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Atkinson jury withdraws to decide verdict

The jury in the Dalian Atkinson case has retired in the Crown Court in Birmingham to debate its verdict on the charge of murder, or manslaughter, that the State’s Attorney’s Office has brought against police officer Benjamin Monk. The jury is made up of eleven members, after the forced withdrawal of one of them, who had to be confined due to contact with a covid-infected person.

Judge Melbourne Inman explained that the conclusion of the case is based on three questions to which the jury must answer with a “guilty” or “not guilty”. The first is whether Monk used excessive and illegal force to suppress the threat posed by the deranged conduct of the former Real Sociedad footballer. The second is whether the stun gun shooting or kicking caused the death of the deceased. The third is whether the policeman intended to kill him.

In his final argument, the Prosecutor’s Office confirmed his interpretation of what happened, ensuring that Monk exaggerated the threat posed by Atkinson afterwards, and that it was the anger he felt at the humiliation he would have suffered trying to control him in the first minutes that led him to discharge the stun gun into his body for 33 seconds and then kick him in the head.

Monk’s defense assured, however, that his client panicked at Atkinson’s presence. Although the policeman was a little taller, he saw the ex-footballer for the first time magnified by the front step at the door of his father’s house. The panic would be justified. Neighbors had called the police, fearing Atkinson would kill his father. That intense fear would also explain the excessive discharge.

Inexact science

To decide on the use of force and the cause of death, the jury has to delve into the minutes and content of the communications, and statements to the internal investigators, of the police officers who came to provide assistance to their colleagues. And also of the two paramedics of the ambulance that picked up Atkinson, with weak breathing and some movement of the eyes, lying on the asphalt in front of his father’s house, and delivered him to the hospital with cardiac arrest.

Pathologists have expressed divergent views on the degree of uncertainty in identifying the cause of death. Atkinson suffered from high blood pressure, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and acute kidney failure. He had suffered from pneumonia in previous days and a crisis in his mental health on the night of his death. But, until that hour, he walked, ran, threatened his father, proclaimed that he was the Messiah. The court has to decide whether the means used by Monk had a significant contribution to his death.

The jury must aspire to a unanimous decision, but the judge can accept a verdict by majority if no such consensus is reached after a few days. When there are eleven members of the jury, the majority must be ten to one. In case the differences are not resolved, the jury can be dissolved and the trial annulled. It would then be up to the Crown Prosecutor’s Office to decide whether to request a new trial.

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