On November 29, 2012, officers outside the Cleveland Police Department’s downtown headquarters thought they heard a gunshot from a 1979 Chevy Malibu driving past. A 22-mile car chase ensued, with more than 60 police cars and 100 officers involved. Over the 20-minute chase, the car ignored more than 100 stop signs and red lights. Its speed at times exceeded 120 mph.

Cleveland police eventually cornered the car in a school parking lot, where 137 shots were fired at the car by 13 police officers. The driver, Timothy Russell, 43, was shot 23 times, while the passenger, Malissa Williams, 30, was struck 24 bullets. Both died at the scene, no gun was found in their car and the gunshot sound heard at the start of the chase is believed to have been the old car backfiring. Russell and Williams were both African-Americans.

Of the 137 shots fired at the car, 49 were from five-year Cleveland police department veteran Michael Brelo. He fired the last 15 of his shots into windshield of the car while standing its hood. Brelo, who is white, was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter while the other 12 officers were not. The case revolved around two issues: could the prosecution prove that Brelo’s bullets caused the death of either of the deceased, and did he reasonably feel he was under imminent threat of serious bodily harm while standing on the car hood and firing those last 15 shots.

On May 23 of this year, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John P. O’Donnell found Brelo not guilty on both counts. In a 35-page verdict, Judge O’Donnell went into great detail about how the state did not prove that Brelo’s shots caused the deaths, and how the chaotic scene made Brelo perception of the threat of bodily harm reasonable. O’Donnell’s verdict—in the wake of protests over police deadly force cases in Baltimore and Ferguson specifically—raised the ire of many individuals who thought O’Donnell’s not guilty decision had racial overtones.

O’Donnell, 50, a Democrat first elected in 2002, has not spoken publicly about his verdict, but sat down with Politico Magazine contributor Daniel McGraw this week in Cleveland to discuss the reasoning behind his decision. The exclusive interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Daniel McGraw: Some of the twitter and other Internet comments are calling you a member of the KKK, a racist, that this “racist judge is a lunatic.” Is that something you pay attention to at all?.

Judge John O’Donnell: I have gotten letters from people who tell me what a “piece of shit I am” and my verdict was racist. I reject all that entirely. This case had absolutely nothing to do with race. This case had to do with whether the prosecutor proved beyond a reasonable doubt whether this crime had been committed, and had to do with the defendant being legally justified in shooting that night. I understand people have their opinions, and if they disagree with my ultimate decision of the facts in this case, namely that the case wasn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt, they are entitled to that. But I reject categorically the notion this case had anything to do with race or that I am a racist.

McGraw: But doesn’t the perception of race get included in almost everything, especially in a court trial like this?

O’Donnell: Let me put it this way. The evidence had concluded in the Brelo case on May 1, and we had closing arguments in this case on May 5. In the meantime, I had another criminal case start where they defendant was black male, and he was accused of domestic violence, theft and other similar crimes. That case, which was happening while I was deliberating on the Brelo verdict, ended with a not guilty jury verdict. The point is that I gave that defendant the same constitutionally fair trial that I believe I gave Michael Brelo. Race has absolutely nothing to do with what happens in my courtroom.

McGraw: In these times, after Ferguson and New York and Baltimore cases of police deadly force, did you have to go to great measures to exclude race from your thought process?

O’Donnell: I was certainly well aware of the decedents were African-American and the defendant is white, but it certainly never consciously ever entered my thoughts while deliberating … I’m well aware of the concept of implicit bias. Sometimes people believe they have no biases but it can be shown they actually do. You can try to put it out of you mind, but it might still be there. All I can say I tried to be scrupulous to not take into account their races of the participants and not taking into account the possibility of some negative reaction to the verdict based upon the races. I decided this case on the law and only the law.

McGraw: You said in the 35-page verdict that every week “I pass a mound of stuffed animals left in memory of a 12-year-old many believe was murdered by a Cleveland police officer.”

O’Donnell: I ride my bicycle by that spot at least once a week, maybe more. It is a reminder to me of how sacred and important life is.

McGraw: Do you see the Tamir Rice case and the Brelo case being related in any way?

O’Donnell: I see them being perceived in the public mind as being related, as being different aspects of the same perceived problem. In my verdict, I did write that I acknowledge there are problems in police community/relations in many cities including Cleveland. Because of those problems, when something like that Tamir Rice death happens or the Brelo’s case is heard in court, tensions get higher and anger can flare, so they have those things in common. They generate public outrage before every fact is laid out and the guilt or innocence is decided. In that sense I see the cases as connected as they raise the same sort of outrage. But connected factually, that the Cleveland police are a bunch of murderers, no.

