It appears that judges and juries are increasingly willing to hold trigger happy police accountable. Case in point, a Huntsville cop who gunned down a man threatening suicide was just convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
We need a lot more of this:
William Ben Darby, the Huntsville police officer convicted of murder for shooting and killing Jeff Parker, was sentenced today to 25 years in prison.
Court security officers took 28-year-old Darby to the Madison County jail from Circuit Judge Donna Pate’s courtroom after the hearing. Darby is not eligible for an appeal bond, so he will begin serving his sentence immediately.
A Madison County jury on May 7 found Darby guilty of murder for shooting and killing Parker, a 49-year-old man threatening suicide, three years ago. [He ran back to his car, grabbed a shotgun, and shot a man who was holding a gun to his own head in the face, and the police department found the shooting justified.]………
Tim Gann, chief deputy district attorney in Madison County, said no one in his office wanted to prosecute a police officer.
“I think that’s the worst thing we face is making that decision,” he said, “because we do understand it’s a dangerous job, we do understand that they’re in harms way.”
But Darby’s actions were “so far out of the norm that he’s got to be held accountable for that,” Gann said.
I hope that this actually means something beyond, "When a cop murdering a citizen is caught on video, and the video goes viral, we'll prosecute."
There needs to be an accounting at the Huntsville PD, where they disciplined the cops who didn't shoot the guy, and in city government, where the Mayor pushed through thousands of dollars for the legal defense of the killer cop.
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