New York (AFP) – A New York police officer will not serve any jail time for killing an unarmed black man, after a judge Tuesday downgraded his manslaughter conviction to criminally negligent homicide, an official said.
Peter Liang, a rookie officer who had been on the job just months at the time of the November 2014 killing, was sentenced to five years probation and 800 hours of community service, the prosecutor’s office said.
He had been found guilty of manslaughter by a jury in February.
The trial was a rare case of a US police officer criminally charged for opening fire, but departments across the country have come under heightened scrutiny over the shootings of unarmed people, many of them black.
Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old father of one, was killed by a bullet that ricocheted off the wall in a darkened stairwell of a public housing apartment block in Brooklyn.
Liang testified that his gun went off accidentally and that he didn’t realize someone was below him in the stairwell.
A spokeswoman in the prosecutor’s office said they would appeal the downgrading of the sentence.
Brooklyn prosecutors had not sought jail time for Liang, saying that while he acted recklessly there was no evidence he intended to kill or injure Gurley.
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