Can a cop be convicted? Recent mistrials offer clues

Two shootings, two dead black men, two white officers charged with murder, and in the past month two mistrials resulting from hung juries.

On Monday, after deliberating 22 hours over four days, a jury of 11 white people and one black person declared they were hopelessly deadlocked in the trial of former North Charleston. South Carolina, police officer Michael Slager who shot and killed Walter Scott.

That came just three weeks after a Hamilton County jury reached a similar impasse after 25 hours of deliberation over four days in the trial of former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing. That jury, with two black members, could not reach a unanimous verdict. Tensing is free on bond awaiting retrial.

To Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminology at Bowling Green State University, the cases verify what his research has shown: It's extremely unlikely for an officer to be convicted of murder or manslaughter.

"Jurors do not like to believe that a police officer could be a murderer," Stinson said. "When you have these on-duty violent encounters, they just are not willing to second-guess the split-second life or death decisions that officers make."

In the last decade, he said only one police officer in the nation has been convicted of murder in on-duty fatal shootings of civilians.

"If there was any case where a prosecutor would be able to get a conviction, you would think it was this case," Stinson said of the South Carolina case. "The video evidence was damning. We saw a police officer execute a man who was running away from him...then the officer's first thought was to plant evidence."

Donyetta Bailey, president of the Black Lawyers Association of Cincinnati, said the latest mistrial reveals racial bias in juries.

"I feel like the Walter Scott situation is more clear cut," Bailey said, referring to the man Officer Slager shot and killed in North Charleston. "For me, in a situation like that, I can't fathom anything other than race or their belief that cops can do no wrong under any circumstances."

Bailey also worried the result of the Slager case might also mean Prosecutor Joe Deters request for a change of venue in the Tensing case might be useless. That trial could take place in either the Columbus or Cleveland areas if a judge grants the request.

"It makes you wonder is there any place where we can go where this case can be tried fairly, where people leave bias at the door and just evaluate the case based on the evidence as opposed to preconceived notions about officers," Bailey said.

While there are many similarities between the cases, including the existence of video and the fact both former officers took the stand in their own defense, there is one major difference: Slager is also facing federal criminal charges, whereas Tensing does not.

"That's the whole purpose of the federal criminal deprivation of civil rights statute -- to deal with situations where the state fails to prosecute or fails to successfully prosecute," Stinson said. He explained that the U.S. Attorney's Office in many jurisdictions has been stepping into cases involving officer-involved shooting earlier in recent years.

Federal charges against Tensing have not been ruled out, but Bailey said the standards for bringing federal civil rights charges are very high. The U.S. Attorney's Office would have to be confident that race was a factor in the incident.

"Before the Tensing trial, I wouldn't have been sure if that was suitable," Bailey said. "Now that we know he was wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt, I don't know if they are going to revisit ... I don't know if the Confederate flag is enough."