evidence objectively.”
And not to be understated, the police departments across the country spoke out against Chauvin’s actions, with no greater example than Arradondo, and took a stand against Chauvin, one of his former officers. Aguiar says this is something he hopes to see ahead in other cases.