In an image taken from a video shot March 16, an officer confronts James Boyd, 38, during a standoff in the Sandia foothills, before police fatally shot the homeless man.
In an image taken from a video shot March 16, an officer confronts James Boyd, 38, during a standoff in the Sandia foothills, before police fatally shot the homeless man.
Sixteen months after Albuquerque police officers Dominique Perez and Keith Sandy shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man in a confrontation that upset people across the state and nation, they head to court Monday as criminal defendants.
Both are charged with second-degree murder and lesser homicide counts in the death of James Boyd, 38, who was camping illegally in the Sandia Mountains.
Perez and Sandy face a preliminary hearing before state District Judge Neil Candelaria in Albuquerque. Candelaria will decide if there’s sufficient evidence for the pair to stand trial. Perez is still a member of the Albuquerque Police Department. Sandy retired in November.
The preliminary hearing, expected to last a week, is part of just one of a handful of recent cases across the country in which prosecutors have charged police officers with serious crimes in the deaths of people they stopped or arrested.
The difference in this case, however, is the time it took for the officers to be charged. Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg, even with police video of Boyd’s death, waited 10 months to charge Perez and Sandy. Prosecutors in Cincinnati and Baltimore moved more swiftly in bringing charges against officers in their jurisdictions.
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Brandenburg charged Perez and Sandy with first-degree murder before another judge removed her from the case based on the appearance of a conflict. A special prosecutor then reduced the most serious charge against them to second-degree murder.
Candelaria on Friday ruled that testimony about Boyd’s criminal past will be limited to what the officers knew at the time of the shooting. In addition, the judge said that police officers who testify during the preliminary hearing will not be able to offer legal conclusions, such as if the officers were justified in shooting Boyd.
After a standoff with officers, Boyd packed up his belongings and appeared ready to surrender. Seconds later, the confrontation escalated again.
Police fired a flash grenade into the dirt near Boyd and demanded he fall to the ground. Boyd remained standing in one spot, still at a considerable distance from the officers. He then took out two knives.
Perez and Sandy, guns already drawn, killed him in a hail of bullets.
Albuquerque police Chief Gorden Eden initially called the shooting justified. He softened his stance as public criticism of Eden and his department mounted.
Soon after Boyd’s death, the U.S. Department of Justice, which had been investigating the Albuquerque Police Department, said its officers had a pattern of using unnecessary force, including deadly force.
The city of Albuquerque three weeks ago agreed to pay $5 million to Boyd’s family to settle a civil lawsuit.
But lawyers for Perez and Sandy have said their clients followed their training and protected themselves and other officers from harm by killing Boyd.
As rare as it is for prosecutors to charge a police officer in a fatal shooting, it is rarer still for them to get a conviction.
“It’s one thing to bring the criminal charges, but it’s another thing to get a conviction,” Philip M. Stinson, a criminology professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said in an interview.
A Washington Post analysis based on Stinson’s work showed that, from 2005 to April 2015, a total of 54 officers were charged with fatally shooting someone while on duty. Eleven were convicted. Twenty-one were not convicted. The other 19 cases are still pending.
“The reason for that is that criminal courts are seemingly very reluctant to second-guess police officers’ split-second, life-or-death decisions that they have to make on the job,” Stinson said.
In Albuquerque, Boyd’s case turned into a political battle as Brandenburg prepared to file murder charges against Perez and Sandy.
Albuquerque police accused Brandenburg of bribing witnesses in two different cases in 2013, when Justin Koch, her 26-year-old son, was accused of stealing a gun from a house and breaking into home. Police told the state attorney general last November that Brandenburg had offered the victims’ money in exchange for not reporting the incidents to police.
In May, the newly elected attorney general, Democrat Hector Balderas, declined to prosecute Brandenburg. He also questioned the motivations of police in a letter to Eden.
“The timing of the APD’s decision to turn over its investigation to the [Attorney General’s Office] raises questions about APD’s motivations,” Balderas wrote, “not only when deciding to when to refer the matter to the [attorney general], but also when deciding to pursue an investigation against Brandenburg in the first place.”
After a judge removed Brandenburg from the Boyd case, Brandenburg chose Randi McGinn as the special prosecutor.
As with Boyd’s death, the July 19 fatal shooting of Sam DuBose by University of Cincinnati police Officer Ray Tensing was recorded by the officer’s on-body camera. But in Ohio, a prosecutor brought a murder charge 10 days after DuBose’s death.
Earlier this year in Baltimore, a prosecutor charged six police officers with a range of crimes, including murder and manslaughter, 12 days after Freddie Gray died after being fatally injured while in police custody.
Stinson, the criminology professor, has been following Boyd’s case. He said he would be surprised if the judge rules that there’s not enough evidence to send the case to trial. But, he said, prosecutors will have a hard time convincing a jury that Sandy and Perez murdered Boyd.
“It’s an uphill battle for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction in these type of cases,” he said. “Even in cases where there’s video.”
Contact Uriel J. Garcia at 986-3062 or ugarcia@sfnewmexican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ujohnnyg.
