RALEIGH, N.C. – The latest on the state of North Carolina's decision not to retry a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man in 2013.
3 p.m.
A defense attorney says the decision not to retry a white police officer who shot and killed unarmed black man in 2013 isn't necessarily a reason to celebrate.
Defense attorney George Laughrun spoke Friday after the decision was announced. He says: "I think there are no winners or losers here, obviously."
He called the decision a relief for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Officer Randall Kerrick and his family so they can "now try to put his life back together."
Laughrun says that while the attorney general's office is to be commended for its effort to gain a conviction, in part by dedicating three prosecutors to the case, Attorney General Roy Cooper also is to be commended for taking politics out of the decision not to seek a retrial. Cooper, a Democrat, is expected to run for governor in 2016.
Laughrun says: "If he were going to play politics with it, he would have sat on it for either weeks or months."
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11:40 a.m.
North Carolina state attorneys have decided against retrying a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man after his trial ended last week in a deadlock.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Robert Montgomery told the Mecklenburg County district attorney Friday of the state's decision in the case of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Officer Randall Kerrick. He had been accused of voluntary manslaughter in the September 2013 death of Jonathan Ferrell, a former college football player.
The jury in the case deadlocked with an 8-4 vote in favor of acquittal, leading the judge to declare a mistrial.
Montgomery wrote to District Attorney Andrew Murray that state attorneys will submit dismissal papers to end the case. Montgomery says it's the prosecutors' "unanimous belief a retrial will not yield a different result."
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