Prosecutor thought he had a slam dunk case and lost.
Via Reuters
An Ohio prosecutor on Friday asked a state appeals court to correct legal errors made by a judge who found a Cleveland officer not guilty in the shooting deaths of an unarmed black man and woman after a high-speed car chase in 2012.
Timothy McGinty of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office filed the motion highlighting “egregious” mistakes in Judge John O’Donnell’s ruling last Saturday that cleared officer Michael Brelo in the shooting deaths of Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell.
The filing comes amid a national outcry against police violence towards minorities, following a series of high-profile police killings of unarmed black men around the country that prompted waves of protest.
McGinty said in the document that prosecutors could not contest Brelo’s acquittal but maintained that O’Donnell’s errors needed to be remedied.
“If the errors in the verdict’s legal statements and reasoning are left uncorrected, the future administration of justice in this county is compromised,” McGinty said in a copy of the filing published on the website of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.
O’Donnell could not be immediately reached for comment, according to the Plain Dealer.
McGinty argued that O’Donnell applied a “unique and imaginative theory” when finding it impossible to determine whether Brelo fired the fatal shots, and also erred in applying the law around whether an officer’s use of force is justified.
McGinty said O’Donnell also considered the wrong lesser offense in the case.