OFFICER'S TRIAL HAS ITS DOUBTERS

Few Expecting Murder Conviction In Shooting Of Louisville Black Man

LOUISVILLE (AP) -- Michael Newby's extra-large jogging pants were falling
down as he rushed out of the house.

"Boy, you better get a rope or a belt or something for those," Jerry
Bouggess told his slender stepson, who was heading out for a Saturday night.

That was the last conversation they would have.

Early the next day, Newby, 19, was dead, shot in the back three times by an
undercover Louisville police officer during a drug buy.

Newby was the seventh black man killed by police in the past five years in
this city of nearly 700,000, where blacks make up about 20 percent of the
population.

Unlike the past killings, however, this one led to murder charges against
the officer, McKenzie G. Mattingly, a white man who had been on the force
for about six years.

But legal experts and local activists doubt the case will end in a murder
conviction.

"Just because somebody is shot in the back doesn't mean it's a criminal
act," said Tim Apolito, a criminal justice professor at the University of
Dayton in Ohio. "It's a quantum leap from somebody getting indicted to
actually being convicted."

Jefferson County prosecutor David Stengel said the Jan. 3 slaying appeared
all along to be a "bad shooting," in part because of the shots in the back.

Mattingly, 31, pleaded not guilty and is free on bail.

Apolito, a former police officer in Ohio, said prosecutors face significant
hurdles.

"It's hard for prosecutors to show intent to kill when an officer has to
react quickly in a potentially dangerous situation," he said. "You would
have to demonstrate not that he did this accidentally but just clearly
intended to take this person's life. And that is usually a difficult thing
to do, because police officers -- even when they take someone's life --
don't do it with the purpose of taking somebody's life. They do it with the
goal of eliminating that person's ability to harm them or someone else."

Activists who have protested recent shootings by police say they also doubt
that Mattingly will be convicted of murder.

"The burden of proof is so heavy" for prosecutors in police shootings, said
Shelby Lanier, a former Louisville officer who has protested shootings by
the department and accused the police of being too eager to use lethal force.

The federal government does not keep figures on fatal police shootings. But
such convictions are difficult.

In Connecticut, Scott Smith, a white New Milford officer who shot a black
man to death, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter in 2000.

That verdict was overturned on appeal, and Smith is awaiting a new trial on
the manslaughter charge.

In 1999, West African immigrant Amadou Diallo was killed in a hail of 41
bullets by four white undercover police officers in New York City. The
officers said they thought Diallo was reaching for a gun. They were
acquitted of criminal charges.

Last year in Louisville, a grand jury refused to indict two white officers
in the shooting death of a handcuffed black man who had lunged at an
officer with a box cutter.

Police said Newby, shot during an undercover drug buy, was carrying a
.45-caliber handgun, and that a powdery substance, thought to be cocaine,
was found on him after the shooting.

Mattingly has not spoken publicly about the shooting. His attorney, Steve
Schroering, said in a statement that Mattingly is certain his actions were
necessary. He predicted his client would be exonerated.

Newby's slaying raised racial tensions in Louisville and prompted protests
outside the police station and at the mayor's house.

During one large demonstration, protesters broke a window in the police
chief's office and threw trash cans and newspaper racks into the street.

Mattingly's friends, meanwhile, have created a Web site, and they staged a
rally for him last month. At his arraignment, about two dozen uniformed
officers attended, all of them white. About 15 percent of Louisville's
1,200-member police force is black.

Bouggess and Newby's mother, Angela Newby-Bouggess, came face to face with
Mattingly for the first time during the officer's arraignment on March 8.

"My faith doesn't allow me to hate. So I can't hate him, and Ann doesn't
either," Bouggess said. But "we want justice. He's committed a crime."