MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. When police shot and killed a Brazilian man who they mistook for a terrorist in a London Underground, that was not lawful. That was the finding of a London jury yesterday. The juror spent the last several months hearing the case, which was an unusual proceeding. The person hearing the case was the coroner who ruled that the jury only had two options for an outcome; one, that it was a lawful shooting, or two, they could return an open verdict, which is what they did. It stopped short of calling the killing unlawful. Another unusual moment in this trial, at one point, the victim's family stormed out of the courtroom wearing protest T-shirts. Richard Edwards of the Telegraph - a London Daily, joins us now from London. Welcome to the program. And perhaps you can begin by reminding us of the case of Jean Charles de Menezes and how he became the victim of this police shooting.
Mr. RICHARD EDWARDS (Reporter, The Daily Telegraph): Absolutely. This takes us back to a very febrile time in London where in July of 2005, the capital city had come under attack twice in two weeks by terrorists. And on the second occasion, four would be suicide bombers were on the run, their devices having failed to go off that day. Jean Charles de Menezes lived in a flat, linked to one of those terrorists. He was followed, he was mistaken for one of those suicide bombers. And after half an hour of a police operation running in a chaotic manner, he was shot dead on the tube in front of hundreds of terrified passengers.
SIEGEL: And now it is the verdict of a court that that killing was not found to be an unlawful act, it was not a lawful act either.
Mr. EDWARDS: Indeed. It's something of the English system of justice that it's taken three years to come to the point to realize that police shooting a man dead on the tube by firing seven bullets into his head, is in some way not lawful. But due to the nuisances of our system over here, the coroner only offered this jury, two options. He decided that it was not officially illegal, i.e. these police officers were not to face murder charges or anything such. However, they should be reprimanded if the jury saw fit. And that is why he only offered them the verdicts of - either lawful while being critical of the police, or an open verdict, which is really a bit of an ambiguous copout.
SIEGEL: Now, as a British reporter covering a trial there, you're restricted in what you can put in your stories while the trial is in progress. You can report what the jury hears in your stories. But beyond that, things like the victim's family and what they did in the courtroom is out of bounds. So now you can tell us what it was like. I gather this was a pretty extraordinary mood inside the courtroom at times.
Mr. EDWARDS: It was. It was something I've never seen before. In fact, at the end of the trial, the family were incredibly upset that the jury were not to receive an instruction that they could find this act unlawful. They were so angry at that, that they decided they wanted to make this protest in front of the jury. Just as the judge was about to send out the jury to consider their verdicts, they stood up, they walked towards the jury slowly and revealed these T-shirt saying, your right to decide, unlawful killing. And then they stormed out of the court, they were not allowed to return. And this kind of atmosphere has never been seen before really, where a family of a victim has been banned from their own inquest, the own examination of the death.
SIEGEL: Is there any possibility for a further appeal or review of this verdict?
Mr. EDWARDS: There is, the lawyers representing Mr. Menezes, he has already approaching the high court to appeal the coroner's decision not to allow the jury to come back with an unlawful killing verdict. The family are also pressing prosecutors and our heads of law to consider reopening the possibility of criminal charges on the police officers involved in the operation. It is fair to say that although maybe the public feel it's time to draw a line under it, this will run and run.
SIEGEL: Richard Edwards, thanks a lot for talking with us.
Mr. EDWARDS: Thank you.
SIEGEL: That's reporter Richard Edwards of the Daily Telegraph speaking to us from London. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
