The North Carolina police officer who shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott earlier this year will not face charges in connection with Scott’s death, local authorities announced Wednesday. The Charlotte Observer with the details:
[District Attorney Andrew] said that evidence in the case shows that Scott stepped out of his SUV with a gun in his hand and ignored at least 10 commands from the five officers on the scene to drop it.
Murray said that Scott obtained the gun – which had been stolen in Gaston County – 18 days before the confrontation. One bullet was found in the chamber of the gun, the safety was off and Murray said Scott’s DNA was found on the grip and ammunition slide.
Scott (who was black) was shot and killed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer Brentley Vinson (who is also black) in September, an event that sparked several days of protests in the city, some of which turned violent. The unrest was fueled in large part by an assertion from Scott’s wife that he was unarmed at the time of the shooting, a claim that was initially backed up by several since-retracted reports from people on social media claiming to have witnessed the shooting firsthand. The police’s curious decision not to immediately release video of the deadly incident added to the confusion and anger. (The bodycam and dashcam footage ultimately did not clearly show whether Scott was armed.)
On Wednesday, Murray suggested the decision not to charge Vinson turned out to be a relatively easy one. He said he showed the case to more than a dozen veteran prosecutors, and not one believed there was enough evidence to move forward. According to police, Vinson and his fellow officers were staked out in the parking lot of Scott’s apartment complex looking for a suspect in an unrelated case. The officers then claim to have seen Scott rolling a joint in his car, something they were ready to ignore until they spotted him holding a semi-automatic pistol. It was only then, authorities say, that the officers decided to confront Scott. Vinson ended up firing four shots, three of which hit Scott.
It was never likely that Vinson would face charges. Our laws, maddening as they can be, give officers broad leeway to use lethal force, either when they fear their lives are in danger or when they are making an arrest. The Supreme Court cemented the scope of that authority in 1989’s Graham v. Connor, a case involving police officers that apparently mistook a diabetic who was behaving erratically due to his low blood sugar for a belligerent drunk. In short, according to the U.S. criminal justice system, it’s not whether the officer is objectively correct when he uses force; it’s whether he subjectively believed that he was right in the moment he did.
Nonetheless, an attorney for the Scott family said Wednesday’s announcement is not the end as far as they are concerned. “We still have concerns,” Charles Monnett said after the press conference, according to CNN. “We still have real questions about what decisions were made that day.”
