The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
April 21, 2021

Judge Denies Dismissal of Prison Sentence for Officer Who Shot and Killed Walter Scott in 2015
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A judge has denied a motion to toss the 20-year prison sentence of
former police officer Michael Slager, who murdered unarmed Black
motorist Walter Scott in South Carolina in 2015. Slager tried to argue
that his defense was ineffective, but the federal judge ruled "a careful
review of this entire tragic episode makes plain that [Slager] has no
one to blame for his present predicament and sentence but himself. What
sealed his fate … was [his] own willful act of shooting an unarmed man
in the back five times as he ran for his life."


.