– ‘It was an accident’ –
Defence lawyer Rae Koshetz, meanwhile, painted a picture of a young officer who turned into a “wreck” too traumatized to communicate after realizing he had accidentally shot someone.
“This is not a referendum on policing in the United States,” she told jurors. “It was an accident.”
Liang had been on the job just 11 months before the shooting.
He testified that his gun went off accidentally and that he didn’t realize someone was below him in the stairwell.
Two high-profile deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police in the summer of 2014 sparked mass protests against police tactics and accusations of racism.
Eric Garner, 43, died after New York police put him in a chokehold, while Michael Brown, 18, was fatally shot by a white police officer in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri.
The shooting of Gurley came only a few months later, on November 20, 2014.
The jury was made up of seven women and five men, and was majority white. Only one member of the jury was black.
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