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Officer cleared in shooting faces indictment!
quote:Personally, I'm outraged by this and will be contacting the Fulton County D.A.'s office. In case anyone else wants to do the same:
Fulton may indict officer
D.A. plans to seek murder charge in death during scuffle
By STEVE VISSER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said he will ask a grand jury to indict a police officer for murder in the death of man he was trying to arrest in College Park.
Last March, Officer Albert Garrett Sr. shot Derrick Fernando Brown, 35, during a scuffle, according to a police report. Brown punched the officer in the face, knocking off his glasses, police said. He then picked up Garrett's flashlight during the struggle and tried to hit him with it, saying "he was not going to jail," according to the report.
The report said Garrett then shot Brown.
There were no other witnesses to the shooting, but Howard said Friday that an extensive forensic investigation showed Garrett's life was not in danger when he shot Brown.
College Park Police Chief Gary Yandura said an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the South Metro Critical Incident Team, an eight-member panel composed of officers from five south Fulton cities, cleared Garrett of wrongdoing.
"We covered ourselves, but I think its better to have a second opinion and a second party review," Yandura said before Howard's decision. "We want to make sure the officer was right in what he did."
Attempts to reach Yandura or Garrett for comment Friday were unsuccessful. GBI spokesman John Bankhead said the agency doesn't recommend whether to charge an officer criminally when it investigates police shootings but just presents the facts.
"That is solely the D.A.'s call," he said. "We can't be prosecutor and investigator."
Howard said he would convene a grand jury on April 18 to hear only the Garrett case, and he expected to call a dozen witnesses to explain why the shooting wasn't self defense.
Usually indictments are foregone conclusions, because typically grand juries only hear the prosecution's side of a case. But as a police officer, Garrett has the right to testify at the proceeding to try head off an indictment. In 1996, a grand jury declined to indict two Atlanta police officers involved in the killing of an unarmed man and the wounding of another man during a bad arrest in the infamous Moto Cycles shop case in 1995. The city paid $1.4 million to settle the lawsuit that arose from the case
"It is an advantage to the police officer," Howard said. "He gets a chance to make a statement and we cannot cross examine him about his statement so he can say anything he wants."
Garrett pulled over Brown and another person in a 1994 Isuzu Rodeo in the early hours of March 3, 2002. The two men, who had been drinking at a 40th birthday celebration for Brown's sister, fled on foot into woods, with Garrett in pursuit.
Howard said three private forensic experts examined such issues as the angle of the bullet, intoxication and lighting and compared those reports with Garrett's three statements on the shooting. Howard said he also would ask grand jurors to study the statements for inconsistencies.
"In many cases, our best witnesses are dead bodies," Howard said.
The case didn't elicit the public outcry of the case involving the shooting of Corey Ward, an Atlanta teenager, by Atlanta police officer Raymond Bunn. The investigation of the Ward shooting -- in which bullet angles also play an important role -- isn't done, Howard said.
Fulton County District Attorneys Office
136 Pryor Street, SW, Third Floor
Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: (404) 730-4981 Fax: (404) 730-4785
Customer Service (404) 730-4887
email: [email protected]
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