US Cop Convicted of Manslaughter over Death of Black Man

The officer, Peter Liang, and his partner were conducting a so-called vertical patrol on November 20, 2014, inside the Louis H. Pink Houses in the East New York neighborhood. At one point, Officer Liang opened a door into an unlighted stairwell and his gun went off. The bullet glanced off a wall and hit Akai Gurley, 28, who was walking down the stairs with his girlfriend, and pierced his heart, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

Liang, a rookie officer who had graduated from the Police Academy the year before the shooting, was also found guilty of official misconduct for failing to help Gurley as he lay on a fifth-floor landing.

Gurley’s friend, Melissa Butler, had testified that while she knelt in a pool of his blood trying to resuscitate him, the officer stopped briefly but did not help before proceeding down the stairs.

The verdict, delivered in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, comes amid a national debate on the policing of black neighborhoods after a string of killings of unarmed black men by police officers. And the jury’s decision is a rare instance in which a police officer was convicted of killing someone in the line of duty.

The jury deliberated a little more than two days before reaching a verdict. The Police Department said soon after the verdict that it had fired Officer Liang.

After hearing the verdict, Officer Liang bowed his head and sank his face into his hands. His lawyer placed a hand on the officer’s back. The officer left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.

Liang, 28, faces up to 15 years in prison on the second-degree manslaughter charge when he is sentenced on April 14. Most of the jurors left the courtroom quickly, but one juror, who declined to give his name, said in a brief interview that the decision had been “very, very, very difficult.”