Update: Charges filed. Press conference at 2:00 PM today. See below.
There may be justice of a sort for James Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man killed by Albuquerque police as he has camped out in the hills outside the city.
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – District Attorney Kari Brandenburg plans to file murder charges on Monday against the two Albuquerque police officers who shot James Boyd in the Sandia Foothills last March, according to multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of her decision.
It will mark the first time an APD officer has faced criminal charges for shooting someone in the line of duty in New Mexico’s largest city. APD has one of the highest rates of police shootings in the country, and the Boyd’s death was the result of the most controversial in a series of 27 fatal shootings here since 2010.
The officers who will be charged were also revealed.
Prosecutors will charge officer Dominique Perez, of the APD SWAT team, and former detective Keith Sandy, who was allowed to retire from the department eight months after the shooting, by “criminal information,” the sources told KRQE News 13.
Filing charges by information is common in many parts of New Mexico, but rare in Bernalillo County. The process is authorized under New Mexico law and allows prosecutors to charge suspects without obtaining an indictment in a secret grand jury proceeding.
Officers are almost never indicted for anything having to do with use of force. And a murder indictment is even rarer. As with the cases of
Oscar Grant and
Kelly Thomas, a conviction for murder is basically unheard of.
I was crushed by the verdict in the Thomas case, prepared for the grand jury decision in Ferguson, and miserably resigned to expect what happened on Staten Island.
I will neither expect nor not expect. I will wait.
Sun Jan 11, 2015 at 10:05 PM PT: A Diary about the Alburquerque police record entitled 'Carnage.'
Sun Jan 11, 2015 at 10:31 PM PT: An article from December 17th about the investigation:
“There have been times it feels that the process is so slow that justice isn’t really being done,” said District Attorney Kari Brandenburg.
But Brandenburg assures residents she is still personally reviewing the Boyd shooting and hasn’t yet made a determination about whether she’ll prosecute officers Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez. Sandy’s attorney, Sam Bregman, said he is not aware of any decision regarding charges against his client.
In late September, the Albuquerque Police Department completed its investigation into the Boyd shooting and gave its report to Brandenburg. Two and a half months have passed, and the district attorney’s office is still reviewing the very long report.
8:51 AM PT: