CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – Relatives of Walter Scott differ on how much time a white former officer should spend in federal prison for gunning down the black motorist, with one brother suggesting Michael Slager should go away for life.
But others, like Scott’s mother Judy, said the officer’s admission of guilt was all the punishment she needed to have closure and move on, telling reporters, “That he admitted he did it was enough years for me.”
It’s now solely up to a federal judge to determine how long Slager, 35, will spend in prison after his guilty plea to a federal civil rights violation in the April 2015 shooting death of the 50-year-old Scott.
Slager shot Scott five times in the back as he fled the officer on foot, and cellphone video of the shooting was viewed millions of times around the world. The officer, fired after the video became public, testified at his murder trial that he feared for his life and that Scott was trying to grab his stun gun. Last year’s initial trial, where Slager had faced a possible life sentence, ended in a hung jury.
The chilling video footage helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged around the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. It was seized on by many as vivid proof of what they had been arguing for years: that white officers too often use deadly force unnecessarily against black people.