McGraw: You said that the Brelo case is rooted in our country’s original sin. Expound on what you meant by that?

O’Donnell: I think everyone knows what our country’s original sin is, there is no denying that slavery has had a huge impact in this country and how the races deal with one another. But I also wrote that a single criminal lawsuit is going to extirpate that original sin from this country nor should we expect it to. Do I think that the Cleveland Police acted the way they did on November 29, 2012 because they were motivated by race? I don’t think that, no, but that doesn’t change the perception that many saw this case as one where race was the major factor.

McGraw: Do the Cleveland Police bear some responsibility for what happened that night, perhaps not in a legal way, but morally or ethically?

O’Donnell: I can’t comment on that. My duty here was to decide is the evidence presented in this case applied to this case and this case only. I don’t offer an opinion on that and I don’t think it good for me as a fair judge to do so.

McGraw: Law enforcement officers come before you daily and testify in all sorts of different cases. A U.S. Department of Justice report says the Cleveland Police has violated Cleveland’s citizens’ civil rights by overuse of deadly force, which the Ohio Attorney General calls a “systemic” failure in the department. You don’t have an opinion?

O’Donnell: I don’t think I’m qualified to opine on that. Let’s, for the moment, put aside the Brelo case. Every day, there are cases that are initially investigated by the Cleveland police. One or more officer often winds up testifying and the defendant is found guilty or not guilty. I don’t know that in any one case I could suss out the evidence of institutional shortcomings … Have I seen cases where it was apparent to me that the police did mistreat citizens or defendants or a witnesses? Not that I can remember. My primary criticism of the Cleveland Police is that often times their investigations seem less than thorough. It is a criticism shared by juries with me, that when I talk to them after a verdict of not guilty, they say they thought the defendant probably did do it, but this and that and the other questions weren’t answered through investigation. So we had a reasonable doubt. I’ve had that conversations with juries many times.

McGraw: It seems that the more bullets that fly, the harder it is to prove which bullet was the one that killed. In this case, you had 13 officers firing 137 bullets and you were asked whether any of the shots fired by Brelo were the ones that caused the deaths. Russell and Williams each had more than twenty bullets in each of them. Seems impossible to prove.

O’Donnell: I wouldn’t say it is an impossible to prove. The standard is always the same—can causation be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Sometimes it is more or less difficult to prove. In this case, it was hard to prove, but not just because of the number of shots fired.

McGraw: What would you say to the Russell and Williams family about how the verdict came about?

O’Donnell: I feel for their loss. They have an emotional stake in the outcome, and it is 100 percent understandable they are upset. But I do think that their emotional stake now, while the verdict is relatively fresh, precludes them from looking at the evidence the way I had to. The way that 12 jurors would have had to had this been a jury trial. Every jury is instructed to not be influenced by sympathy or prejudice for one side or the other. Here, and in any case where a person is killed and someone else is accused of a crime causing that killing, there is a strong emotional factor. I feel for them. I haven’t heard much of what they said, though. If they are upset with me I can understand. But if they think I am racist, I believe they are wrong … Whatever they feel, though, I understand, but I am not sure what I can say beyond that. I couldn’t find this defendant guilty if the elements were not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. I understand that decision can be painful for them.

McGraw: The attitude on this case, from many in the public and many law enforcement experts, is that something went wrong the night in question and someone has to pay for it. Was there a problem with how this case was presented?

O’Donnell: There were 13 shooters in this case. The evidence presented by the prosecution, the party advocating for a conviction, was that 12 of the shooters were legally justified for what they did. There was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that maybe three or four people fired fatal shots. We had 12 shooters taking shots that were deemed lawful … Never any debate about that because that was evidence the prosecution presented. Every shot they fired was lawful, regardless of whether those shots missed, wounded or was fatal to either Malissa Williams or Timothy Russell. As for Brelo, the evidence presented by the prosecutors was that of the 49 shots the defendant took, 34 of those shots were also [lawful]. So the question was whether some or all of the 15 shots in dispute actually caused the deaths. … When you have 13 officers and claim that only one of them engaged in criminal conduct, the way to do that is not to say he fired a shot that would have been fatal if the others had never shot. That doesn’t cut it because it ignores the fact that if the others shot and fatally wounded these two, they did so lawfully. It would have been a different scenario if 13 people had been charged and accused of being criminal actors and the evidence might have shown, even if you couldn’t have traced a particular bullet to a particular gun and to a particular shooter, one might have be able to find all of them complicit in the unlawful killing.

