SAN FRANCISCO — The involuntary-manslaughter conviction of a white former transit officer in the death of an unarmed black man set the stage for a sentencing that could be just as explosive as the trial, depending on how the judge interprets the verdict.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry has a lot of discretion in handing down punishment Aug. 6 against Johannes Mehserle — anywhere from probation to 14 years.
A sentence on the low end could further inflame tensions among the hundreds of angry protesters who took to the streets Thursday in Oakland over what they thought should have been a murder conviction. Those demonstrators could find some satisfaction in the way Perry decides to apply a finding by the jury that Mehserle used a gun to commit the crime on New Year’s Day 2009.
Involuntary-manslaughter convictions call for two to four years in prison, but Perry could tack on an additional three to 10 years because of the gun enhancement.
“I think he could get . . . six years,” said John Barnett, a lawyer from Orange County who represented one of four Los Angeles police officers acquitted of excessive force in the 1992 beating of Rodney King. “There is going to be a lot of pressure to give him state prison.”
In a handwritten letter released Friday, Mehserle suggested a possible prison term wouldn’t be his only punishment for killing Oscar Grant, 22, as he was lying face-down on an Oakland train platform.
He said he will forever “live, breathe, sleep and not sleep” with the memory of Grant dying on the platform.
Fearing Grant might have a weapon, Mehserle said, he decided to shock Grant with his Taser but mistakenly pulled his .40-caliber handgun.
The verdict against Mehserle inflamed emotions Thursday in Oakland, where 30 businesses were damaged and 78 people were arrested for violations that included failure to disperse, vandalism and assaulting a police officer. Protesters looted an athletic footwear store and ransacked a jewelry shop. A bank’s windows were smashed, and fires were set in several trash bins.
