Former Portsmouth police officer Stephen Rankin faces up to ten years in prison for the death of William Chapman, who was killed last April in a Walmart parking lot as Rankin attempted to apprehend the 18-year-old under suspicion the teen had shoplifted, Huffington Post reports.
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The jury made its recommendation for Stephen Rankin on Thursday, hours after the panel convicted him of voluntary manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old William Chapman. A jury convicted Rankin of voluntary manslaughter on Thursday in the shooting death of an unarmed black man who had been accused of shoplifting.
The jury recommended a sentence of two-and-a-half years, but he will not be officially sentenced until a later date.
The jury, eight black and four white, did not convict on the first-degree murder charge prosecutors had sought.
The small number of convictions in fatal police shootings looks even smaller when you consider how many such shootings occur each year.
Gregory Provo, the Walmart security guard, testified that Chapman never charged the officer, but did say Chapman raised his hands boxing-style and said, “Are you going to f**king shoot me?” before Rankin fired at him.
Chapman is the second person shot and killed by Rankin – a detail omitted from the trial. Rankin’s defense described this as a deliberate attempt to influence the outcome of the trial ― a charge that the friend denied. I wish it had never happened.
Rankin, who was sacked after his murder indictment, had already killed another unarmed suspect four years earlier. “I can’t begin to fathom how much pain that family is going through”. Rankin claimed that Chapman had resisted arrest.
Across the country, only 74 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter stemming from an on-duty shooting since 2005, according to data from Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminology at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University.
A man immediately opened fire on a San Diego police officer who walked up to him on a dark residential street last week to ask if he lived nearby, then shot into a patrol auto, hitting the officer’s partner with.
“I had no reason to think he was going to stop attacking me”, said Rankin.
According to research by associate professor of criminology at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University, only 41 officers in the USA were charged with either murder or manslaughter in connection with on-duty shootings over a seven-year span. “I believe that everyone’s mouths will drop open and say, ‘What in the world was the police chief thinking when they made a decision to retain this officer on the police department?'” Prosecutors said Officer Wesley Cagle approached that suspect as he lay wounded on the floor and shot him in the groin.
The shooting in Portsmouth provoked immediate protests in the in the mostly black city of 100,000 near Norfolk on the Virginia coast. Of those, a third were convicted, a third were not and the other cases are pending.
Rankin had received several excessive force complaints in the time leading up to Chapman’s killing, and one of his former colleagues described the officer as being “afraid of his own shadow”.
Prosecutor Stephanie Morales argued Rankin chose to shoot when he could have used non-lethal force.
Rankin’s attorney James Broccoletti said they expected and anticipated a civil lawsuit.
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