Radley Balko, as usual, gets it right on the trial and verdict of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle:
Early in the morning of January 1, 2009, in a now infamous incident captured on video by dozens of cell phones and replayed across the globe, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed 23-year-old Oscar Grant as Grant lay on his stomach on an Oakland BART platform. Last week, a Los Angeles jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Because the jury had the option to convict Mehserle of second-degree murder, and perhaps because the jury contained no blacks (Mehserle is white, Grant was black), the verdict has enraged civil rights groups and sparked protests and rioting in Oakland. The Department of Justice is now looking into the possibility of trying Mehserle a second time under federal civil rights law.
The jury got it right.