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Jury Hears Closing Arguments in Trial of NYPD Officer Involved in Fatal Stairway Shooting

On Tuesday, a jury heard closing arguments in the manslaughter trial of rookie NYPD Officer Peter Liang, who fatally shot an unarmed black man in a dimly lit stairwell in Brooklyn two years ago.
Photo by Seth Wenig/AP

On Tuesday, a jury heard closing arguments in the manslaughter trial of rookie NYPD Officer Peter Liang, who fatally shot an unarmed black man in a dimly lit stairwell in Brooklyn two years ago. The defense and prosecution rested their cases on Monday.

Liang, 28, faces charges of second-degree manslaughter, negligent homicide, assault, and official misconduct in the killing of Akai Gurley, who was 28 at the time of his death. If convicted of the charges, the officer could spend up to 15 years in prison.

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Speaking softly into a microphone, Liang took the witness stand on Monday and tearfully recalled the moment in November 2014 that he entered the Louis H. Pink Houses in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York.

He had only been 18 months on the job at the time of the incident. Liang and his partner, Shaun Landau, were conducting a routine patrol of the housing project at around 11pm on the night of the incident. They had finished inspecting the roof and had proceeded to inspect the staircases from above.

As he and Landau walked downward, Liang had his weapon drawn. As they proceeded, he noticed that the stairwell beyond the door to the eighth floor was "pitch black," so he drew his firearm as a precaution. He explained in court that the roof and upper areas are typically the most dangerous to patrol. He turned the handle and shoved the heavy red door with his shoulder, holding his firearm in his left hand and a flashlight in his right. As the heavy door flung open, Liang said his whole body "tensed" when he heard a loud noise on his left side, and he accidentally squeezed the trigger on his firearm.

The bullet ricocheted off the wall and fatally struck Gurley in the chest one floor down. "Oh my god," Liang recalled saying, "someone's hit!" Gurley made it down two flights of stairs before he collapsed.

Liang testified that he heard crying as he went down the stairs. He saw Gurley on the ground, bleeding, and his girlfriend Melissa Butler kneeling over him.

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"I broke down," Liang said, remembering that moment. "His eyes were rolled back and he was just laying there very still."

Liang had to look away from the courtroom many times as he recounted the night's events, pausing to cry. The judge even briefly excused the officer while he took a minute to compose himself.

The officer said Butler began giving CPR on Gurley. Liang testified on Monday that he had never practiced CPR on the resuscitation dummy at police academy; his training had been mostly theoretical. He said he let Butler continue with the CPR because he "didn't know if I could do it better than her."

Liang's failure to give Gurley any kind of medical attention has been slammed by the prosecution as "callousness." Liang has countered that he was "panicking" and "in shock."

The shooting occurred as a national conversation about police killing unarmed black men was unfolding following the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Mike Brown in Ferguson at the hands of white officers earlier that summer. The anger over those deaths stung anew when grand juries declined to indict either officer involved.

So when a grand jury decided in February 2015 to indict Liang, the son of Chinese immigrants, the Asian-American community rallied around him, claiming that he was being used as a scapegoat for the more egregious actions of white officers. Hundreds of protesters waved flags saying "No Scapegoat," and walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to Chinatown, where Liang grew up, calling for a fair trial.

One protester, Jim Cheng, told NPR at the time: "Mr. Peter Liang won't be charged if he's [a] white policeman, as demonstrated in the other incident like the one in Ferguson."

"In America, people say, 'Well, white people is first class. Black people is second class,' " Cheng added. "What I see, Chinese is no class, or the last class."

The mothers of both Liang and Gurley have been constant presences at the trial proceedings, which began three weeks ago.

"Peter Liang walked away and left Akai to die in his own blood," Gurley's mother, Sylvia Palmer, said outside the courthouse on Monday.