Articles tagged with: Michael Schott

(6/24) — UPDATED 20:00 PDT — LOS ANGELES — In a surprise move Thursday afternoon, former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shot and killed an unarmed train passenger at the Fruitvale BART station on January 1, 2009, took the witness stand and testified in his own defense.

The prosecution in the second-degree murder trial of former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle will be allowed to present into evidence a cell phone photo Oscar Grant took which depicts Mehserle holding a Taser moments before pulling out his gun and shooting Grant.

The image can be presented due to a ruling Judge Robert Perry made to permit Grant’s girlfriend, who received the photo, to testify.

The prosecution in the second-degree murder trial of Johannes Mehserle, the former BART Police officer who shot and killed unarmed passenger Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day 2009, is opposing defense requests to exclude evidence of the use of a racial slur shortly before the shooting and testimony from the mother of Grant’s child from the trial, according to documents made public yesterday by the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Meanwhile, the defense is now seeking to prevent the use of a synchronized compilation of videos of the shooting made by the prosecution at trial.

The attorney for BART shooting victim Oscar Grant’s family said Monday that he would fight a legal request by the defense for Johannes Mehserle, the former BART Police officer charged with second-degree murder for the New Year’s Day 2009 shooting, to compel him to testify as a witness.

In a subpoena request dated May 11, attorney Michael Rains says that John Burris, who represents the Grant family in a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against BART, could provide “testimony concerning threats or intimidation” of witnesses who “may be reluctant to give testimony which would ostensibly be helpful to Mr. Mehserle and harmful to Mr. Grant.”