Ex-Portsmouth police officer Stephen Rankin was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of William Chapman II past year in a Walmart parking lot in Portsmouth. On-duty officers kill suspects about 1,000 times a year, according to Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Rankin was facing up to 10 years in prison; when he is formally sentenced on October 12, the judge can give him less than the two and a half years recommended by the jury, but not more. He was originally charged with attempted murder.
Advertisement
The jury, eight black and four white, did not convict on the first-degree murder charge prosecutors had sought.
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. There is no video of the encounter between Chapman and Rankin, and some of the details remain disputed. Prosecutors said the officer, who is white, could have used non-deadly force, noting that every witness but Rankin testified Chapman, who was black, had his hands up. Rankin took out his pistol and ordered him several times to get on the ground, he said. “At 5’8”, Chapman was two inches shorter than Rankin. He said the teen ignored the officer’s commands and “made a quick gesture to fight” before being shot.
After fatally shooting the teen in the face and chest, Rankin allegedly told a witness, “This is my second one”.
Earlier Thursday in Baltimore, a 15-year veteran officer was convicted of assault for shooting an unarmed burglary suspect in 2014, and his police commissioner was taking steps to fire him. While a grand jury declined to indict him in Denyakin’s death, his superiors barred him from patrol duty for three years. “Juries are very reluctant to convict an officer because they all recognize that policing is hard and violent”, he said. Rankin may be only the 26th police officer to be convicted of such a charge in that timeframe. A third of these were convicted, a third were not and the other cases are pending.
Rankin had already killed another unarmed suspect, four years earlier, and many in Portsmouth saw his trial as a chance for accountability amid continuing reports about police-involved shootings around the nation. “We don’t have any problems with policemen or police officers”.
The case hinged on whether Rankin, who was sacked from the Portsmouth police department after his indictment, could have used non-deadly force in the superstore’s parking lot on April 22, 2015. Under Graham v. Connor, the 1989 case that set forth the standard, each “use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight”.
Before the jury had reached a verdict Wednesday morning, defense attorneys filed a motion for a mistrial, and offered security video that showed a Chapman family friend interacting with a juror on Wednesday.
All things considered, Stinson said a murder conviction for Rankin was unlikely.
Advertisement
“I had no reason to think he was going to stop attacking me”, said Rankin, 36.
