{"id":21579,"date":"2016-12-09T15:13:40","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T15:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colorlines.madeostudio.com\/article\/watch-michael-slager-trial-jury-foreman-says-race-wasnt-major-factor-mistrial\/"},"modified":"2016-12-09T15:13:40","modified_gmt":"2016-12-09T15:13:40","slug":"watch-michael-slager-trial-jury-foreman-says-race-wasnt-major-factor-mistrial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/article\/watch-michael-slager-trial-jury-foreman-says-race-wasnt-major-factor-mistrial\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: Michael Slager Trial Jury Foreman Says Race Wasn’t Major Factor in Mistrial"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WATCH: Michael Slager Trial Jury Foreman Says Race Wasn’t Major Factor in Mistrial<\/h3>\n

\n By Kenrya Rankin<\/span> Dec 09, 2016<\/span>\n <\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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On Monday (December 5), the jury charged with determining the fate of the White former North Charleston police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black man failed to make a decision, leading to a mistrial.<\/a> Now, the only Black person on that jury is speaking out.<\/p>\n

Jury foreman Dorsey Montgomery II appeared on the Today<\/a> show yesterday (December 8) to discuss the Michael Slager<\/a> trial and explain why he and the 11 White people on the jury were unable to convict the man who was caught on video fatally shooting Michael Scott<\/a> in the back on April 4, 2015.<\/p>\n

During the interview with co-anchors Tamron Hall and Matt Lauer, Montgomery said that the jury initially considered the murder charge, but after seeing the evidence, the conversation pivoted to manslaughter. \u201cWe had to come to find out that he didn\u2019t do anything malicious. He had manslaughter, he had a brief disturbance in reason for that moment. So based on the law, that would be classified as manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter,\u201d Montgomery said.<\/p>\n

He also said that the mistrial was not the result of one hold out juror, as widely reported. \u201cWe had one individual who was deadlocked that he wasn\u2019t changing, but yet we had five other individuals who were undecided,\u201d he said. When asked about the deadlocked juror\u2019s reasoning, Montgomery did not reveal much: \u201cHe just had his own convictions. And I\u2019ll leave that right there.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Montgomery was asked about the role race played in the hung jury, he said he didn\u2019t think it played an explicit role. \u201cDue to the society that we live in, race will always be a factor,\u201d he said. \u201cBut at that point of time, I do believe some jurors may have had that in their mind, but the majority of them didn\u2019t have anything in reference to race that may have played a factor in the decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the full interview above.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n

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Tags<\/h3>\n <\/div>\n
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\n Archive<\/a>Criminalization<\/a>Dorsey Montgomery II<\/a>Michael Slager<\/a>North Charleston<\/a>North Charleston Police Department<\/a>Police Violence<\/a>Today Show<\/a>Walter Scott<\/a> <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dorsey Montgomery II was the only Black person on the jury for the man who killed Walter Scott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_gspb_post_css":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[16402,16407,4678,9571,10678,10679,11450,14865,15719],"article-type":[],"topic-meta":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21579"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-type?post=21579"},{"taxonomy":"topic-meta","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic-meta?post=21579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}