Oscar Juliuss Grant III, (February 27, 1986 – January 1, 2009)

Oscar Juliuss Grant III, (February 27, 1986 – January 1, 2009)

While many people across the nation are paying close attention to the trial of George Zimmerman, who's accused of the murder of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, filmgoers across the country are about to be introduced to another young black man, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III, shot in the back by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle on New Years Day in 2009.

Grant was unarmed. He was being restrained. He died in the hospital later that morning.

As word spread rapidly in the Bay Area, cell phone videos of the shooting also hit the internet. Angry residents demanded action be taken and that Mehserle be arrested.

The docudrama, "Fruitvale Station", made by 26-year-old filmmaker Ryan Coogler, profiled last week in the New York Times, has already garnered top awards from this year's Sundance Film Festival, where it was titled "Fruitvale." The movie will open in select theaters July 12 and nationwide on July 26.





While the nation watches the Zimmerman trial, and many of us are hoping that Martin's family gets justice, we can only hope that the "justice" meted out isn't what happened in the case of Oscar Grant—the trial of Mehserle, which was moved to Los Angeles, wound up with a jury that had no African Americans on it.

The verdict and sentencing:



They acquitted him on second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter, but convicted him on charges of involuntary manslaughter. Though involuntary manslaughter usually carries a four-year prison sentence, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry sentenced Mehserle to two years in state prison with 292 days of credit for time already served.

Mehserle was released from the Los Angeles county jail (he was never sent to prison) after serving only 11 months of his two-year sentence.

As many people have pointed out, Michael Vick served a longer sentence for killing dogs than Mehserle served for killing an unarmed black man.

We've seen too much of this, and unfortunately, if nothing is done about the criminal injustice system we will see it again, and again. The deaths are disproportionately of young people of color.

Though Trayvon was shot by a gung-ho neighborhood vigilante, and Oscar by a police officer, the end result is the same. Another unarmed young black man, dead.

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