Oscar Grant’s killer released after serving only one year

By J. Kojo Livingston
Contributing Writer

Protests broke out again in Oakland last month when it was announced that Johannes Mehserle was being released on June 13. Mehserle is the police officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back as Grant lay face down unarmed in a Bay Area subway station on New Year’s Eve 2009.

The shooting was captured on several phone cameras which also showed Mehserle and other officers punching and abusing Grant and other young men that they had detained. Mehserle’s attorneys argued that he thought he was reaching for his Taser, when he pulled out his gun and fired it, killing Grant.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) initially found that Mehserle had done nothing wrong in shooting Grant who was a butcher at a local supermarket. The District Attorney refused to prosecute the case until protests erupted all over the city. The judge presiding over the trial refused to allow murder or even negligent homicide to be an option for the verdict. The history of complaints against Mehserle was suppressed from evidence.

Finally the Jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced him to two years in jail with credit for 12 months already served. It is not yet known where he will reside.

Bobby Johnson, Grant’s uncle, speaking on behalf of the family said it will be a sad day for his family. “This whole thing was staged. It was planned. It was acted out. It has brought this type of conclusion,” Johnson said.

Meanwhile the Bay Area Rapid Transit agreed to pay Grant’s mother $1.3 million to settle a $50 million wrongful death and civil rights violation suit she filed. Last year BART settled with Grant’s then-5-year-old daughter, Tatiana, for $1.5 million. Other suits are pending.

“The criminal justice system let us down,” Grant’s uncle, Cephus Johnson, told a local radio station, “Once he’s held accountable and serves 14 yrs or more for the murder he committed, only then can the family say we have some forgiveness in our hearts.”

The Department of Justice is looking into the matter.

This article was originally published in the July 18, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper