27 March 201721 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Louisiana jury finds officer guilty in fatal shooting of 6-year-old

source: NBC News
published: 24 March 2017

A Louisiana jury on Friday found a law enforcement officer guilty of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old autistic boy following a vehicle pursuit in 2015.

Derrick Stafford and another deputy city marshal fired on a vehicle driven by the boy’s father after a 2-mile chase. The boy, Jeremy Mardis, was killed and his father, Christopher Few, was wounded.

The jury in Marksville found Stafford guilty of manslaughter for Jeremy’s death and found him guilty of attempted manslaughter in the wounding of Few. During the trial Few said he heard no warnings from law enforcement before the officers fired.

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3 January 201721 December 2022 4WardEverUK

The continuing collapse of the death penalty (Florida Supreme Court)

source: NY Times
published: 26 December 2016

Piece by piece, the death penalty continues to fall apart. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court invalidated between 150 and 200 death sentences — nearly half of all those in the state — because they were imposed under a law the United States Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional in January.

The law, which required judges and not juries to make the factual findings necessary to sentence someone to die, violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial. “A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for an 8-to-1 majority.

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29 September 201621 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Police body cameras ‘cut complaints against officers’ says research

source: BBC News
published: 29 September 2016

Police body cameras can dramatically reduce the number of complaints against officers, research suggests. The Cambridge University study showed complaints by members of the public against officers fell by 93% over 12 months compared with the year before.

Almost 2,000 officers across four UK forces and two US police departments were monitored for the project. Dr Barak Ariel, who led the research, said no other policing measure had led to such “radical” changes.

The study aimed to find out if the use of cameras, which are usually clipped to the top half of an officer’s uniform, affected complaints against police made by the public.