A white police officer in Las Cruces, N.M., was convicted on Wednesday of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black man at point-blank range during a scuffle at a gas station in 2022, prosecutors said.
The officer, Brad Lunsford, shot Presley Eze, 36, in the head on Aug. 2, 2022, after Mr. Eze grabbed another officer’s Taser during the struggle. The shooting drew the attention of the N.A.A.C.P., which said it had pushed investigators to bring charges.
Jose Coronado, Mr. Lunsford’s lawyer, said he had argued during an eight-day jury trial that the shooting was justified because Mr. Eze was holding the Taser about 12 inches from the other officer’s face and had his finger on the trigger.
Experts hired by the defense concluded that, under those circumstances, Mr. Lunsford’s “use of force was necessary to stop the threat,” Mr. Coronado said in an interview on Thursday, adding: “You can’t react. You have to act.”
The New Mexico Attorney’s General Office, which prosecuted Mr. Lunsford, said in a statement that the Taser was never activated or deployed and that experts it had hired concluded that the use of deadly force was “not reasonable under the circumstances and that other, less lethal options could have been used to subdue Eze.”
The jury deliberated for about two and a half hours before finding Mr. Lunsford guilty. He was taken into custody immediately after the verdict and faces up to nine years in prison, the attorney general’s office said. A sentencing date has not been set.
“Officer Lunsford’s actions were not just a tragic lapse in judgment; they were an egregious abuse of power that cost Presley Eze his life,” New Mexico’s attorney general, Raúl Torrez, said in a statement. “The jury’s swift decision underscores the gravity of this case and sends a clear message that excessive force will not be tolerated in New Mexico.”
Mr. Coronado said he planned to file a motion to have the jury’s verdict overturned. He said that Mr. Lunsford, 39, was an Army veteran who completed two tours in Iraq and had been a member of the Las Cruces Police Department for about 10 years.
“I’m really disappointed because I don’t think the state put on a strong case,” he said.
Shannon Kennedy, a lawyer for Mr. Eze’s family, said that Mr. Eze’s father and brother were in the courtroom when the jury returned the verdict and that his mother, wife and 4-year-old son were in a side room, watching the proceedings on a television.
After the verdict, the family wept and Mr. Eze’s father said that his son had “not died in vain,” Ms. Kennedy said in an interview. She said she was grateful to the prosecution, to the jurors and to a clerk at the gas station who had recorded cellphone video of the shooting.
Mr. Eze was part of a Nigerian-American family from Connecticut, Ms. Kennedy said. He had worked as a nurse and for a solar panel company, she said.
Mr. Lunsford’s conviction, Ms. Kennedy said, showed “you can’t execute an American for stealing a beer.”
The deadly encounter began when an employee at a Chevron gas station reported that a man had tried to buy cigarettes without identification and then walked out with a beer he had not paid for, prosecutors said.
Mr. Lunsford responded, and found Mr. Eze in the front-passenger seat of a car. Mr. Eze told the officer that he had gone into the gas station with the beer and did not have any identification on him, but he gave the officer his name and date of birth.
When a second officer arrived, Mr. Lunsford told Mr. Eze that he was going to detain him because he had searched a computer system for his name and birth date and could not find any matches, prosecutors said.
The officers opened the car door to remove Mr. Eze, who told them he did not want to get out, prosecutors said. Mr. Lunsford told Mr. Eze that he did not have a choice and the officers grabbed him. He began to struggle with them.
The second officer pushed Mr. Eze to the ground and Mr. Eze ended up on top of the officer, with Mr. Lunsford on top of Mr. Eze, prosecutors said. As the men fought, Mr. Eze managed to grab the second officer’s Taser.
In response, Mr. Lunsford immediately drew his gun and shot Mr. Eze in the back-left side of his head, at point-blank range, the attorney general’s office said. He died at the scene.
The Las Cruces Police Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on Thursday, and it was not immediately clear if Mr. Lunsford was still on the force. Mr. Coronado said that Mr. Lunsford had been a paid officer throughout the trial, although he had been placed on desk duty.
Bobbie Green, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Doña Ana County, which includes Las Cruces, said that the shooting was part of a pattern of police officers using unjustified deadly force against Black men.
She said that the N.A.A.C.P. had urged investigators to examine the case closely and to bring charges. “It is very unfortunate but it’s not unusual,” she said of the shooting, adding, “I’m hoping this will be a catalyst for change.”
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