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Former Minneapolis police officer, Mohamed Noor, crosses the lobby of the elevators at the Hennepin County Government Center with his team of lawyers in Minneapolis on Friday, April 26, 2019. (Leila Navidi / Star Tribune via AP )
MINNEAPOLIS – The jurors on Tuesday issued a verdict in the trial of a Minneapolis police officer accused of shooting an unarmed woman who approached his team's car a few minutes after having called 911 to report a possible rape behind his home.
Mohamed Noor has been charged with two murders and one murder for the murder of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, in July 2017, a 40-year-old American and Australian citizen.
The jurors deliberated for about five hours Monday and six Tuesday before making a decision. The verdict was to be read around 5 pm CDT.
Noor and his partner were driving in the driveway behind Damond's home and were reviewing the 911 call just before the shooting. Noor testified that a loud bang on the police car had scared his partner and that he had seen a woman raise her arm to appear at her partner's window. He said that he had shot to protect the life of his partner.
Prosecutors attacked Noor for firing without seeing Damond's weapon or hands. They also asked if the noise was real. Neither Noor nor his partner, Matthew Harrity, spoke to the investigators on the spot. Harrity mentioned it for the first time three days later, during an interview with state investigators. Noor refused to talk to the investigators.
The death of Damond, a life coach who was to be married a month after the shooting, has aroused outrage both in the United States and Australia. It also cost the police chief of Minneapolis his job and helped defeat the mayor of the city a few months later.
Damond was white. Noor, 33, is a Somali American police officer who left his job in mid-career business. He testified that he had become a policeman because he "wanted to serve" and that Minneapolis executives celebrated his hiring two years before the shooting, eager for more diverse police forces in a city populated with 39, Somali immigrants.
He was fired after being charged.
None of the two officers had a body camera running when Damond was shot down, which Harrity blamed on what he called a vague policy that did not require it. The two men turned on their camera in time to grasp the consequences, including their attempts to rescue Damond with CPR. But Noor's bullet struck her in an essential abdominal artery and a medical examiner testified that she had lost so much blood so quickly that even faster medical care might not have it. not saved.
Prosecutors sought to ask questions about how the police and state investigators reacted. They broadcast extracts of body cameras carried by the intervention agents, who revealed that many officers turned them on and off at will; an officer could be heard on his camera at some point telling Noor to "keep your mouth shut until you have to say anything to anyone". They also pointed to the lack of forensic evidence proving that Damond had hit the police car.
However, the case still depended on the jurors' assessment of the legitimacy to shoot Noor. They had only the testimony of the officers to get an idea of the key moments. In closing arguments on Monday, defense lawyer Thomas Plunkett told the jury that the "precise moment" when Noor fired his weapon was important and that they needed to consider whether Noor was acting as a reasonable officer in the same circumstances. Attorney Amy Sweasy asserted that the shooting was not justified.
In his only public statement about the shooting, Noor said that after hearing the loud noise, he saw the fear in Harrity's eyes and heard his partner scream, "Oh Jesus!" as he went to get his weapon. Noor said Harrity was struggling to get his gun out of his holster. Noor then saw a woman in a pink shirt with blond hair appear at Harrity's window and lift her right arm.
"I fired a shot," he said, adding that "my intention was to end the threat and save my partner's life."
Prosecutors insisted that he was not shooting at Harrity. He said that he had not evaluated whether there had been a threat at the time of Noor's departure. When Sweasy asked Harrity if it would have been premature to use lethal force, he replied, "Yes, with what I have."
Both officers testified to their trust and their high esteem for each other. Both cried at times during their testimony.
The jury consisted of 10 men and two women. Six of the jurors, including the two women, are people of color.
In the event of conviction, lump-sum sentences range from four years for the charge of manslaughter to 12½ years for third-degree murder to 25½ years for second-degree murder.
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Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/amyforliti
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Check out the full coverage by the AP of Mohamed Noor's trial: https://apnews.com/MohamedNoortrial
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