After 273 days in jail, Michael Slager spoke up and asked circuit judge Clifton Newman to release him on bond.
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Because Slager’s trial date isn’t until October, lawyers argued that keeping him in jail was akin to punishing him for the crime without a conviction.
The conditions of Michael Slager’s bond he also can leave the house to attend church, visit the doctor, meet with his attorneys and attend court appearances.
Officials say the former police officer charged with murder in the death of an unarmed driver running from a traffic stop has been released from a SC jail. When he made a decision to set bond, according to CNN affiliates, the judge said he’d taken into consideration the lengthy amount of time Slager would have to wait behind bars before having his day in court. The judge said at the time that Slager posed a threat to the community.
Savage added the cellphone video released shortly before Slager’s arrest is incomplete and that experts were piecing together more video to shed light on what happened in the minutes leading up to the shooting.
WASHINGTON, United States-A police officer who shot dead a black motorist in SC has been released on $500,000 bail, The Post and Courier newspaper reported Monday. Slager was originally denied bond in September of previous year.
Tonight he is out, and will be able to spend the next 10 months with his family as he awaits trial for killing Walter Scott. Representatives of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network released a statement calling former officer Michael Slager a danger to the community and a possible flight risk. Now, he will have to remain at an undisclosed location in SC and must have no contact with the victim’s family.
A grand jury indicted Slager, 34, on a charge of murder after the video surfaced of him shooting Scott, 50, eight times after Scott had turned his back and fled after a daytime traffic stop on April 4.
Prosecutor Scarlett Wilson says the trial should be held next November at the earliest.
If convicted, he faces 30 years to life.
Bamberg urged the Charleston community to remain calm after Slager’s bond was set.
Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the family of Walter Scott, said damaging property or hurting innocent people would do nothing to help Scott’s family or affect the trial process, but would only get the perpetrators arrested.
The shooting of Scott sparked a national outcry and became another example, activists said, of the serious problem that exists between police departments and black citizens in the United States.
Newman issued his order after an hour-long hearing on the defense’s motion for a speedy trial and a renewed request for bail.
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Wilson is prosecuting Dylann Roof in the Charleston AME church shootings in a July trial and says a state Supreme Court order protects her from trying other cases before that one.
