A federal grand jury indicts a former Monroe area State Trooper for excessive force in the May 2019 roadside beating of arrestee Aaron Bowman. Jacob Brown’s bodycam footage shows his striking Bowman 18 or more times with his Maglite. Legal analyst Tim Meche said it’s important to remember a federal indictment is not for committing a violent crime.
“And that’s because the federal criminal code doesn’t have offenses like assault and battery, and general murder, that’s because they wouldn’t have jurisdiction over that,” said Meche.
Brown’s indictment is for “deprivation of rights under color of law,” Meche said the prosecutor will need little more than the video to convince a jury of Brown’s guilt, but there are avenues Brown’s legal counsel could take to clear him.
“If I’m the defense I’m going to argue that he had to do that because the victim was being belligerent, he was trying to escape, he was a criminal with a record a mile long,” said Meche.
If convicted of the deprivation of rights charge, Brown could face up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Meche said this is a great example of how cops wearing body cameras leads to more and better transparency. He said Brown’s defense has its work cut out for it.
“These cases use to be very triable from a defense perspective but now since the advent of these pesky videotapes, it’s very difficult to argue about what happened. You have to argue why it happened and that’s going to be the key,” said Meche.
Story by Kevin Gallagher
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