The officer who took the life of Oscar Grant was sentenced to the minimum possible prison sentence of two years today. He fatally shot Grant who was unarmed  on a California train platform. Johannes Mehserle will get credit for time he’s already spent behind bars since he was charged in the shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant on a train platform on January 1, 2009.

Wanda Johnson, the mother of Oscar Grant, shouted, “Oh my!” when Superior Court Judge Robert Perry issued the two-year sentence. She burst out of the courtroom saying, “He got nothing! He got nothing!”

Grant’s uncle, Bobby Cephus Johnson, said outside court: “I do believe it’s a racist criminal justice system.”

Wanda Johnson had asked the judge to sentence him to the maximum 14 years in prison. She and four other family members who spoke at the sentencing hearing called Mehserle “a murderer.”

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People gathered outside of Oakland City Hall and outside of the Los Angeles courthouse reacted relatively calm to the sentence. There was a strong police presense due to the riot  in Oakland that followed the shooting on New Year’s Day 2009.

Johnson family attorney John Burris acknowledged a small step was taken by the justice system in sentencing Mehserle to two years, but he said that was insufficient. Both Burris and Bobby Johnson noted that NFL star Michael Vick got a harsher sentence for running a dog-fighting ring.

“What you take from that is that Oscar Grant’s life was not worth very much,” Burris said.

NYT

And this is where our government/judicial system is so EFFED up! How can this man be sentenced to only 2 years for taking an innocent man’s life?!

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