N.C. Attorney General won’t retry Kerrick in police shooting case

After speaking with members of last week’s deadlocked jury, prosecutors with the N.C. Attorney General’s Office announced Friday they won’t retry Randall “Wes” Kerrick in the 2103 shooting death of Jonathan Ferrell because they don’t think a second trial would yield a different result.

At a news conference Friday, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper acknowledged the frustration of Ferrell’s family and supporters – as well as that of prosecutors – at the failure to convict Kerrick, but he vowed to push for “more consistent training” for law enforcement officers on the use of deadly force.

“Officers must be held accountable when they do not follow their training,” Cooper said. “Lethal force should be the last option, and training needs to reinforce that.”

Kerrick, 29, was charged in Ferrell’s 2013 shooting death during a predawn encounter east of Charlotte. Ferrell, 24, was unarmed. Kerrick shot him 10 times, testifying at the trial earlier this month that he feared for his life. Last Friday, Superior Court Judge Robert Ervin declared a mistrial with the jury deadlocked 8-4 to acquit the officer.

Cooper said prosecutors for his office “did their very best” in arguing that Kerrick should be found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, but after speaking with jurors, he said they agreed unanimously that another jury would still be divided. “We have to listen to the jurors,” Cooper said.

The jury deadlocked by a vote of eight jurors for acquittal and four jurors for conviction, according to the attorney general’s office. Jury foreman Bruce Raffe told the Observer that, of the eight jurors who favored acquitting Kerrick, one was black, one Hispanic and six white. Of the four favoring conviction, two were black, one Hispanic and one white. Raffe said he believed Kerrick was not guilty.

In a letter to Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray on Friday, Robert Montgomery, senior deputy attorney general, said the charge against Kerrick will be dismissed. “While our prosecutors tried to seek a conviction, it appears a majority of the jurors did not believe the criminal conviction was the appropriate verdict,” Montgomery wrote. “.…Meeting the standard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt could not be achieved.…It is our prosecutors’ unanimous belief a retrial will not yield a different result.”

Ferrell’s family had wanted the state to put Kerrick on trial again, as did U.S. Rep. Alma Adams of Greensboro and other critics of the shooting.

Ferrell’s mother, Georgia, received a call from two prosecutors Friday morning letting her know the case would not be retried. She said she was told prosecutors wouldn’t be able to find a jury that would convict Kerrick.

“They didn’t try hard enough. It was just another black life. They don’t care, it doesn’t matter,” she told the Observer. “I am going to continue to fight. I am going to work on the foundation, continue work for justice. It’s not the end.”

George Laughrun, one of two attorneys who defended Kerrick, said he was surprised the attorney general’s decision came so quickly. “I think it shows the attorney general wanted to take politics out of the decision,” Laughrun said. Cooper Cooper is expected to run for governor in the November 2016 election.

Laughrun said it’s unclear if Kerrick will remain with CMPD: “We haven’t even gotten that far,” he said. “We’ll see what his options are and what’s best for him and his family.”

Some have suggested those options might include filing a suit against the city. Laughrun said his office would not be involved in any civil litigation should Kerrick decide to file a lawsuit.

Laughrun said Kerrick is “relieved obviously” by the decision not to retry the case. “I think he was a little stunned the decision came so quickly. He didn’t want this hanging over his family’s heads or the heads of the Ferrell family and the city of Charlotte.”

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police declined to comment about the attorney general’s decision. A police spokeswoman said she did not yet have information on Kerrick’s employment status with the department.

Activists are ‘not giving up’

Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte NAACP branch, said she’s concerned prosecutors opted not to re-try Kerrick because “one black juror sided with the white jurors.” She called the decision a “rush to judgment” since the mistrial was declared only a week ago.

Mack joined a number of civil rights activists who called for the attorney general’s office to retry Kerrick after a judge declared a mistrial last week. Online petitions emerged, including one championed by Ferrell’s brother, Willie Ferrell.

“We’re not giving up,” Mack said. “There’s an African American male who is deceased at the hands of a former white CMPD officer. He was shot 10 times. If that’s not excessive, I don’t know what is.”

Charlotte civil rights activist John Barnett, founder of the True Healing Under God (THUG) organization, said a retrial would give the Ferrell family and many others in the community “full closure.” He said his group plans to petition the attorney general again, asking the office to reconsider.

Barnett said activists are moving forward with plans to urge six national civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, to bring attention to the Kerrick mistrial and subsequent action by the attorney general’s office. They’re also planning a community-wide march in Charlotte Sept. 14, he said.

The Rev. Dwayne Walker, pastor of Little Rock A.M.E. Zion Church, said he was baffled and disheartened by the prosecution’s decision. “I just don’t understand how an officer can get away with shooting an unarmed man 10 times. It sends a terrible message. I am sickened by the decision. To me, it was an open-and-shut case. I don’t know what those jurors were looking at. It tears my heart up.”

In a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling on Aug. 26 and 27, 59 percent of Democrats said the Kerrick case should be re-tried, while 77 percent of Republicans said it shouldn’t.

Democrats were more likely than Republicans to be less confident in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department as a result of the Kerrick trial. But 53 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats said the trial didn’t make a difference in their confidence in the CMPD.

Mistrial prompted protests

Last Friday, within moments of the mistrial being declared, protests erupted. At one point, a crowd of about 100 protesters gathered outside BB&T Ballpark, where the Knights were playing. The scene became tense, as people inside the ballpark and protesters outside yelled at each other through the fence.

The protests continued last Saturday, and a small group gathered Thursday outside the Blumenthal Center for the Performing Arts to protest.

One juror interviewed this week agreed that it wouldn’t be worth retrying the case.

“Unless you have new evidence to present, you are going to come up with the same thing,” a deadlocked jury, the juror said. She is the fourth juror who has spoken publicly about the trial, and the second to decline to disclose her vote.

The jury foreman, Bruce Raffe, told the Observer that of the eight jurors who favored acquitting Kerrick in Ferrell’s death, one was black, one Hispanic and six white. Of the four favoring conviction, two were black, one Hispanic and one white. Raffe said he believed Kerrick was not guilty.

Moses Wilson, 67, the jury’s only African-American male, voted to convict. Another juror interviewed this past weekend would not say how she voted but said: “I feel bad that as a jury we could not come together one way or the other for the families.”

Doug Miller, Ames Alexander, Fred Clasen-Kelly and Clayton Hanson contributed to this article.

This story has been corrected to say that N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper's office argued that Kerrick should be found guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 2:08 PM with the headline "N.C. Attorney General won’t retry Kerrick in police shooting case."