The North Carolina Attorney General’s office has announced it will not retry a white police officer who shot an unarmed African-American man in Charlotte. Officer Randall Kerrick shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell in 2013 after responding to a breaking-and-entering call.
The voluntary manslaughter trial of Kerrick ended in a mistrial last week. The hung jury was stuck at 8-to-4 in favor of an acquittal.
“In consideration of the jurors’ comments, the evidence available to the state, and our background in criminal trials, it is our prosecutors’ unanimous belief a retrial will not yield a different result,” wrote Robert Montgomery, senior deputy attorney general, in a letter to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney. “While our prosecutors tried to seek a conviction, it appears a majority of jurors did not believe the criminal conviction was the appropriate verdict.”