On Tuesday, Michael Slager is expected to plead guilty in the shooting death of Walter Scott. In 2015, Slager, a former police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, was caught on video shooting Scott in the back. Despite video evidence that showed Scott was actually running away from Slager, contrary to Slager’s self-defense claims, a jury could not reach a verdict the first time the case went to trial.
Michael Slager, who worked for the North Charleston Police Department, had faced both federal civil rights and state murder charges in connection with the April 2015 shooting of Walter Scott, a 50-year-old unarmed motorist who was running away after a traffic stop. [...]
It was not immediately clear whether Slager’s plea would resolve both the state and federal cases, though the parties had discussed such a resolution in the past, the people familiar with the case said. The plea was expected to take place in federal court in Charleston Tuesday afternoon during what was supposed to be a different hearing in the case.
It remains puzzling that the jury couldn’t manage to reach a verdict considering that the North Charleston Police Department paid out a settlement to Scott’s family after the video was released—without being sued. To be fair though, it wasn’t the entire jury that wasn’t able to reach a verdict—it was one single juror who could not agree with the other jurors on a guilty verdict. On the day the original mistrial was declared, the juror’s letter to the court was read. In it, he said that he could not “in good conscience approve a guilty verdict” and would not change his mind. That’s unfortunate, because everyone else seemed to know that Slager was guilty. In fact, his first lawyer quit and the police union refused to pay for his defense. All these signs point to the fact that even the police, who normally notoriously put up their “blue wall of silence” in cases like these, are aware of Slager’s guilt and couldn’t remain complicit. It looks as if the plea deal he has agreed to means the murder charges are off the table. And knowing how the system often fails to hold folks in power accountable for the taking of black lives, especially police, it will be remarkable if Slager does any time in jail. Now that he’s plans to plead guilty, let’s see what’s next.