13 May, 2017
Michael Slager, the former Charleston, S.C. police officer that gunned down fleeing Black man Walter Scott, has pleaded guilty to the charges.
The federal court indictment alleges Slager "used excessive force when he shot and killed Walter Scott without legal justification", the Department of Justice said. The charge of depriving a person's civil rights carries a sentence of up to life in prison, and a potential fine of up to US$250,000 (RM1.08 million).
Though a sentence was not agreed upon, the plea eliminates the unpredictability of a jury trial and will place key issues affecting Slager's punishment squarely in the hands of a judge who'll decide in the coming weeks whether the officer committed murder in shooting Scott.
Slager testified at his state trial that he feared for his life when Scott grabbed the officer's Taser. When Scott got up and ran again, Slager shot him five times in the back, killing him. A video of Officer Michael Slager shooting and killing 50-year-old Walter Scott was secretly taken in 2015 by a passerby.
Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager is escorted from the courthouse by security personnel while waiting on his verdict at the Charleston County Courthouse in Charleston, South Carolina, in December 2016. And state prosecutors will drop an outstanding murder charge.
A copy of the plea agreement obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday also shows state prosecutors are dropping a pending murder charge against Slager.
The Charleston Post and Courier reported that Slager is expected to enter the guilty plea at a motions hearing at a federal district court in Charleston on Tuesday afternoon.
Slager shot Scott after pulling him over for driving with a broken taillight on the morning of April 4, 2015.
Muhiyidin D'Baha from the Charleston chapter of Black Lives Matter told Vice News at the time, "Right now, our number one demand is the creation and implementation of a Citizen Review Board to authoritatively deal with police misconduct allegations and weigh in on methodology of police recruitment, training, deployment, advancement and accountability".
The plea agreement, reached almost five months after a jury in state court deadlocked on a murder charge against Slager, represents a rare conviction of a police officer in connection with an on-duty killing.
Savage says "this is a day for the Scott family and the government".
Though Slager's plea deal doesn't mention race, it does acknowledge that Slager's "actions were done willfully, that he acted voluntarily and intentionally and with specific intent to do something that the law forbids". The lawyer for Scott's family said the coroner found Scott was hit three times in the back, once in the rear and once in the ear.
