Santa Fe, NM – A former police officer was declared guilty on Wednesday of voluntary homicide in the fatal shooting of a black man during a 2022 confrontation in a New Mexico service station.
The verdict of the police officer of the Brad Lonsford crosses in a jury trial is the last result in cases where prosecutors have linked to systematic brutality against blacks by police members, almost five years after George Floyd’s murder of George Floyd for a white police officer. Minneapolis.
Linsford, who is white, had declared himself innocent. His lawyer, José Coronado, said he will ask the judge to check the verdict for his legal sufficiency.
“While I respect the jury’s verdict, I am extremely disappointed in it. I don’t think the State has fulfilled its load, ”said Associated Press in an email.
The prosecutors said it shot Presley Eze in the blank range in a fight after the police responded to a 911 call from a service station assistant who reported that Eze stole beer. Eze allegedly placed his hand on the stunning gun of a second officer before receiving a shot.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez said that the use of the mortal force was not reasonable, and pointed out that Linsford immediately drew his service weapon and shot Eze on the back of the head.
“Today’s verdict reaffirms a fundamental principle: no one is above the law, not even the jurors to defend it. The shares of the officer JUNSFORD were not just a tragic period in the trial; They were an atrocious abuse that cost Presley Eze his life, ”Torrez said in a statement after the verdict was announced.
The position of voluntary homicide with an improvement of firearms entails a possible sentence of up to nine years in prison. The evidence in the trial included the video of the Chamber of the Corps of the Police of the Confrontation, in which the police took Eze from a vehicle and the fight occurred.
Philip Stinson, professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green University in Ohio, said most of the fatal shootings of the service officers are legally justified under precedents derived from two decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of the United States 1980s.
“It is incredibly difficult for a prosecutor to obtain a sentence in a jury trial in one of these cases, and that is because the jurors are very reluctant to guess the divided decisions of a police or death of an official police in service in a Potentially violent street encounter, “said Stinson.
The records compiled by Stinson, university colleagues and students through the Police Integrity Investigation Group show that 205 non -federal law officers have been arrested by criminal charges of homicide or homicide in the last 20 years, which, which It results in 66 convictions, 27 of them for homicide or homicide.
“If you get a conviction, it is often for the minor crime,” said Stinson.
More than 900 fatal shootings by state and local law agents in service generally take place every year in the United States, he said
By pursuing a criminal office against Lonsford, Torrez described Eze’s murder as a tragedy and “another example of poor police tactics that results in an unjustifiable use of force to submit an individual who resists the arrest for the commission of a minor crime “
