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Charlotte Officer “Justified” In High-Profile Shooting

12/5/16

By: Wes Jackson

Officer Brantley Vinson will not be criminally charged in a court of law for fatally shooting Keith L. Scott in Charlotte, N.C. on September 20, 2016. It appears that charges are still pending in the proverbial “court of public opinion,” however.

Soon after the shooting, two narratives of the incident emerged: according to the police, Scott was armed and refused to drop his weapon after repeated commands. But according to Scott’s family and purported witnesses of the shooting, Scott was unarmed and minding his own business, reading a book, when police confronted him. The divergent narratives fueled days of protests—some violent—throughout Charlotte immediately after the shooting.

On November 30, 2016, Mecklenburg County district attorney R. Andrew Murray announced in a 40-minute news conference that he was “fully satisfied and entirely convinced that Officer Vincent’s use of deadly force was lawful,” and that no criminal charges would be filed against the officer. The same day, the district attorney’s office released a 20-page investigative report on the shooting.

The New York Times noted that the news conference “at times took on the feel of a courtroom argument.” Indeed, it is increasingly apparent in the wake of a police shooting that how officials make their “closing arguments” in the court of public opinion can have drastic consequences for their officers or the community. For instance, after Missouri state prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the community responded with riots and arson. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Baltimore City state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby’s failed attempt to criminally prosecute officers involved in Freddie Gray’s arrest and death has been widely characterized as incompetent by some critics and an “egregious rush to judgment” by the Fraternal Office of Police.

If there is anything to be learned from the Charlotte shooting and the dialogue surrounding it, it’s that the “courts of law” and the “court of public opinion” operate on different planes and by different rules.

First, there are no rules of evidence in the court of public opinion. Statements on social media from purported eyewitnesses to the Charlotte shooting that Scott was unarmed and reading a book when confronted by police spawned days of violent protests and riots across the city. However, the investigation revealed that a gun was found next to Scott’s body after he was shot—cocked and loaded, with Scott’s DNA found in two locations on the gun. No book was found at the scene of the shooting, and several of the “eyewitnesses” who claimed on social media that Scott was unarmed were later determined to have not witnessed the shooting at all.

Second, the court of public opinion demands that the wheels of justice grind faster than they do in a court of law—perhaps to the detriment of discovering the truth. Protesters in Charlotte, along with the ACLU and NAACP, called for the release of police video footage before investigators had interviewed all potential witnesses. The demands for the early release of such evidence pits the public’s need for transparency against the integrity of official investigations.

Third, while Lady Justice’s blindfold represents the objectivity one hopes to find in a court of law, objectivity is less prevalent in the court of public opinion. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney recognized this fact when he was asked whether releasing videos of the shooting would calm the violence in Charlotte: “I would like to think that but I can tell you this . . . there’s your truth, my truth, and the truth. Some people already made up their minds what happened.” Indeed, even after the district attorney’s office released the videos and other evidence apparently confirming the officers’ version of the shooting, many in Charlotte still took to the streets to protest the decision not to prosecute.

So, how should police chiefs and other public officials address the court of public opinion after a police shooting? At a minimum, public officials must be aware of the public’s changing attitudes and increased scrutiny on policing, and judge their actions and statements accordingly.

For any questions you may have, please contact the attorneys of the Government Practice Group.