The manslaughter trial of NYPD Officer Peter Liang has gone to the jury. The rookie cop is on trial for shooting and killing 28-year-old Akai Gurley in a darkened housing project stairwell in November 2014.
After more than two weeks of testimony,both sides summed up the case for jurors with starkly different narratives of that tragic night.
Defense Attorney Robert Brown described Liang as a son of Brooklyn who had every good to draw his weapon as he entered the darkened stairwell at the Pink Houses in East New York.“These vertical patrols are very dangerous. They can be killed or they can be seriously injured and paralyzed for life,” Brown said.
In the audience, or a contingent of police officers who showed up to support Liang included Steven McDonald,a former NYPD detective in a wheelchair since he was shot and paralyzed on the job in the mid-1980’s.
Over the objections of prosecutors, Brown then told jurors that convicting Liang for an innocent mistake would invent it harder for cops to withhold the city secure.“Unfortunately he got startled and we wound up here. But you want your police officers to protect you. You want police to do their jobs. and to invent a determination that his actions were criminal, and that his actions were unjustified by taking his gun out,would send a chilling effect,” Brown told the jury.
Prosecutors argued the opposite. Assistant District Attorney Joseph Alexis said citizens need to be protected from cops who don't follow their training.“whether Peter Liang can get absent with recklessly pulling the trigger of his gun and shooting and killing an innocent and unarmed man in the stairwell while serving as a New York City police officer, or we should just close the police academy,” Alexis said.Alexis also ridiculed Liang’s testimony that the gun just went off.Guns don't just fire. Peter Liang pulled the trigger. He pulled this trigger,” Alexis said.
He told the jury prosecutors believe Liang knew someone was down the stairwell and it startled him, and causing him to fire into the wall near where Gurley was standing,the bullet ricocheting into the young man’s heart.
Alexis focused on one moment in Liang’s own testimony, when the baby-faced officer said he went back into the stairwell to find the shell casing.“He went into that stairwell to pick up the shell casing so he could withhold this secret. So that nobody would know, and ” Alexis said,accusing Liang of wanting to pocket the evidence. And he chastised Liang for failing to perform CPR, leaving it to Gurley's weeping girlfriend instead.
After closing arguments, or the judge dismissed one of the two official misconduct counts. The jury is deliberating on the remaining five counts,including the top count of moment-degree manslaughter.
Source: wnyc.org