Michael Slager charged with federal civil rights violation, obstruction in Walter Scott shooting
http://www.postandcourier.com/20160511/160519884/michael-slager-charged-with-federal-civil-rights-violation-obstruction-in-walter-scott-shooting
A federal grand jury this week indicted former North Charleston officer Michael Slager on charges of a violating civil rights law and misleading investigators in Walter Scott’s death, a rare measure in police shootings that gives authorities another route to reach a conviction.
S.C. civil rights cases
Since 1993, nine public officials in South Carolina have been charged with deprivation of civil rights in six different federal cases. Sorted by the year they were filed, those are:
2016: North Charleston police officer Michael Slager indicted in the April 2015 shooting death of Walter Scott.
2010: Greenville officers Jeremiah Milliman and Matthew Jowers got three years of probation for assaulting homeless people, some of whom were handcuffed, for a laugh.
2009: S.C. Highway Patrol Lance Cpl. Alexander Richardson entered pretrial diversion and served 100 hours of community service for hitting and injuring a fleeing suspect with a patrol car in April 2009.
2000: David Grice, a polygraph examiner, was fined $250 for his role in secretly videotaping a conversation between a murder suspect and a defense attorney in May 1995. Civil rights charges against Assistant Solicitor Francis Humphries Jr. and Lexington County Deputy Scottie Frier in the same case were dismissed.
1995: Archie Lee got a year in prison for fondling women in the early 1990s during his time as an Horry County magistrate.
1993: Moses Cohen Jr. was sentenced to 15 months in prison for beating up men in the late 1980s while serving as police chief in Fairfax, a town in Allendale County.
Slager is charged with three crimes. The chief among them is deprivation of civil rights under the color of law, a statute barring abuses of power that violate federally protected “rights, privileges or immunities.” The indictment alleges that he was acting with his authority as a policeman when he used excessive force — a violation of the Constitution — by shooting Scott five times from behind.
He also was indicted on counts of using a firearm in a violent crime and obstruction of justice after he told state investigators that Scott was coming at him with his own Taser when he fired. A video showed Scott running away.
The officer is white and Scott was black, but race is not alleged to have played a role.
The charges could serve as a backstop if the state’s murder case against Slager, 34, were to fail. Putting him on trial in both state and federal courts for the same shooting would not be double jeopardy because the alleged crimes are different.
No minimum prison term would come with a conviction on the civil rights charge. Because Scott died, the maximum sentence is life behind bars. Execution is sought only under the rarest of circumstances that are not present in this case, experts said.
An arraignment of Slager is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Charleston. Scott’s family plans to discuss the development after the proceeding.
His killing came during close scrutiny of law enforcement tactics and uses of force nationwide. Video of the death made it an especially poignant moment in that debate and prodded the U.S. Department of Justice to step in.
The grand jury, which first met nearly a month ago, handed down the indictment Tuesday. Officials kept it under wraps until making it public Wednesday. It makes the case one of the few high-profile American police killings in recent years to result in a federal criminal charge. In South Carolina, Slager is the ninth public official since 1993 to face the civil rights count, records show, but he is the only one of those accused in a shooting.
Such prosecutions are relatively rare in police shootings, said Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies policing. It reveals the government’s eagerness to weigh in on controversial police killings like Scott’s regardless of actions taken in state courts, he said.
“The feds may be prosecuting because they think it’s important to use this case to send a message,” Stoughton said, “and that message might not be sent if officer Slager were just prosecuted and even convicted on the state charges.”
Slager’s lawyer in state court, Andy Savage of Charleston, has said that such a development would have a significant negative impact on the defense. The attorney has maintained, though, that his client’s actions were justified.
It was not immediately clear who would represent the former officer on the federal charges. Savage said he is committed to defending Slager only in state court, where he has worked for free.
The indictment came more than a year since April 4, 2015, when Slager pulled over Scott’s Mercedes-Benz for a broken brake light. The patrolman acted professionally, his attorney said, as Scott, 50, couldn’t provide documents for the car.
As the officer checked with dispatchers on Scott’s identification, the motorist got out and ran. Slager gave chase and tried to use his Taser, but the stun gun had little effect.
A struggle followed. Slager’s attorney said later that the officer suffered a beating and that Scott grabbed the Taser.
Nearby, a bystander filmed the final moments of the scuffle with a cellphone. The video shows the stun gun fall, then Scott turn and start running again. Slager drew his .45-caliber pistol and fired eight times with Scott’s back turned to him. Scott fell.
After the gunfire, the officer is seen picking up the Taser and dropping it near Scott’s lifeless body. Seconds later, he plucked it from the ground and returned it to its holster.
Three days passed before he was arrested.
In state court, a grand jury indicted Slager on a murder charge that carries between 30 years and life in prison. He was freed on bail in January to prepare for a trial now set for Oct. 31.
Prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and FBI agents, meanwhile, worked on building their own case.
The federal government in recent years has zeroed in on allegations of police misconduct and opened its own probes into controversial deaths of black men. The cases included the 2014 killings of Michael Brown in Missouri, Laquan McDonald in Chicago and Eric Garner in New York, along with Freddie Gray’s death last year in Baltimore.
In 2014, the FBI reported getting 72 criminal indictments for deprivation of civil rights, but none of them came in the high-profile deaths. Scott’s is the first of those cases to prompt the indictment.
The four-page indictment is signed by U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles, South Carolina’s chief federal prosecutor, and Principal Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who leads the Civil Rights Division in Washington. It revealed for the first time some details of Slager’s interview with State Law Enforcement Division agents in the hours before his arrest.
“Slager knowingly misled SLED investigators by falsely stating that he fired his weapon at Scott while Scott was coming forward at him with a Taser,” the document alleged. “In truth and in fact, as ... Slager then well knew, he repeatedly fired his weapon at Scott when Scott was running away from him.”
While the federal case could serve as a backup if Slager were acquitted in state court, experts said, the civil rights charge also carries a high burden of proof for prosecutors.
Legal concepts on self-defense give defendants leeway to use force against perceived threats. Appeals courts also have ruled that using deadly force on a fleeing felon who poses a threat to the community can be legally justified — a key component to Slager’s defense against the murder charge.
Authorities, though, have said that any danger Slager or the community faced had subsided by the time he opened fire. Representatives of Scott’s family also have called the defense, which highlights evidence of the victim’s alcohol and cocaine use, “smoke and mirrors.”
While state prosecutors must prove their murder case by showing that Slager acted with malice — an evil intent or disregard for life — their federal counterparts must show that he purposefully meant to deprive Scott of a right by using excessive or unreasonable force, said Stoughton, the law professor.
In both cases, intent is key.
Defendants can fight the civil rights charge by arguing that they made an error in good faith — a reasonable mistake in the heat of the moment — instead of a conscious decision to violate a personal right, Stoughton said. Simply playing a video that prosecutors say shows an over-the-top reaction might not be enough to persuade jurors to convict Slager, he said.
“Murder is not easy to prove either,” he said, “but willfully violating someone’s constitutional right in these circumstances is a difficult charge for prosecutors to prove, which is why we see it so rarely.”