SANTA FE, N.M. — A former police officer was found guilty Wednesday of voluntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black man during a 2022 confrontation at a New Mexico gas station.
Las Cruces police Officer Brad Lunsford’s verdict in a jury trial is the latest outcome in cases that prosecutors have linked to systematic brutality against Black people by members of law enforcement, nearly five years after the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Lunsford, who is white, had pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Jose Coronado, said he will ask the judge to review the verdict for its legal sufficiency.
“While I respect the jury’s verdict, I am extremely disappointed in it. I don’t believe the state met its burden,” he said in an email to The Associated Press.
Prosecutors said he shot Presley Eze at point-blank range in a scuffle after police responded to a 911 call from a gas station attendant who reported that Eze stole beer. Eze allegedly placed his hand on a second officer’s stun gun before being shot.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez said the use of deadly force was not reasonable, noting that Lunsford immediately drew his service weapon and shot Eze in the back of the head.
“Today’s verdict reaffirms a fundamental principle: no one is above the law — not even those sworn to uphold it. Officer Lunsford’s actions were not just a tragic lapse in judgment; they were an egregious abuse of power that cost Presley Eze his life,” Torrez said in a statement after the verdict was announced.
The charge of voluntary manslaughter with a firearms enhancement carries a possible sentence of up to nine years in prison. Evidence at trial included police body camera video of the confrontation, in which police pulled Eze from a vehicle and the struggle ensued.
Philip Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said most fatal shootings by on-duty officers are determined to be legally justified under precedent stemming from two 1980s-era U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
“It is incredibly difficult for a prosecutor to obtain a conviction in a jury trial in one of these cases, and that’s because jurors are very reluctant to second guess the split-second, often life-or-death decisions of an on-duty police officer in a potentially violent street encounter,” Stinson said. “Anything can happen, but it’s only in the most egregious cases.”
Records compiled by Stinson, university colleagues and students through the Police Integrity Research Group show that 205 nonfederal law enforcement officers have been arrested on criminal charges of homicide or manslaughter over the past 20 years, resulting in 66 convictions, 27 of them for manslaughter or homicide.
“If you do get a conviction, it’s often for the lesser offense,” Stinson said.
More than 900 fatal shootings by on-duty state and local law enforcement officers typically take place each year in the U.S., he said
In pursuing a criminal charge against Lunsford, Torrez described the killing of Eze as a tragedy and “yet another example of poor police tactics resulting in an unjustifiable use of force to subdue an individual resisting arrest for the commission of a minor crime.”
