U.S. police officer who shot dead Kazakhstani 5 years ago found guilty of manslaughter
Jurors at Portsmouth circuit court found Stephen Rankin guilty of voluntary manslaughter for killing William Chapman in April last year. It was Rankin's second fatal shooting of an unarmed man in the city, The Guardian reports.
Chapman's mother, Sallie, wept as the verdict was read out by the court clerk. Rankin stared directly ahead as his supporters sat in silence.
Rankin had been charged with first-degree murder and using a firearm to commit a felony but the judge had told jurors they could convict him on lesser charges.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 13 hours after hearing four days of detailed testimony from witnesses to the shooting, a series of experts and Rankin himself. Rankin, 36, was terminated from his job at the police department after being indicted for murder.
Prosecutors argued that Rankin intentionally killed Chapman with premeditation after Chapman resisted arrest and defied his orders. The officer tried to stop Chapman in the parking lot of a Walmart superstore on the morning of 22 April 2015 to investigate a suspected theft from the store.
"The law does not say that because you do not comply you have to die," commonwealth's attorney Stephanie Morales said during her closing argument on Tuesday. Morales told jurors that Chapman should have "lived to face prosecution" for resisting arrest or assaulting an officer.
"The defendant brought a gun to what at worst was a fistfight," she said.
Rankin and his attorneys had insisted, however, that the officer opened fire only as a last resort after Chapman fought with him aggressively and then charged towards him. Rankin had tried to subdue Chapman with his Taser but the weapon was then knocked from his hand, they said.
"He didn't have a choice. He didn't have an option. He didn't have anything else left to do," James Broccoletti, Rankin's lead attorney, said in his closing argument. "It's easy for us to ‘Monday morning quarterback'. It's easy for us to look back with 20/20 hindsight and say ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda'."
During several hours of testimony on Tuesday, Rankin told jurors that he did not want to hurt or kill Chapman but was compelled to fire. "I felt I needed to save my life," he said. Rankin said he immediately carried out CPR on the 18-year-old to try to keep him alive.
Jurors were not told that Rankin had shot and killed Kazakhstani Kirill Denyakin, an unarmed hotel cook, four years before his confrontation with Chapman.
Rankin said Denyakin, 26, reached into his waistband and charged at the officer during a confrontation outside an apartment building where Denyakin was banging loudly on a door. Denyakin was shot 11 times. A grand jury declined to bring charges.
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