Legal Commentary

Last Friday, former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the New Year's Day 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant. The jury declined to convict on the more serious charges of second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. Mehserle faces anywhere from 3-15 years in prison.

The shooting drew attention because it was recorded on multiple cell-phone cameras by BART riders who witnesses the incident. And the videos all seemed to show Mahserle and several officers pinning Grant to the ground on his chest, then Mahserle pulling his gun and shooting Grant in the back and point-blank range.

Instead, we have another data point in favor of the Kahan-Hoffman-Braman thesis (which I have written about before) that video is forever open to interpretation, often based on cultural experiences and identities. As Hadar wrote in his her (oops, sorry) post on the video: "What do you see?". Looking at the comments section to Hadar's post, Prawfs readers saw something very different than what the jury saw. So did Grant's family, the National Lawyers' Guild, and other civil rights organizations and leaders, who all decried the verdict.

But the point, as always, is that video never speaks for itself and never tells the whole story. In this case, Mahserle testified that he thought he was reaching for and using his taser, not his gun and nothing in the video contradicted that, at least in the jury's eyes. Nor could the video explain why an officer would deliberately or even recklessly execute (in essence) someone in front of dozens of witnesses, a key element in any prosecution.

Hadar correctly predicted one result--a large settlement from the civil rights case. BART settled a suit by Grant's now-six-year-old daughter for $ 1.5 million; lawsuits by Grant's parents and friends are pending. But the settlements reflect a further aspect of video interpretation--BART understands how much (although obviously not all) of the public likely views the video and makes its litigation choices, such as settling, based on that understanding.