Carrinon
Posted on 06/27/2007 6:22:28 PM PDT by CAWats
SAN BERNARDINO - A former sheriff's deputy on trial for shooting an unarmed suspect at the end of a car chase softly cried this afternoon as his attorney pleaded one last time with jurors to acquit him of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm charges.
Ivory J. Webb Jr. wiped tears from his eyes as his attorney, Michael Schwartz, finished his closing argument during Webb's trial in San Bernardino Superior Court.
In the final words of that argument, Schwartz compared Webb to a bird trapped in a cage, and asked jurors to allow the former deputy to return to a normal life, to return to his family.
"Do the right thing," Schwartz said. "Set him free. Not guilty on both counts."
Webb is charged with attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm in connection with the Jan. 29, 2006 shooting of Elio Carrion. Carrion was the passenger in a Corvette that led Webb on a high-speed chase. The chase ended when the driver crashed on Francis Street in Chino, prompting Webb to hold the car's two occupants at gunpoint. A nearby resident caught the subsequent shooting on tape. The tape appears to show Webb shoot Carrion as Carrion complies with the deputy's orders to get off the ground.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailybulletin.com ...
I have mixed feelings about this one. Hindsight is 20-20 and I’m sure if this police officer could have watched the tape while sitting safely in a chair in a courtroom like the jurors are, he’d have made a different decision about shooting. But the reality is that an awful lot of police officers get shot during traffic stops, and quite a few of those get killed. They want to get home to their families alive just like everybody else. And when a driver leads you on a high speed chase, and you have to make split second life-and-death decisions about the intentions of his passenger, you’re likely to make the not-unreasonable assumption that there’s a better than even chance they’re two peas in a pod.
Obviously this vet shouldn’t have been shot, but what the heck was he doing riding in a car driven by the sort of low-life who leads police on high-speed chases? There have been some cases where our soldiers in Iraq have been accused of a criminal act when they shot someone who turned out to be perfectly innocent, but if they had legitimate reason to believe their target was a threat to their own lives and the lives of their fellow soldiers, and only had a split second to think through the evidence pro and con, I’d call their act a tragic mistake, not a crime.
That cop should fry.
Watch the video and say that.
If I may suggest a solution.
Sentence the officer to four years in the Army, served overseas in Iraq.
I wouldn't serve with him....
I couldn’t send this guy home to his family. He ordered the man up, then when the man started to obey, the cop shot him...not once, but 3 times.
Perhaps. But there are reams of research showing that people’s memories are unreliable. You can take a bunch of random research subjects, show them a video clip, ask them specific questions about what they’re sure they saw, and get a raft of confident answers that differ wildly from what’s actually shown in the video. People’s minds fill in gaps with guesswork and hindsight, often completely subconsciously.
Hang him
And I would call you whole post BS.
If a so called cop cannot handle his job he should get another job before he kills somebody and you call it a mistake.
Oh, what the heck; he showed remore, and even cried! Let the poor jailbird out of his cage...
...I have a danker dungeon that would be more appropriate for him.
That video is pretty damning. It looks intentional. It sure wasn’t self defense.
How can anyone watch that tape and defend the cop is beyond me? He should be in jail for life, if I had any say. He orders the man to stand then shoots him 3 times. No way you can say he was a threat! The only threat is this officer if he gets back out on the force!
Well, that’s what I saw too on the tape. He told him to get up and he was doing just that and then was shot.
where’s the vid?
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