By AFP
NEW YORK: The trial began
Wednesday of a rookie New York police officer accused of manslaughter in the
death of an unarmed black man whose shooting fueled nationwide protests against
US police tactics.
Peter Liang, 28, faces up to 15
years if convicted of manslaughter in the second degree, criminally negligent
homicide, assault in the second degree, reckless endangerment and two counts of
official misconduct.
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Chicago police after black teen shot dead
Liang fatally shot Akai Gurley,
28, the father of a young daughter, in a dimly lit stairwell of a Brooklyn
housing project on November 20, 2014.
His death closely followed those
of Eric Garner, a father of six in New York, and 18-year-old Michael Brown in
Missouri, also at the hands of police.
Brown’s death sparked the first
of angry and at times violent protests across America.
Liang appeared in Kings County
Supreme Court dressed in a suit, white shirt and gray tie. He made no remarks
and sat silently next to his lawyers as jury selection for his trial began.
It is rare for US police officers
to face trial for actions carried out in the line of duty. The Asian-American
officer was on the job just 18 months before the shooting.
The trial is likely to last three
to four weeks, Judge Danny Chun said. Jury selection is expected to continue
Thursday and opening statements are scheduled next Monday.
Five shot in US at rally over
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Liang and his partner were on a
routine patrol of the Louis H Pink Houses complex, the scene of two murders in
one year, the night that Gurley was killed.
Liang left the roof and walked
down the stairs to the eighth floor. The lights were not working and at that
moment Gurley and his girlfriend stepped into the stairwell, a floor below,
when the elevator failed to appear.
Liang opened fire and the bullet
struck Gurley in the chest.
New York police immediately
declared his death a “tragedy” and Commissioner Bill Bratton described Gurley
as a “total innocent.”
Within hours Brooklyn district
attorney Ken Thompson opened an investigation into Gurley’s death, interviewing
dozens of witnesses and inspecting the staircase multiple times.
A grand jury’s subsequent
decision to indict Liang came in stark contrast to decisions by other grand
juries in similar cases, particularly the death of Brown in Missouri and Garner
in New York.
Chicago fires top cop after black
teen’s fatal shooting
Dozens of potential jurors spent
Wednesday trying to be excused, citing reasons such as lack of fluency in
English, a bad experience with the police or claiming to have read a lot about
the case.
Others said they had grown up
surrounded by police officers and would be biased or unable to exercise fair
judgment.
“There was a lot of police
misconduct recently, I don’t think I can be fair,” said one potential juror,
who was excused.
After Liang fired the bullet, he
and partner Shaun Landau did not respond to radio contact for more nearly seven
minutes, the New YorkDaily News reported.
Kimberly Ballinger, the mother of
Gurley’s daughter, filed a wrongful death suit last May against the city, the
two officers and the housing authority which runs the apartment building.
A series of high-profile police
killings in the US, usually of black men or youths, triggered a nationwide
debate about police reform and penalties for officers who kill unarmed
suspects.
The US Bureau of Justice
Statistics says that blacks accounted for 32 per cent of all reported
arrest-related deaths from 2003 to 2009, despite making up 13 per cent of the population.
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