McGraw: Would the charge been the same if all 13 had been indicted? Still voluntary manslaughter?

O’Donnell: If you had 13 officers all shooting, and you could not prove which one did the fatal shooting, but were certain they all acted criminally with the purpose to kill the person, then one could possibly find them guilty if you could show they were aiding and abetting [each other]. I don’t want to say the result would have been different, but I do want to say that the lay of the land would have been very different if all 13 of the police officers had been charged with the same crime. And I can envision a scenario where failure to prove a particular bullet from a particular shooter caused a particular injury would not have prevented a guilty verdict because of the complicity of the actions.

McGraw: Why did the prosecutor decide to charge only one officer and not 13?

O’Donnell: That is fully within the prosecutors’ discretion. I could venture an educated guess but it is not my job to publicly speculate on the reasoning behind a decision like that.

McGraw: The prosecution said that, when Brelo fired his shots with feet on the ground, next to Russell’s car and into the windshield, those were fine and lawful. But when he moved up three feet and was standing on the hood of the car, still firing into the windshield, those were not lawful. As an observer, that argument didn’t make sense to me, just being three feet over and three feet up making the difference between being illegal and legal. What was your view on Brelo’s shots from the hood of the car?

O’Donnell: Remember, that the state’s lead expert essentially testified that, if Brelo had kept shooting behind his police car, that would have been OK. The only way those shots are OK is if he has probable cause to believe that the people he is shooting at present an imminent danger of bodily harm to him and his colleagues. My feeling was that it wasn’t his position that mattered. He didn’t lose the probable cause to believe that harm was no longer imminent just by changing his position. I got the impression that the state took issue with the admittedly unorthodox movement he made by saying that by being closer to and exposing yourself to even more the bodily harm made the bodily harm go away.

McGraw: But doesn’t it make little sense to move closer to the bodily harm. Most of the public had a problem with an officer jumping on the hood of a car and acting like he was a warrior in some action movie. Why would you stand on a car when that puts you in more danger?

O’Donnell: It is unorthodox and doesn’t make sense to you and I sitting here almost three years later in an office talking about the case. The evidence was, though, that this was a chaotic scene, and the state agreed with this in that their expert found that 12 shooters were justified in every shot they took. It was not apparent that [Russell and Williams] were not shooting at the officers and the defendant saw some movement by them. Brelo had seen the car barreling at him, and the driver was still in the driver’s seat and the car was still running. By exposing himself to the danger, people assumed he felt that danger was not imminent from the occupants of the car. But things were so out of the ordinary, things were so hectic and fast-paced that the fear he and twelve other reasonably perceived was that they could be hurt or killed.

McGraw: Do police use “I feared for my life” as a sort of a catchall phrase for anything they do in the line of duty?

O’Donnell: No, it has to comport with the evidence. For example, take the case of the officer indicted in North Charleston, South Carolina. There seems to be evidence that this officer shot a person who did not have anything in his hands and was running away from the officer … Let’s say that officer comes in and testifies he shot because he had probable cause that that man running away from him would cause imminent bodily harm to him or those round him. They are certainly welcome to use that as a defense, but based on the evidence we see on the video that has been made public, the claim is not consistent with the facts in the case. In Brelo’s case, the claim was consistent with the facts of the case. I understand that the claim that he perceived a threat of bodily harm from the car occupants can be said to be inconsistent with jumping on the hood and exposing himself more. My feeling was that the probable cause that surely existed—which the state said existed—didn’t disappear in those seven seconds when those last 15 shots were fired, and it wasn’t eradicated by the unorthodox conduct of Brelo putting himself on the hood.

McGraw: And also based on his previous 20 minutes of the car chase?

O’Donnell: There is no evidence there was conspiracy to lie about the various radio calls and officers hearing that “the passenger is holding a gun” and “looks like a gun,” etc. The point is that just because the officer says there is a threat of bodily harm the officer has to be believed. I do believe though it was true in this case.

McGraw: Did you take into account in your decision that some CPD policies were violated—especially the number of cars and officers in the chase and how the car was pursued?

O’Donnell: I felt it was relevant evidence to allow in what the chase procedure is and isn’t, but in the end, they had to prove the elements of the shooting and not those elements of violation of policy.

McGraw: You wrote in your verdict that there is isolation by the police from the people they serve in many cities in the country. How so?

