Jurors in Portsmouth found Stephen Rankin, 36, guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the April 2015 shooting of 18-year-old William Chapman II.
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A former police officer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter Thursday after shooting an unarmed black teenager in a Walmart parking lot. The use of cell phones for video recording police is on the rise, as is an increase in the number of police departments that require officers to use body cameras.
Melania Trump’s former modeling agent says she obtained a work visa before she modeled professionally in the United States in the mid-1990s. Prosecutors also couldn’t share with the jury text messages Rankin sent before Chapman’s death; one read “people are just bad”, another referenced Sodom and Gomorrah.
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”. Witnesses who testified differed on whether Chapman charged at Rankin.
The conviction marks a departure from a series of acquittals of police officers in fatal shootings that have sparked outrage in the U.S. over the last few years. A judge cannot increase the jury’s recommended sentence, but he could reduce it.
He said they are filing an appeal and don’t think Rankin got a fair trial. Rankin used a stun gun on Chapman, then the teen knocked it to the ground, Rankin testified.
Rankin, who was sacked from the Portsmouth police force after being indicted, had already killed another unarmed suspect four years earlier.
After fatally shooting the teen in the face and chest, Rankin allegedly told a witness, “This is my second one”.
Babineau said they’re planning to sue Rankin, the city, and former police chief claiming there was behavior in the past that indicated that Rankin should have never been a cop.
Rankin’s lawyers said Chapman’s death had nothing to do with any other police shootings.
Regardless, prosecutor Stephanie Morales said Rankin could have used nonlethal force to subdue the teen. However, Rankin-a US Navy veteran with training in mixed martial arts-said he shot Chapman twice in self-defense as Chapman “came towards me aggressively” after a Taser was knocked from Rankin’s hand as the two scuffled.
Rankin will be formally sentenced by a judge later this month, The Guardian reports.
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.
The Walmart security guard who accused Chapman of theft said he had never moved on the officer. Rankin said that he did not want to hurt or kill Chapman, but that he had no other choice than to open fire. “He didn’t have an option”, said Rankin’s lead attorney, James Broccoletti.
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Stinson’s data don’t include cases in which civilians died in police custody or were killed by other means, or those in which officers faced only lesser charges.
