Justice For Stephon Clark

In the late evening of March 18, 2018, Stephon Clark, a 22-year old African-American man, was shot and killed in Meadowview, Sacramento, California by Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet, two officers of the Sacramento Police Department in the backyard of his grandmother's house while he had a phone in his hand. The encounter was filmed by police video cameras and by a Sacramento County Sheriff's Department helicopter which was involved in observing Clark on the ground and in directing ground officers to the point at which the shooting took place.

The officers stated that they shot Clark, firing 20 rounds, believing that he had pointed a gun at them. Police found only a cell phone on him. While the Sacramento County Coroner's autopsy report concluded that Clark was shot seven times, including three shots to the right side of the back, the pathologist hired by the Clark family stated that Clark was shot eight times, including six times in the back.

The shooting caused large protests in Sacramento, and Clark's family members have rejected the initial police description of the events leading to Clark's death. The Sacramento Police Department placed the officers on paid administrative leave and opened a use of force investigation. Police have stated they are confident that Clark was the suspect responsible for breaking windows in the area prior to the encounter.

Nearly a year after Sacramento police fatally shot Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old unarmed black man who died in his grandmother's backyard, District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert announced on Saturday that the two officers who killed him will not face criminal charges.

In a news conference that lasted more than an hour, the district attorney walked the public through evidence gathered by investigators and discussed the law that governs when police officers are justified in using deadly force.

"The law requires that we judge the reasonableness of an officer's actions based upon the circumstances confronting them at that moment of time," Schubert began, speaking to a packed room of reporters inside a building across the street from her office's headquarters.

In the end, she said, it was clear that Sacramento police officers Jared Robinet and Terrence Mercadal did not commit a crime.

"We know [Clark] fled from the officers after being told to stop, we know that he continued into the backyard, and we know that when he continued into the backyard, he rounded that corner, and he went to the end of that yard and he turned around," said Schubert, describing the moments leading up to the fatal shooting. "He didn't continue to flee. He turned around and he was in a shooting stance with his arms extended."

The officers involved in the fatal shooting of Stephon Clark were responding to a 911 call that a man wearing a black hoodie was breaking car windows in a Sacramento neighborhood. Minutes later, Clark lay dead in the backyard of his grandmother's home. The attorney general's decision also created lots of disappointment for Clark's supporters.

Clark's death sparked weeks of demonstrations and immediate calls for the district attorney to bring criminal charges against the officers. After the police department released body-camera videos from the shooting, demonstrators spilled into the streets of downtown Sacramento, at one point bringing traffic on a major freeway to a stop and, later, blocking thousands of fans from entering a Sacramento Kings game.

After the district attorney's announcement, the Clark family reacted with anger, accusing Schubert of a "smear campaign."

"I don't care if he was a criminal. None of that matters," Clark's mother, Sequette Clark, said outside the home where her son was killed. "What matters is how those officers came with lethal force around a corner, on a vandalism call, after my son and gunned him down — when he had nothing but a cellphone in his hand."