Despite a last minute effort from attorneys for (now former cop) Peter Liang to get the conviction thrown out, the Amsterdam News heard late on Thursday afternoon, that presiding judge Danny Chun declared that there will not be a mistrial.
On Thursday April 14, Judge Danny Chun was scheduled to pronounce sentence in the convoluted Akai Gurley case. But, it was announced late Wednesday that the sentencing would be delayed until Tuesday, 19th April – Primary Day, whilst the hearing continued on whether or not a mistrial may be declared.
There was tension on Thursday morning as protestors showed up in Downtown Brooklyn outside Brooklyn D.A. Kem Thompson’s office. There was angst too at a massive press conference and rally.
As news broke about the no mistrial later that day, protestors who had been in the hearing were ecstatic.
“God showed up and showed out!” Gurley’s aunt Hertencia Petersen told the Amsterdam News on Thursday, after heading “I put my faith in a higher authority.”
It is a case in which the fairly new, but self-declared justice-committed Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson successfully indicted and convicted the cop, who while paroling the Pink Houses in East New York in November 2014, fired into a darkened stairwell, and hit and killed the unarmed father a 2-year-old daughter, as he walked through a door.
“The family just wants justice,” said Petersen, who said that the whole case has been hard on the family. “My sister Sylvia has sunk into a deep depression because she is afraid that we won’t get jail time for Liang. We want Judge Chun to do the right thing by her son Akai. It was not right how he died.”
This week, in a last-minute tactic, Liang’s attorneys made a motion for a new trial. The premiss they are using is that Juror Number 9, Michael Vargas, lied when he was asked if any members of his family had been convicted of a crime. He said no, but reports show that his estranged father had served time for accidentally shooting a friend.
At press time, there was no news of the result of the hearing.
Liang shot and killed Akai Gurley, 28, on Nov. 20, 2014. On February 11, in a jury trial, he was found guilty of manslaughter and official misconduct. Just over a month later, DA Thompson recommended that the former NYPD officer get no jail time.
The Gurley case has once again shone the harsh light on the divide between the NYPD and the Black community, in the wake of the cop killings of unarmed civilians such as Ousmane Zongo, Mohammed Bah, Ramarley Graham and Eric Garner.
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,.
“A dangerous signal is sent across this nation when killer cops get away with murder, manslaughter or assaulting Black people!” declared Assemblyman Charles Barron. “It gives out of control racist pigs the incentive to keep killing and terrorizing us. It also embeds in Black people a deep anger and hatred towards police. This is the formula for uprisings and revolutions.”
As they organized a National Week of Action (April 1-10) for Justice for Akai Gurley, including a march through East New York last Saturday, the group ANSWER Coalition stated, “Liang is set to be sentenced on April 14 by Judge Danny K. Chun, and if he is able to get off with a light sentence, this will be yet another case of extreme injustice—just a new way of the system saying that Black lives still don’t matter. We cannot sit idly by. Liang was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and official misconduct last month for the November 2014 killing of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn, N.Y. He did the crime, and now he must do the time.”
This past Tuesday in the rotunda of Brooklyn Borough Hall, the Kings County Borough President Eric Adams hosted a closed-door meeting with Black and Asian business leaders, including former New York City Comptroller John Liu and Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Dr. Roy Hastick, in what Adams’ office said was “an expression of their communities’ joint commitment to solidarity and collaboration going forward from the sentencing decision in the Akai Gurley case.”
“The Borough President Eric Adams should be calling for justice for Akai Gurley,” responded Barron. “The borough president should be criticizing DA Ken Thompson for recommended no jail time of Peter Liang. But he is having meetings to supposedly pull the two sides together before we even have justice. It is disingenuous and smacks of political opportunism. Black leaders should be supporting the Akai Gurley family’’s call for justice. We are in a state of crisis.”
Tuesday, April 12, 2016, on what would have been Ramarley Graham’s 23rd birthday, his mother Constance Malcolm delivered petitions signed by tens of thousands, “pointing to misconduct beyond killing of Ramarley in call for real police reform from [Mayor Bill] de Blasio that brings accountability.” Reportedly, nearly 60,000 signatures, collected over the past several weeks by national civil rights organization ColorOfChange, were delivered to de Blasio at City Hall, “demanding a full investigation that leads to meaningful accountability—including removing all officers who engaged in misconduct—the group called for transparency, with the release of the names and charges against officers.
“As I’m forced to spend a fifth birthday without my son, none of the officers responsible for his killing or other misconduct against our family have been held accountable,” said Malcolm. “Despite Mayor de Blasio’s rhetoric about reform, his administration has not taken any serious steps to ensure full accountability for all the officers who engaged in misconduct in the killing of my son and against our family or addressed the systemic failures that perpetuate misconduct after all instances of police brutality and killings. His failure is perpetuating these abuses.”
NYPD officer Richard Haste, who shot and killed Ramarley Graham is still employed by the NYPD, and, according to the family, has received multiple salary increases of nearly $25,000 since killing Graham. They also note that, “there were many officers involved in busting into Ramarley’s home without legal justification, threatening, assaulting and mistreating his family members after his killing, and disseminating false/improper information about Ramarley and the incident. None of the officers responsible for any of this misconduct have been held accountable by the NYPD, either.”
Friday, April 8, 2016, Members of Mothers Cry for Justice held a protest outsideDA Thompson’s office.
“When my son Malcolm Ferguson was murdered by police officer Louis Rivera in the Bronx March 1, 2000, DA Robert Johnson refused to take the case to a grand jury,” said Juanita Young, co-founder of Mothers Cry for Justice. “When a jury found him 100 percent responsible for Malcolm’s death in a civil trial, Johnson still refused to bring charges against Rivera, who admitted in court he did not know why he shot Malcolm.
“When Ken Thompson was running for DA, he promised he was going to protect the people in Brooklyn. I told him I hoped he would not be like DA Robert Johnson, who failed so many families in the Bronx. It looks as if Ken Thompson is now walking the same path.”
Young’s organization’s events frequently include Joshua Lopez, nephew of John Collado, killed Sept. 7, 2011 in Manhattan; J. Andree Penix Smith, mother of Justin Smith, killed Aug. 14, 1998 in Tulsa, Okla.; Nicholas Heyward Sr., father of Nicholas Heyward Jr., killed Sept. 27, 1994 in Brooklyn; Iris Baez, mother of Anthony Baez, killed Dec. 22, 1994 in the Bronx; Hawah Bah, mother of Mohammed Bah, killed Sept. 25, 2012 in Manhattan; Joanne Mickens, mother of Corey Mickens, killed March 13, 2007.
Mothers Cry for Justice state that they are “a national networking organization for a growing number of parents and family members seeking justice for their innocent loved ones whose lives were stolen by law enforcement agents.”
