After O’Donnell delivered his verdict, some African American spectators in the court house shouted: “No justice, no peace!”
Brelo’s trial ended about three weeks ago, and was decided by a judge instead of a jury at the request of the defendant. The move allowed the decision to be made by a judge looking only at the strict legal interpretation of the case, rather than by a jury that might render a decision based more on emotion.
Sources have told the Guardian that O’Donnell waited so long to issue his verdict in order to give the city time to prepare for any resultant civic unrest of the kind seen recently in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore after cases involving deaths at the hands of police.
The judge picked a Saturday morning on a holiday weekend to announce the verdict, the sources said, to provide an extra day for law enforcement to calm the city, and also as a way to lessen problems that might be caused by high school students.
In recent years, downtown Cleveland has experienced some acts of mob violence carried out by high school students – in particular on St Patrick’s Day this year.
Brelo, 31, joined the Cleveland police department in 2007, having served in the marine corps in Iraq. He was charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter. Each count can carry a sentence of three to eight years in prison.
O’Donnell would also have decided the sentencing. The 50-year-old judge, in office since 2002 and elected as a Democrat throughout his career, ran for the Ohio supreme court but was defeated by a Republican.
Brelo’s trial resulted froma police chase on 29 November 2012, when Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell led police on a 20-minute pursuit that involved 60 police cars and about 100 police officers. The chase began when their car, a 1979 Chevy Malibu, apparently backfired as it passed police headquarters in downtown Cleveland. The noise was mistaken for a gunshot.
Williams, 30, and Russell, 43, were boxed into a middle-school parking lot when 13 Cleveland police officers fired 137 shots into the car in an 18-second volley. Brelo fired the most – 49 shots total – including 15 at the end of the barrage while standing on the hood of the car, aiming at the pair through the windshield. Even though a dozen other officers fired 88 bullets into the car, only Brelo was charged.
If Brelo was fearful that he or another officer or a bystander might get hurt, he was entitled to use deadly force.
The prosecution also had to prove that Brelo’s actions led to the deaths of Williams and Russell, meaning the bullets fired from his gun were the ones that killed them. No forensic science experts could say with any certainty that any of Brelo’s 49 bullets resulted in death.
The prosecution’s expert witnesses testified that all the shots fired by police were justifiable – except for the 15 Brelo fired from on top of the car. Prosecutors conceded that those 15 shots would have been justified had Brelo not been standing on the hood. In other words, if Brelo had fired the same shots into the windshield standing in front of the car with his feet on the ground, he probably would not have been charged.
The Brelo case caused widespread outrage and led to an investigation of the use of excessive force by the Cleveland police department."
