In a letter to the police chief of New Hope, a town about 40 miles northeast of Philadelphia, District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub of Bucks County said the shooting of the man, Brian Riling, “was neither justified, nor criminal, but was excused.”
The officer violated a department rule that a Taser be worn on the opposite hip from a firearm, but he “did not possess the criminal mental state required to be guilty of a crime under state law,” Weintraub said in a statement that quoted his letter to the police chief.
The statement refers to a Pennsylvania law that states that a person cannot be charged with a crime “if he makes a mistake as a matter of fact for which there is a reasonable explanation or excuse.”
The officer, who was not identified because charges were not filed, did violate the department’s policy by wearing the Taser on his right side, in front of his firearm, the district attorney’s investigation found. Officers are required to wear Tasers on their non-dominant side, known as the “cross-draw position.”
Video of the March 3 incident, released by the district attorney’s office, showed Riling entering a holding cell and removing his belt in response to an officer’s instructions. In the process, “a white, rectangular object consistent with a drug baggie” fell from his waistband to the floor, Weintraub said. When Riling moved to cover the object with his foot, an officer pushed him onto a bench in the cell, resulting in a skirmish.
A second officer entered the cell and yelled “Taser!” before shooting Riling in the torso with his gun.
Riling was taken to a hospital in critical condition, where he spent several days before being released, according to the district attorney’s statement.
The officer who fired the gun was on paid administrative leave until he retired from the police department, three days before the district attorney released his findings.
“Given the totality of circumstances, the officer would have been justified in using his Taser to regain control of Riling inside the holding cell,” Weintraub said, “as the officer had a reasonable belief the scuffle posed a danger to his fellow officer.”
On the day of the shooting, Riling was in police custody on charges of intimidation and retaliation against a victim, simple assault and related offenses from an incident on March 3, Weintraub said in his statement. He was also charged with burglarizing the same victim’s home.
The officer “was aware of these two criminal episodes ahead of the holding cell incident, and had himself heard threats of violence made by Riling during a phone call between Riling and the previously mentioned victim,” Weintraub said.
William Goldman, a lawyer representing the officer, told The Intelligencer newspaper that the officer had acted “in defense of a fellow officer with a large man.”
The New Hope Police Department thanked the district attorney’s office for the investigation in a statement posted online.
Chief Michael V. Cummings of the New Hope police could not be reached for comment Sunday night.
Police departments have a complicated past with Taser stun guns, which shoot electrified barbs instead of bullets. The devices became a popular tool for police officers in the 2000s as a less-lethal weapon, like pepper spray or batons.
But some studies have shown there is no evidence that the adoption of Tasers reduces the use of firearms by police officers. And Tasers, too, can be deadly.
Cases of officers mistaking a Taser for a gun are rare, said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina who studies the use of force.
It demonstrates that the officer isn’t “well-trained or is so hyped up he or she doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“In my estimation,” he said, “there’s no real excuse for it.”
In 2009, a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer fatally shot a young, unarmed man on New Year’s Day, while the man, Oscar Grant III, was lying face down on a transit platform. The officer said the killing was an accident and that he had mistaken his firearm for his Taser. He was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
In 2016, a former volunteer sheriff’s deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was convicted of killing a suspect when he accidentally fired his handgun instead of a Taser.
Robert J. Louden, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at Georgian Court University and a former chief hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department, said Tasers are normally worn on the non-gun side of an officer’s belt to “minimize the probability or the possibility of drawing the wrong weapon.”
“In the heat of battle,” he said, “people do things that turn out not to be what they wanted to do.”
Using a Taser to “temporarily disable” a person is preferable to reaching for a gun, he said.
But, he added, the question remains: “Why do you say ‘Taser’ and then use your right hand to shoot somebody with a gun?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.