iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — A mistrial was declared Monday in the murder trial of a former South Carolina police officer who was accused in the shooting death of an unarmed black man — the latest in a string of officer-involved deaths that did not result in convictions.
The reason for lack of convictions in office-involved deaths could lie with the jurors, who are often reluctant to convict police officers, according to experts interviewed by ABC News.
“What we see time and time again is that jurors are very reluctant to second-guess the split-second life-or-death decisions that a police officer makes,” said Philip Stinson, a former police officer and criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University who researches police-involved incidents and crimes.
Jurors are “unwilling to conclude that an on-duty police officer could be a murderer,” Stinson said.
The law is “pretty clear” that police officers are to be judged by “different standards,” said Sunny Hostin, senior legal correspondent and analyst for ABC News. Officers are judged, not in hindsight, but by “what a reasonable officer at the scene would have done,” she said.
“I think [the jurors] sometimes give that police officer the benefit of the doubt” because they are “trained to shoot if they are in danger,” Hostin said.
“Jurors understand that police officers have a very difficult job,” she said. “They put their lives on the line every day to protect us. They have a hard time convicting someone whose job is to protect and serve.”
Somewhere between 900 and 1,100 people are shot and killed by an on-duty police officer every year, Stinson said, and additional people are killed in a manner not involving a gun.
“The vast majority of office-involved deaths are done by shooting,” most of which are found to be legally justified, which means that “the officer had a reasonable apprehension of an imminent threat of serious or bodily injury or deadly force being used against the officer or someone else,” Stinson said.
Since 2005, when Stinson began studying police-involved incidents, a total of 78 state and local police officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting, he said. Of those cases, 27 officers have been convicted to date — 14 by jury trial and 13 by guilty plea, Stinson said. Of those convictions, only one officer was convicted of murder: James Ashby of the Rocky Ford (Colorado) Police Department, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
There has also been a recent uptick in police being charged in officer-involved deaths due to the abundance of video evidence provided by cellphone, surveillance and police dash-cam and body-cam, Stinson said. In 2015, 18 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting. In 2016 so far, 12 officers have been charged. In comparison, in the decade preceding 2015, from 2005 to 2014, 48 officers were charged — an average of fewer than five officers a year.
“Many, if not all of those officers would not have been charged had it not been for the video evidence,” Stinson said.
“In the past, police have owned the narrative in these cases,” he added. “What they say happened is what gets put into the official record. What we’re seeing with video evidence is the initial statement is inconsistent with the video evidence. Either their recollections are faulty or they’re lying.”
But even the most compelling video evidence often isn’t enough to convict the officer.
“Although those cases being brought are on the upswing, in large part due to ubiquitous cellphone video, we’re still not getting a significant conviction rate as prosecutors,” Hostin said.
Police officers are “entitled to receive the same due process and the same presumption of innocence that any other American citizen enjoys,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “The right to a fair trial is an integral piece of that equation.”
“Every case is judged on its own merits and is unique in and of itself,” Pasco said.
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