Mehserle's murder trial opens (transit police officer who killed a passenger)

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(06-10) 14:14 PDT LOS ANGELES -- The murder trial of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle began today with prosecutor David Stein calling the shooting of unarmed train rider Oscar Grant an intentional act that resulted from "emotion taking over for discipline, and aggression taking over for judgment."

Defense attorney Michael Rains countered that the shooting at Fruitvale Station in Oakland on Jan. 1, 2009, was a terrible accident - one that led to the "unintended death of a young man who shouldn't have died" and has left Mehserle, 28, "trapped in a wretched prison of his own memories."

The attorneys made their opening statements in downtown Los Angeles, where the case was moved to escape publicity in the Bay Area. About 45 people, most of them reporters and relatives of Grant, filled Judge Robert Perry's courtroom gallery. The first witnesses in the case were expected to take the stand this afternoon.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/10/BASL1DTBM3.DTL

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Mehserle's defense attorney also went through the usual insufficient Taser training and "it was confusion" arguments and even brought up the facts that Mehserle came to the US from Germany as a young child and was voted "most huggable" in high school in order to make Mehserle look like a morally upstanding man. That comes after the defense successfully relayed that Grant had to be Tased in 2006 for resisting arrest.