NEW YORK – A rookie police officer who shot an unarmed man dead in a darkened public housing stairwell was convicted Thursday of manslaughter in a case closely watched by advocates for police accountability.
The courtroom audience gasped and Officer Peter Liang, who had broken into tears as he testified about the 2014 shooting of Akai Gurley, buried his head in his hands as the verdict came after 17 hours of jury deliberations. He also was convicted of official misconduct.
The manslaughter charge carries up to 15 years in prison. Liang’s sentencing is set for April 14.
But an uncertainty remains: Brooklyn state Supreme Court Danny Chun has yet to rule on Liang’s lawyers’ request to dismiss the charges. They made it before the verdict, which brought Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson to the courtroom audience to watch.
The shooting happened in a year of debate nationwide about police killings of black men, and activists have looked to Liang’s trial as a counterweight to cases in which grand juries have declined to indict officers, including the cases of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York. Like Gurley, Brown and Garner were black and unarmed.