The former officer, 28-year-old Peter Liang, was convicted in the November 2014 shooting death of Akai Gurley, who was unarmed, in a Brooklyn public-housing building.
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Liang’s sentencing, originally scheduled for Thursday, April 14, was postponed until and is expected to take place on Tuesday, April 19.
“There’s not much memory of my father”, the juror insisted.
“I think Black Lives Matter needs to see more Asian people on the street validating their pain and validating the very real police brutality that’s going on in this country against black and brown people”, said Lei.
Attorneys for Peter Liang had argued that one of the jurors should not have been on the panel.
Outside the courthouse, Shechtman said Vargas “is not an impartial juror” and that his testimony on Wednesday “showed he’s not an honest man”. “Had the roles been reversed, had Akai Gurley murdered Peter Liang, would the D.A. recommend no jail time?”
Liang’s attorneys argued last week that Juror No. 9, Michael Vargas, initially told lawyers empaneling a jury that no one in his family had been accused of a crime.
Vargas also told Chun that he didn’t have any “close family” who had been accused of a crime, according to the paper.
“I find that on both ends, the defense has not met this burden”, Chun said.
Authorities are speaking with a “person of interest”, she said but added that she was unable to provide information about a possible motive.
And he said no. Vargas testified at the post-trial hearing that he answered no in part because he wasn’t close to his father and it didn’t come to his mind. “It was not a deliberate withholding of his father’s past”. “It is entirely conceivable that he could not think of his father because he felt distance from his father”. The former member of the NYPD was convicted in February in the shooting of Akai Gurley, who was walking down to the lobby when Liang, on a routine vertical patrol, opened a door to the stairwell and accidentally fired his weapon.
Shechtman said Liang plans to speak at the sentencing hearing, and that he has filed letters from Liang’s family as well as a few police who are friends with him. The team then dug up a number of comments Vargas made online that were critical of police.
Judge Danny Chun said Thursday that he didn’t believe the juror knowingly withheld the information.
“They wanted it to be a mistrial. That’s the message that the defense is trying to send”, she said.
The maximum sentence for manslaughter in the second degree, which Barron calls for, is 15 years in prison.
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Tensions did not subside during this case, and the community outrage was palatable when Thompson made the surprise recommendation to Judge Chun hat Liang do no jail time, but instead serve six months house arrest and 5 years probation, with 500 hours of community service, .
