Prosecutors asked Friday for manslaughter charges brought against two Torrance police officers for the 2018 on-duty fatal shooting of Christopher Deandre Mitchell to be dismissed, after the LA County District Attorney’s Office told a judge the evidence in the case does not meet the legal burden of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”<\/p>\n
Officer Matthew Concannon and former officer Anthony Chavez were indicted in 2023<\/a> under the tenure of former District Attorney George Gasc\u00f3n, who had campaigned for office with the promise of reopening and potentially prosecuting this case, which a new analysis under DA Nathan Hochman’s office said could play into the defense should the two face trial.<\/p>\n Mitchell was shot to death on Dec. 9, 2018, after Concannon and Chavez spotted a possible stolen car in the parking lot of a grocery store, approached the driver, and said they saw the sawed-off butt stock of a rifle or shotgun between the driver’s legs.<\/p>\n Body worn video cameras were recording as both officers fired into the car. Mitchell was killed, and the weapon turned out to be a pellet gun<\/a> that resembled a firearm.<\/p>\n In October 2019, the shooting was reviewed by the District Attorney’s Office, then under former DA Jackie Lacey, and the office concluded the shooting was lawful and reasonable.<\/p>\n After Gasc\u00f3n was elected in 2020, he hired former federal prosecutor Lawrence Middleton<\/a> as a special prosecutor to review police shooting cases, and Middleton obtained the indictment against the officers for voluntary manslaughter.<\/p>\n The motion to dismiss the charges included new analysis of the case completed by Michael Gennaco, the special prosecutor hired by Hochman to replace Middleton on police shooting reviews.<\/p>\n His 26-page review suggested that there might have been a different path to prosecute the shooting under the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, but for unknown reasons, Middleton didn’t present the case to a grand jury within the three-year statute of limitations for that crime.<\/p>\n Gennaco also noted that Middleton didn’t show grand jurors all of the video of the shooting, and didn’t properly instruct grand jurors on the legal elements required to prove a voluntary manslaughter case.<\/p>\n While the charges were pending defense lawyers for the officers challenged Middleton’s use of the officers’ pre-shooting conduct<\/a> in assembling the argument that the shooting was unjust, which, after a 2020 change in California law, was allowed to be more fully considered in police shooting evaluations.<\/p>\n Gennaco said one pending appeal of that decision could also lead to the charges being dismissed.<\/p>\n