Mehserle's defense says Grant was resisting (BART)

[BlueJessamine]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Attorneys for the former BART police officer accused of murdering an unarmed rider on New Year's Day stepped up efforts Tuesday to prove what they called the key to their case - that the victim had resisted arrest.

At the preliminary hearing for Johannes Mehserle, the attorneys tried to place his shooting of Oscar Grant in the context of a chaotic scene on the Fruitvale Station platform in Oakland, in which BART police feared for their safety and Mehserle fired his pistol thinking it was his stun gun.

But the strategy angered relatives of Grant, who said the 22-year-old supermarket worker from Hayward had never resisted. They said outside court in Oakland that descriptions of the incident by BART officers testifying as defense witnesses suggested a coordinated effort to protect one of their own.

On Tuesday, Officer Marysol Domenici testified that minutes before he was shot, Grant grabbed her arm as she tried in vain to get him to sit against a wall in the wake of fight on a train.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/26/BAHD17RDUH.DTL

[cosmicone]

1. There are too many cell-phone videos of this out there.

I don't know this defense would fly.

Although -- it did in the case of Rodney King

[norepubsin08]

2. If this fucking pig gets off,

I suggest a Rodney King sort of response!

[Throd]

3. Oakland should be put to the torch?

[davidinalameda]

6. when you live here

you can give your opinion on how to deal with this

until then, let me be the first to tell you to fuck off and mind your own business

[Ignis]

4. Oh yeah, he put up a lot of resistance face-down on the floor.

:eyes:

[Wizard777]

5. Resistance is irrelevant. It can not possibly justify this use of deadly force.

Mr. Grant was not an immediate and credible threat to the life or limb of anyone.

[davidinalameda]

7. you know this how?

by watching videos taken by camera phones?