Jurors will deliberate today as closing arguments were given yesterday during the retrial of the Pittsburgh Police in the Jordan Miles civil case. A few years ago Jordan Miles, who was at the time only 18 years old, was brutally attacked by Pittsburgh Police as he was walking down the street from his mother’s to his grandmother’s home. Miles at 18 years of age was a violinist and honor student at Pittsburgh’s prestigious Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) high school. However, on a January night in 2010, three white officers mistook Miles, a young black male with dreadlocks, for a drug dealer.
Miles took the stand just days ago and spent nearly six hours explaining how undercover officers jumped out at him and never identified themselves. Defense attorneys for the three police officers argue that the officers did what was needed, knowing what they knew that night. Each officer testified that Miles resisted arrest and that they believed he had a gun, although no weapon was found. The officers claim that they may have mistaken a bottle of Mountain Dew in his coat pocket for a gun. The officers say that they threw the bottle down the street once they found that it was not a weapon. Miles states that he never had a weapon or the bottle.
Today jurors will be in for a long day as they determine who is at fault with each side giving entirely different stories.
Miles attorney Joel Sansone argued that this case is about an abuse of power. Noting Miles injuries that night, he sneered at the idea that it was the officers who were in “the fight of their lives” and that the kid with no criminal background suddenly became a “ninja” clashing with police.
“That’s baloney,” said Sansone.
After twelve days of an intense trial, family and friends of the Miles family leave the fate of the three Pittsburgh Police officers up to the jurors.
All charges against Miles were dropped at a preliminary hearing in April 2010, but criminal charges were never pressed against the three officers. This civil trial is the second in the matter. In 2012, a jury found that the officers did not maliciously prosecute Miles, but they could not reach unanimity on whether the officers falsely arrested Miles and used excessive force.
WATCH JASIRI X’S MUSIC VIDEO “JORDAN MILES”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONPo-wslB40&w=560&h=315]
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