The jury in the murder trial of former North Charleston, S.C., police Officer Michael Slager told the judge on Friday afternoon that it’s having trouble coming to a unanimous verdict.
Slager is accused of murder for shooting Walter Scott multiple times as he ran away from the officer in 2015, after a routine traffic stop.
The jury heard nearly a month of testimony in the case, including testimony from Slager. Friday was the third day of deliberations. The jurors have three options if they hope to avoid a mistrial: a guilty verdict on murder or voluntary manslaughter, or an acquittal.
Just after 1 p.m. ET on Friday, the jury sent a note to Judge Clifton Newman saying it could not reach a unanimous decision, reported the Charleston Post and Courier.
About an hour later, the judge read a note from the jurors stating that they didn’t need to rehear any testimony: “At this point we don’t need to hear. If we listen, it will not change based on they (sic) juror,” which apparently referred to a single juror who disagreed with the other 11.
The judge called the jury into the courtroom and encouraged members to break the deadlock.
“You should not give up your firmly held opinions just to be in agreement,” Newman said, but “the majority should consider the minority’s position, and the minority should consider the majority’s position.”
Before sending the jury in to deliberate “one more time,” the judge said:
“If you cannot agree on a verdict, I must declare a mistrial. In that case, it doesn’t mean anyone wins. It just means at some other time I will try this case with some other jury sitting where you now sit. The same participants will come, and the same lawyers will ask basically the same questions and get basically the same answers.”
Earlier Friday, the judge refused to answer a question from the jury about the difference between “fear” and “passion,” which seemed to relate to the question of whether Slager acted in self-defense when he shot Scott.
As The Two-Way has reported, cellphone video from a bystander appears to show Slager shooting Scott multiple times in an empty lot at a distance of more than 15 feet. When Slager took the stand earlier this week, he said in his testimony that he had been “in total fear” during the incident, and contended, as he has previously, that Scott had taken his Taser stun gun.
Video of the shooting does not appear to show any Taser in Scott’s hand.
The City of North Charleston has already approved a $6.5 million civil settlement with Scott’s family in connection with the killing, and Slager is also facing separate federal civil rights charges for shooting Scott.
As we’ve reported, “in that indictment, federal prosecutors accuse Slager of deliberately misleading investigators by telling them he had fired his weapon ‘while Scott was coming forward at him with a Taser.'”
The indictment continues, “In truth and in fact, as defendant MICHAEL SLAGER then well knew, he (SLAGER) repeatedly fired his weapon at Scott as Scott was running away from him.”
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