If you're going to kill an unarmed black man, at least plan to be white, it's so much easier

A former transit police officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting an unarmed man on an Oakland train station platform was sentenced by a Los Angeles judge Friday to two years in prison.

Johannes Mehserle, 28, contended that he mistakenly used his firearm instead of an electric Taser weapon when he shot Oscar J. Grant III in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009. But prosecutors argued at his trial that Mehserle meant to reach for his handgun as he tried to handcuff an unresisting Grant, who was lying face-down on the platform floor.

Grainy video footage captured by several witnesses shows Mehserle, who is white, firing one round into the back of Grant, who was black. The racially charged case sparked rioting in Oakland soon after the shooting and again in July, when a Los Angeles jury acquitted Mehserle of murder but found him guilty of a lesser crime. The trial had been moved to downtown Los Angeles amid concern about the extensive media coverage of the killing in the Bay Area.

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