BART officer charged with murder appears in L.A. court

More than 100 protesters demanding justice for a Bay Area man shot to death by a BART police officer on New Year's Day last year converged on a downtown Los Angeles courthouse today for the first proceedings since the racially charged case was moved here from Alameda County.

Johannes Mehserle, who resigned from the Bay Area Rapid Transit police force a week after the shooting he admits to but contends was unintentional, will stand trial for murder before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry in May, the judge said at his pretrial hearing.

Perry prolonged a gag order issued by an Alameda County judge prohibiting either side in the case from discussing it in public. He also rejected a request from Bay Area broadcasters to allow televised coverage of the trial in light of the intense public interest in the shooting death that provoked three days of rioting that damaged dozens of Oakland businesses.

Perry said his experience of high-profile trials is that allowing cameras in the courtroom "is detrimental to the search for truth and justice." The judge said he would prohibit cellphones, texting, the use of laptop computers and all other means of recording or transmitting the proceedings when the trial begins in mid-May.

Mehserle, 28, has received death threats, as have his family and attorneys, posing a risk to the safety of witnesses who might testify on his behalf, Perry said in denying broadcast coverage of the proceedings for the benefit of Bay Area residents unable to travel to Los Angeles for the trial.

Mehserle's attorney, Michael Rains, told the court that his client wasn't contesting the cause of death in the Jan. 1, 2009, slaying of Oscar J. Grant III at Oakland's Fruitvale station. What is at issue in the case, Rains said, is the former officer's "intent" in the incident. It is rare for a police officer to be charged with murder in an on-duty shooting due to the qualified immunity accorded law enforcement.

Many of the protesters who picketed the courthouse traveled from the Bay Area to hoist placards demanding justice for Grant, the 22-year-old Hayward man shot to death as BART officers were trying to subdue a trainload of unruly New Year's revelers.

Dozens of witnesses reported seeing the white officer shoot Grant, who is black, including some who captured the killing on cellphone cameras.

Mehserle told Alameda County authorities at preliminary court proceedings that he was reaching for his stun gun and accidentally drew his revolver instead.

"There are thousands of Oscar Grants everyday," Hannibal Shakur, a 23-year-old Oakland student making a documentary about the victim, said in front of the crowd outside the courthouse.

"It was a shame. It was a clear murder," Shakur said. "Young brothers get killed by the police everyday. I'm guessing (Mehserle) won't be held accountable. L.A. has a history. If they wanted to give us justice, they could have done that in Oakland."

The trial was moved to Southern California because of the high publicity surrounding the case in the Bay Area.

-- Carol J. Williams and Gerrick D. Kennedy

Photos: Protest in L.A. as former BART officer appears in court

Photos: BART shooting protests in January 2009

Photo: Protesters demanding justice for a Bay Area man shot to death by a BART police officer demonstrate outside the Criminal Courts building in Los Angeles. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[WJ]

This case doesn't make any sense because everybody is throwing around their own interpretations. Ask yourselves these questions and answer them logically,
1) why would a cop pull a gun on a person who is already cuffed and prone?
2) why would he pull his gun when ANOTHER cop on the suspect's back?
3) why would he shoot somebody in cold blood with witnesses?

If your answer keeps coming back that the cop was racist or stupid, then there's no critical thinking happening between your ears.
And just to show that media needs to clean up their act, this article has a minor factual error: the gun is NOT a revolver, it was a P226.

A little advice to all the "young brothers". Keep yourself clean (i.e. no drugs on you, no weapons on you); when you get pulled over, don't act smart. You rather get arrested and live another day to fight a better battle, or die trying to make statement.

[Adam]

So far, Don probably has made the most sense (although I frown on using television shows to back arguments). For all the individuals that have asked the question, "why is the community not as concerned when someone from their community is shot and killed by another member of the community, but concerned when a cop does it?" I have a seemingly obvious answer:
THEY ARE AS CONCERNED!!!

What you folks do not seem to understand is that such issues involving two black people from a poor neighborhood just does not matter to "White America" and thus does not make it on to FOX or CNN news.

On the other hand, when multiple videos surface of someone who is empowered by the State to protect the people shooting a person (who is already restrained) in the back , "White America" watches the content and is embarrassed to confront the truth that is a reality to minorities in this country every single day.

Furthermore, police are granted power and authority by the government, and with that authority and power comes a responsibility to act with a higher standard of care in tense and potentially violent situations. When someone applies to be a police officer and receives TRAINING, I think it reasonable to believe that the police would be more capable and in control of themselves than some young men who likely have not been trained how to "properly act" in such tense situations with one another.

I would also like to say that if a video surfaced of a homicide by one black male against another, it would be just as publicized and there would be a huge reaction by the community as well (that would likely be televised on CNN or FOX so that you would know it existed). Please think back to the incident caught on video in Chicago this past summer in which a young man (who was an honor student at his high school) was cracked over the head with a 2X4 and then kicked repeatedly, resulting in his death. Both CNN and FOX news televised that video and the resulting protests and community efforts to bring justice and stop such violence.

Unfortunately, most of you posting questions (although they seem like passive aggressive statements) do not know enough about issues of race between the Oakland police and local black community to even realize how inappropriate your questions are. You do not even know where to begin to understand the issue, so you simplify it in your own mind with your own egocentric and ethnocentric views. The truth is that the issues in Oakland between the black community and the police have their roots back in the 1960's. To think that such a complex relationship and history can be simplified to your understandings was likely a mistake on my part.

I am a white male who grew up in one of the wealthiest towns in the U.S. and attended one of the top rated private high schools in the nation. I have a Bachelor's of Science in Psychology and am licensed to practice law in California. This is not to say I am right, it is instead provided by me in the hopes that some of you will not automatically discount these points I have elaborated on. "I'm a glutton for the truth even though truth hurts."

[Adam]

Oh, and TED: You da man! Thank you for bringing some knowledge to "Mel."

[Joseph W. Walden Jr.]

I'll tell you the truth on the matter, as a black youth growing up in a area where drugs where sold and racial profiling was accepted practice, I am furious over everything that was done to me.
I couldn't attend work, school, run family errands for groceries, pharmaceuticals for my mother or grandmother, or attend Sunday School.
Why you ask, because local law enforcement hounded me everywhere, standing over me in class, searching my belongings for drugs that never exsisted.
From ages 18 to 25 until my mother passed away and I moved out of thier jurisdiction I was constantly being arrested and charges dismissed due to lack of evidence.
The only reason I remain a free man today is because I stood up to what's now a illegal practice but at the same time I'm lucky I wasnt murdered before I could prove my innocence.
Now age 43 I hate local law enforcement because I know them only as an organization of armed men who at any given moment can legally murder me, my wife, or children even if no wrongdoing occured.
That America believe it's acceptable for police officers to actively practice the extermination of people of color.
If any of that is true than law enforcement becomes a greater threat to my families well being than any crimminal element, that is a condition no American has to endure.