O’Donnell: That has been proven over years of studies. And I don’t just mean white police and African-American residents either. By nature of the job, you tend to socialize with other police because your old friends don’t understand what you see and do on a daily basis. Then you add in that the police are not particularly welcome in some areas.

McGraw: Do you think a jury would have come to the same conclusion as you?

O’Donnell: That question is unanswerable. I found certain things were not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I found reasonable perception of bodily harm. Do I think that 100 juries would make the same findings as I did? No. Do I think a jury who didn’t find the facts as I found them to be wrong? Clearly I would disagree with their decision, but juries are free find elements proved or unproved as they find them. I have learned to respect the verdicts of juries, because it is my experience they work hard in finding what the facts are in a case.

McGraw: You waited about three weeks after the closing arguments to release the verdict and then you did it on a Saturday morning. Were you in any consultation with any Cleveland political or community leaders to do it in that time frame?

O’Donnell: I knew I had to write the verdict ruling myself and without consultation with anyone and I knew that was going to take some time. I was still writing it at ten o’clock the night before. I had a lot to think about and a lot to review, literally thousands of exhibits. I did not personally consult with anybody. But during this trial, the civil unrest happened in Baltimore. I was certainly aware that there was attention being paid to this case and there could be strong reactions regardless of what the verdict was going to be. I told them I would give them two hours notice; typically I would say let’s meet back here on a certain date and I’ll deliver a verdict. I didn’t do that in this case. I wanted to shorten the public notice of when the verdict was going to occur and the verdict actually occurring to decrease the possibility of a bad reaction. And it occurred to me that if people were concerned about civil unrest, the weekend would be a better time because downtown was less populated. But never consulted with anyone directly. I made the court administration aware on my intention just a few days before the verdict so they could make their preparations.

McGraw: Were you surprised the more rioting did not occur and did you think about that prior to releasing the verdict?

O’Donnell: I don’t think I was surprised and I certainly was gratified that the protests were for the most part peaceful. The evidence was that 12 people were justified for using deadly force and the 13th was partially granted to be lawful in using deadly force, so I think the facts in this case were such that they didn’t lend themselves to as much outrage and anger as we’ve seen in other cases.

McGraw: Should the laws be written to better define what constitutes fear of bodily harm?

O’Donnell: It is not a statute that can be changed by the legislature and it is not something the executive branch can enforce or not enforce. It is a US Supreme Court precedent based upon The Constitution. If you read the case, the reason the doctrine exist is that police aren’t going to be asked to wait until they are shot or stabbed or punched or otherwise hurt—to wait until the threat materializes and causes physical harm to them. They are privileged by The Constitution to use deadly force in those situations where see a threat to them. Whether that is good policy or not, that is for others to decide. I know what the law is, however, and I had to follow it in this case. But the opposite policy would be to not allow police to use deadly force until deadly force is actually used on the officer. If the government wants to institute that policy, I suppose they are welcome to, but we can all see the problems with doing that.

McGraw: Some have said you are more of an academic jurist, not one too concerned about politics or setting policy.

O’Donnell: Does that mean I follow the law?

McGraw: No, I mean that you have seen this case as not one where you are setting policy but one where you are interpreting the law as it is.

O’Donnell: That’s my view in every case. I have to follow the law. If I am considered an academic judge, though, I can be at some peril to myself. Here’s an example of that in the Brelo case. He waived his right to a jury trial an asked for a decision by me, what is known as a bench trial. I inquired if he knew his rights and he was aware of the differences between the two. I found Brelo’s decision was voluntary that he was giving up that constitutional right. The [prosecutor] opposed that waiver. I could have easily denied the defendant’s jury trial waiver, and as I understand it that is not easily appealable, so the case would have gone to a jury and that jury would have had to decide. If I made that decision, the jurors would be the ones getting letters saying they are racists and rotten people on this planet and have no business being in a courtroom. But I didn’t waive his right to having a bench trial because that was not correct under the law, but it would have been much better for me personally if I had done so.

The same for the verdict. I was aware what happened in Baltimore and what you might call the public feeling what the right result was supposed to be in this case. But after I examined all of the evidence, and thought about it for a couple weeks, I was aware the verdict I was going to reach was not a “popular,” if you will, verdict. It would have been very easy for me to come up with the popular verdict, guilty. But I didn’t feel like I could. I’m like everybody else. I like to be popular. I like to be liked. Most of us do. But it is more important I do what is right and I did so in this case.

This article has been updated.