Like it or not, both the DeValkenaere and Rittenhouse verdicts were based on the law – By Melinda Henneberger (Kansas City Star) / Nov 21 2021
As we were waiting for the verdict in the manslaughter case against Kansas City police detective Eric DeValkenaere, I kept thinking about two things: First, that the prosecution had proven its case. But also that I’d seen the law and the facts disregarded before, including in a police shooting just as clearly flawed as this one.
Almost 30 years ago now, in 1992, I covered the almost six-week manslaughter trial of Teaneck, New Jersey police officer Gary Spath, who’d shot a Black 16-year-old, Phillip Pannell, in the back as he bolted from the schoolyard where a neighbor had reported seeing a boy with a gun. Witnesses testified that Pannell had his hands up in surrender, and forensics experts said that because of the location of the bullet and how it lined up with the hole it shot in his parka, he had to have had his hands in the air when Spath fired.
On the stand, Spath cried, just like DeValkenaere. He said the dead boy had been reaching for a gun with his left hand, just like DeValkenaere said his victim, 26-year-old Cameron Lamb, had been. Spath said he fired because he was in fear of his life, just as DeValkenaere said he fired to protect his partner’s life.
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