Not sure I can look. So sad. RT @tigerbeat: Oscar Grant's 6 yr old daughter at an Oakland rally #OscarGrant

Finally wrote down stuff I've been stewing about: Shock Treatment, Suspicious Blacks & #OscarGrant /cc @AdamSerwer

In case the name Oscar Grant is unfamiliar to you, he was the victim of a police shooting in the Bay Area, sometimes known as the BART shooting. The shooter, former officer Johannes Mehserle, was arrested on suspicion of murder, which was a reasonable charge to anyone with an internet access and a functional sense of decency. Kevin has video of the incident here, to which I direct you with a strong trigger warning. It is very upsetting to watch.

The prosecution was never able to convince the jury of intent, which is a requirement for convicting a defendant of second-degree murder. The jury's instructions stipulated that second-degree murder occurred if, "When the defendant acted, he had a state of mind called malice aforethought." Malice aforethought was defined for jurors as "a mental state that must be formed before the act that causes death is committed."

Of course, this understates the case a wee bit. Mehserle, along with several others BART cops, had Grant pinned face first on the ground when he very deliberately pulled out his gun and shot Grant in the back. Mehserle's defense is that he meant to pull out his taser but mistakenly pulled out his gun instead. This is, needless to say, pretty hard to accept, and there's little question that there's a jury anywhere in the country that would have bought this story from anyone who wasn't a police officer. You can judge for yourself in the cell phone video taken by a witness (the clearest view starts around the 1:45 mark).

SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division will investigate a white former transit officer who was convicted in state court of killing an unarmed black man - a verdict that touched off angry protests and more than 80 arrests in Oakland.

In a move reminiscent of the Rodney King beating case in Los Angeles, the federal government said it intends to investigate Johannes Mehserle, who was found guilty Thursday in state court of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant.

The Root spoke to the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton about what it takes to defuse the ongoing tension between the police and the black community.

A mere three months after the officers in the Diallo case were exonerated, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band rolled into New York for a ten night stand at Madison Square Garden. It was here that they would play, for only the second time ever, a new song called “American Skin (41 Shots).” The song had been debuted at a show in Atlanta, Georgia right before the New York shows and it takes a mesmerizing and heartbreaking look at the Diallo case. The officers involved had fired 41 shots at the unarmed man and it’s this phrase that becomes the repeated mantra for the song. The song is not, despite the protests that were mounted by police organizations, a blatantly anti-police song. It delves into the shades of grey of the case and even sympathetically portrays one of the officer’s reactions immediately following the shooting. Ultimately Springsteen bemoans the fact that whatever American skin you wear, whether it’s the officer’s uniform or the immigrant’s work clothes, it’s possible that you could be killed for it. “We’re baptized in these waters and in each other’s blood…you get killed just for living in your American skin.”

With this verdict, the jury essentially affirmed their belief that Mehserle, while guilty, had made a "mistake".  As someone who has observed juries deliberate, the idea this jury could reach a concensus so quickly in such a complicated case makes me wonder how many of the people sitting in the jury box actually listened to what they heard.

He was just trying to teach the little bastard a lesson by swearing at him and then shooting him full of electricity while he was already on the ground. People have to learn to obey transit police officers unquestioningly and when they curse you out and threaten you out of the blue you have an obligation as a citizen to take whatever they mete out --- including death if they accidentally pick up their torture device instead of their killing device. Shit happens.

In reality, when you think you're seeing everything, you're really seeing nothing. But if you peel away some layers, all of a sudden you're looking at the gun; peel back another layer and all of a sudden you can see the expression of horror on Mehserle's face; or Oscar Grant's desperate pleading. In the following video, I sought to add depth to the original interpretation of this tragic event, in order to reveal more of the story. If you remember the first grainy footage following the shooting, dispel the ingrained "YouTube truth" you may be harboring, so that you can look for what's new, what wasn't there before. This video is best (indeed, should only) be watched on Full Screen mode with good speakers or headphones.

Taser International Inc. is no stranger to lawsuits, but it got zapped with a zinger this time. According to the Las Vegas Sun, the Scottsdale, Arizona manufacturer is getting sued in a taser lawsuit by the family of a Las Vegas doctor who died in 2008. A Nevada Highway Patrol officer allegedly tasered him when he got pulled over on his way to work in Interstate 15 which allegedly caused him to turn blue at the scene and die. He was only 33 years old. The lawsuit serves as another example of what some see as a risk of death posed by taser use in certain situations.

Like so many other Oakland residents, I've waited anxiously all week to hear whether justice would be served for Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old black youth who was shot by a BART officer last year. And now our answer's arrived. The verdict for Johannes Mehserle — the officer who shot him — is in: involuntary manslaughter. Crowds are gathering downtown to protest the outcome, and Bob Marley is getting wafted over speakers to try and keep folks calm.

I am clear that Mehserle must be held accountable. But that alone is not justice. Locking him up won't give Oscar Grant's daughter her father back. It won't give his mother the chance to see her son continue to grow. And it won't take away the terror in the hearts of black and brown boys when they are stopped by police officers this summer. A guilty verdict for Mehserle won't make up for decades of police brutality, racism, unequal justice, exploitation, racial profiling, or socio-economic systems that are rigged against the poor.

I'll be ducking in and out of the Oscar Grant-shooting trial in Los Angeles as it unfolds over the next few weeks. Yesterday was day four, and it was dominated by testimony from law enforcement training and weapons experts as the prosecution tried to chip away at the idea that Johannes Mehserle's shooting of Grant was an understandable mistake.

After a swift but dramatic three week trial, a Los Angeles jury will likely begin deliberating today in the trial of ex-BART cop Johannes Mehserle, who has been charged with murder for shooting the unarmed Oscar Grant in the back on New Year's Day 2009. The jury will now decide whether the shooting was a tragic accident, as Mehserle argues, willful murder or something in between.

Cheryl Contee

RT @shani_o: Making sense of the #OscarGrant verdict (great analysis from @racialjustice and @AdamSerwer):