Civil Rights Attorney Says Cops Have Been Shooting Unarmed People in the Back for Years

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Investigative Journalist Stephen Janis discusses the shooting of unarmed man by a North Charleston police officer with civil rights attorney A. Dwight Pettit and its implications for police accountability in Maryland. - April 9, 2015

Mr. Pettit, thank you for joining us.

A. DWIGHT PETTIT, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Thanks for having me, Stephen.

JANIS: So just off the top, you've seen the video. What is your reaction to it?

PETTIT: Well, it's, it's a reaction of horror. You know, that it's actually, in my opinion, murder in the first degree. And I say murder in the first degree, because the police officer has the opportunity to premeditate and to formulate the intent to take this young man's life. And so that's the elements of murder.

There is no issue here in terms of, he's going to probably argue, I think he might argue about laying the Taser down beside the deceased, that in some kind of way he was in apprehension of the Taser. But that doesn't make any sense.

Normally the defense is, I thought I saw him going for a weapon. I thought I saw something that looked like a weapon. I saw a cell phone, I saw this or that. In this instance, he's running away, he's shot in the back. Officer sees no weapon, makes no allegation of a weapon. There's no abrupt turn or reaching or what have you. So it is clearly, clearly a murder in the first degree.

JANIS: So you have prosecuted, or sued the city, multiple times on these kind of cases where people are shot in the back. Tell us a little bit about your experience with dealing with these kind of cases, and some of the evidence that you had.

PETTIT: Well, they're very difficult to deal with because what's happening in this new technological age is that we have video. And that's becoming more and more relevant in each case.

Most of the cases that I have tried, except for the most of them have not had video. I'm trying to think of the one that did. It was the shooting down at Lexington Market. That wasn't a back shooting, but there was national video, it went national, as a young man was shot -- a quarrel -- was shot while the video was running. The tape was running.

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1. The horrible truth..