Lawyers, in their raptures of indignation and flourishes of mind-numbing legalese, can ask for the moon.

Thing is, when the client’s a police officer, they usually get it. The moon and sixpence.

From juries, which are averse to convicting cops, and from judges, who are part of a shared law enforcement culture.

Fact: Of the 11 Ontario officers charged with murder or manslaughter since the inception of the Special Investigations Unit a quarter-century ago, not one has been convicted.

You’d have to be a really lousy lawyer or defending a particularly odious accused to lose a case in this province.

Peter Brauti is demonstrably not a lousy lawyer. And the cop he got off on second-degree murder — Const. James Forcillo — well, I can’t say if he’s odious or not. But a jury did find him guilty of attempted murder early this year in the shooting death of Sammy Yatim, the teenager who terrified passengers aboard a Toronto streetcar by brandishing a knife and exposing himself.

It was a highly unusual outcome, in all its angles, and logical only — logical perhaps only — when viewed through the prism of how the case was presented, as two separate actions: A first volley of three shots, including the fatal bullet, and a second volley of six shots when the 18-year-old was already down and in the process of dying. The initial shots were deemed justified, thus not-guilty of murder. The subsequent shots were determined by jurors to have been an excessive use of force, thus guilty.

In a way, Brauti got his hat handed to him by the prosecution’s tactical decision to prosecute the charges in this clever manner. It could also be argued that the Crown fatally damaged its own case by giving the jurors a lesser option on which to convict.

Brauti’s dim view of the guilty verdict jumps off the page of written submissions filed with the court in advance of Forcillo’s sentencing hearing next month.

“The logical and legal effect of the jury’s verdict is that they accepted that it was reasonable and necessary to kill Mr. Yatim, and Officer Forcillo was acting lawfully when he did so. Having found the Applicant guilty of attempted murder in relation to the second volley of shots, the jury appears to have accepted that the Crown had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that one or more rounds from the superfluous second volley of shots were not legally justified and that the Applicant meant to cause death when he fired at him.”

It is indeed difficult to wrap one’s brain around the dueling verdicts, more so from the acquittal end than the conviction end, I’d say. Forcillo killed Yatim and the jury accepted that this shooting was justifiable; Yatim would have died regardless of Shooting Part II, but those rounds were unjustifiable.

“The unlawfulness of his conduct, according to the jury, arose at some point during the second volley when he used force that was not justified,’’ under two sections of the Criminal Code, Brauti writes. “He was nonetheless authorized by law throughout the entire transaction to confront Mr. Yatim. In fact, he had been justified in killing Mr. Yatim less than 6 seconds before.”

Brauti seems intent on re-arguing his case in this document, perhaps as a dress rehearsal for the expected appeal. But the submissions are primarily jaw-dropping for the arguments put forth to secure Forcillo a grossly inadequate sentence on the attempted murder conviction: essentially two years less a day of house arrest.

No prison time. No minimum sentence as any other individual would face, though the maximum punishment for attempted murder is life in prison.

Why? Because Forcillo is a cop.

The crime was committed with a restricted weapon — Forcillo’s police-issued Glock. Brauti argues the mandatory minimum sentence with a restricted handgun is “grossly disproportionate’’ for an officer who used too much force to stop a threat, and the minimum sentence rule should be struck down as unconstitutional.

“The gravity of this offence is as close to nil as one can imagine an attempted murder ever being.”

Only blinkered cop-huggers would agree that attempted murder is an offence that lacks gravitas.

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“The Applicant’s act of firing at Mr. Yatim a second time had absolutely no causal effect vis-à-vis his death. It did not even rise to the level of amounting to a contributing cause of death for the purpose of criminal liability.”

Yatim was already all-but-dead — Forcillo’s doing — but don’t let that affect the sentence for firing six more times when the teen posed no reasonable threat to anybody. A “misperception,” Brauti describes it.

Oh no, Brauti isn’t promoting special treatment for convicted cops. “It is about ensuring that, when we ask men and women to arm themselves to protect the larger community, we treat them justly and fairly when they make mistakes concerning how they use force, because we placed upon them the responsibility of engaging in the conflict in the first place.”

This is another way of saying that the law should be applied differently with a cop in the dock. It’s only a mistake, if you, the jury, insist on convicting.

Mandatory minimums have indeed been knocked for a loop by the Supreme Court of Canada; just last week, the Supremes struck down a mandatory minimum penalty of a year in prison for low-level drug trafficking.

This is not that.

Brauti claims a reasonably informed member of the public would be “shocked’’ that Forcillo is facing the same sentencing guidelines as “the bank robber who deliberately shoots at a teller intending to kill her; the husband who discharges a firearm intending to kill his wife, who miraculously survives her grievous wounds; or the hitman that shoots at the intended victim but misses.’’

Rather — and this is galling — Brauti likens Forcillo to a soldier asked to put his or her life on the line in “incredibly dangerous and high stress circumstances’’ but is then punished severely for “a temporary lapse in judgment that had no consequences, since the killing itself is justified.’’

Even more egregiously, Brauti draws a correlation with the battered woman who is repeatedly subjected to domestic assault. “Her partner threatens her with a knife and in self-defence, she runs and grabs her partner’s gun and shoots him, knocking him to the ground on the first shot. Medical evidence later establishes that it is this first shot that is fatal. However, terrified that he might get up and continue attacking her, she empties the rest of the clip at him.

“A jury could reasonably conclude that her initial decision to shoot was justified in self-defence … but the continued shots subsequently were excessive and not justified … Despite her history with her abuser, and the fact that she legitimately feared him, she would also be liable to the mandatory minimum of five years.’’

The analogy is preposterous.