Location:
St. Louis, Missouri
What happened:
Officer Jason Stockley shot 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith five times while Smith tried to flee from Stockley on Dec. 20, 2011, following an alleged drug deal. During the pursuit, Stockley could be heard saying on an internal police car video he was going to kill Smith, prosecutors said. At Stockley’s direction, the driver of the police car slammed into Smith’s vehicle and they came to a stop, court documents said. Stockley then approached Smith’s car and shot him five times with his service weapon. Stockley’s lawyers said he fired in self-defense, believing Smith was reaching for a gun. Stockly later stated he saw Smith holding a gun and felt he was in imminent danger. But prosecutors said the only gun recovered from the scene had only Stockley’s DNA on it. Prosecutors stated Stockley planted a gun in Smith’s car after he shot him. Stockley waived his right to a jury trial, allowing the circuit judge Timothy Wilson to decide. Stockley, 36 at the time, could have been sentenced to up to life in prison without parole. Stockley left the St Louis Police Department in 2013, after a suspension for carrying his own AK-47 pistol, and moved to Houston, Texas. Stockley was not charged with Smith’s death until 2016 after new evidence emerged from the St. Louis city police and the FBI. According to the circuit attorney’s office, the St. Louis police’s internal affairs investigators contacted them in March 2016 with this new evidence that ultimately made the prosecutor pursue charges.
About The Perpetrator:
A West Point graduate who served with the Army in Iraq, Stockley said that his job as a St. Louis cop grew so dangerous, he began carrying unauthorized weapons with extra rounds.
About The Victim:
Anthony Lamar Smith was a 24 year old African American male at the time of his murder.
Outcome:
On 9/11/2017, the city’s black police organization, the Ethical Society of Police, issued a letter calling for Stockley’s conviction based on the “physical evidence, circumstantial evidence, questionable tactics, and numerous violations of SLMPD policies/procedures”. Despite their call for justice, Missouri judge Timothy Wilson ruled on Friday (9/15/2017) that former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley was not guilty of murder in the 2011 shooting of a black man, which sent hundreds of protesters to the city’s streets to voice their anger. Jason Stockley, 36, was acquitted of first-degree murder for killing Anthony Lamar Smith, 24. The former policeman, who was arrested in May 2016, was accused of planting a gun in Smith’s car but testified he acted in self-defense. The attorney for Smith’s fiance, Christina Wilson, said his client was appalled by the decision. Al Watkins said the ruling showed prejudice, pointing to a line where the judge wrote that an “urban heroin dealer” without a weapon would be an anomaly. Thomas Harvey of Arch City Defenders, a St Louis civil rights law firm, said: “If police can announce they are going to murder, carry personal AK-47s, plant weapons and shoot unarmed people five times at close range with no consequences, no black man in America is safe.” Jeffrey A. Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, said Smith “died unnecessarily” in 2011. Mittman stated further, “This region — and our country as a whole — have seen too many deaths caused by police, with little accountability for the officers or department involved.” Smith’s family settled a lawsuit filed against the city for $900,000 in 2013, according to the family’s lawyer, Albert Watkins. Ever mindful about the alarming trend where grand juries decline to charge officers involved in fatal shootings such as the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, near St. Louis, and the choking death of Eric Garner, 43, in New York. Baltimore police officers also were not convicted in the case of Freddie Gray, who died from a broken neck suffered in a police van in 2015. Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr., voiced his frustration after Stockley’s verdict, saying to a St. Louis Fox tv station, “You all know this ain’t right and you all continue to do this to us…Like we don’t mean nothing, like we’re rats, trash, dogs in the streets. Right now, I’m praying for my city because my people are tired of this.”
Sources:
