By ALAN
BLINDERJAN. 7, 2016
DECATUR,
Ga. — A prosecutor here said Thursday that he would seek a felony murder
indictment against a white police officer who last year shot and killed Anthony
Hill, a black man who was naked and unarmed at the time of the fatal encounter.
“Our
position is that the facts and the circumstances surrounding the shooting death
of Anthony Hill warrant a charge for felony murder,” District Attorney Robert
D. James Jr. of DeKalb County said at a news conference.
Mr.
James’s decision to pursue a criminal case against Officer Robert Olsen does
not guarantee an indictment, in part because Georgia offers law enforcement
officers special protections when their on-duty behavior is being reviewed by a
grand jury.
Mr. James
said that prosecutors would ask grand jurors, when they meet on Jan. 21, to
charge Officer Olsen with felony murder, aggravated assault, violation of oath
of office and making a false statement.
Officer
Olsen could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Neither a lawyer who has
represented him, nor the DeKalb County Police Department, immediately responded
to messages on Thursday, one day after Mr. James said Officer Olsen was
notified of the government’s intention to request an indictment.
Officer
Olsen’s conduct has been scrutinized since last March, when he was called to an
apartment complex in Chamblee, northeast of Atlanta, and Mr. Hill approached
and behaved erratically. Witnesses said that Mr. Hill, whose family said he had
post-traumatic stress disorder after an Air Force deployment to Afghanistan,
had raised his hands or placed them at his sides and that he did not obey
Officer Olsen’s instructions to halt.
In
November, Mr. Hill’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in Atlanta’s Federal
District Court that accused Officer Olsen of using “illegal and excessive
force” against Mr. Hill, 27. That case is pending.
Georgia
law allows some public officials, including police officers, to attend meetings
where grand jurors hear evidence that could yield an indictment. The law, which
supporters say is a vital safeguard for officers who are often required to make
immediate judgments in chaotic circumstances, also permits potential defendants
to address the grand jury, unrebutted and without cross-examination, at the end
of the prosecution’s presentation.
It is not
clear whether Officer Olsen will speak to the grand jury this month, but he
testified last year when a civil grand jury reviewed the shooting. In October,
that panel recommended that officials continue their inquiry.
Lawyers
here said that they would not be surprised if Officer Olsen addressed the grand
jury, and they said such a choice could be central — perhaps even decisive — to
his defense.
“It is
going to go in the way of the police 99 times out of 100 if it’s a close call,
or not even a close call,” said J. Tom Morgan, a former DeKalb County district
attorney who is now in private practice. “It’s got to be very egregious for a
police officer to be indicted when they’ve heard from the police officer as a
last witness.”
But Lance
LoRusso, a defense lawyer who works with the Georgia division of the Fraternal
Order of Police, said the laws here afforded officers a crucial opportunity to
explain their decisions and experiences, and he said the protections helped to
curb potentially overzealous prosecutions.
“It’s a
check and balance on the D.A.,” Mr. LoRusso said.
Although
Georgia’s legal safeguards for police officers are among the country’s most
generous, the state is one of more than a dozen that have enshrined protections
for officers whose on-duty actions draw scrutiny. A police officer in Maryland,
for instance, may wait 10 days before giving a statement to investigators. In
Florida, a police officer has the right to be questioned by a single
investigator.
Despite
Mr. James’s words of caution about the ultimate authority of the grand jury,
Mr. Hill’s girlfriend said Thursday that she welcomed the step toward a
possible indictment, particularly at a time when white police officers
elsewhere have not been prosecuted in the killings of unarmed black men.
“I’m glad
that we have an officer off the streets,” Ms. Anderson said of Officer Olsen,
who was placed on administrative leave after the shooting. “He murders people
because he’s hiding behind the badge
