Minneapolis Police Officer Receives Shorter Sentence in Fatal Shooting
Mohamed Noor shot a resident who had called 911 seeking help. His conviction was seen as a rare example of an officer facing serious consequences for an unjustified shooting.
Mohamed Noor, a former Minneapolis police officer who in 2017 killed a woman who had called for help, was resentenced on Thursday to four years and nine months in prison for manslaughter, a reduction of more than seven years from his earlier sentence after the state’s highest court vacated his murder conviction.
When jurors convicted Mr. Noor of third-degree murder in Justine Ruszczyk’s death, it was held up as a rare example of an American police officer facing significant consequences for an unjustified shooting. A judge sentenced him to more than 12 years in prison.
But when the Minnesota Supreme Court threw out that murder conviction last month, while leaving in place a second-degree manslaughter conviction, the case underscored the challenges in prosecuting officers.
In announcing the new prison term for Mr. Noor — which was below the 10-year maximum but at the high end of state sentencing guidelines — Judge Kathryn L. Quaintance alluded to the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the continuing distrust between many residents and officers.
“Since we last met, another person has died at the hands of the police,” said Judge Quaintance of the state district court. “The community exploded. Another police officer has been on trial for murder.”
Ms. Ruszczyk, 40, a yoga instructor who had moved to Minneapolis from Australia, called 911 twice on a summer night four years ago asking for help after hearing a strange noise behind her home. She thought it was possibly a woman screaming or being sexually assaulted, and she wanted the police to investigate.
Mr. Noor and his partner were sent to the area. Testimony at Mr. Noor’s trial suggested that Ms. Ruszczyk, who was unarmed and wearing pajamas, went outside in the darkened alley to talk to the officers, and startled them. Mr. Noor, seated in his police cruiser, fired a single, fatal shot into her chest.
Mr. Noor’s defense lawyers asked for a sentence of just under three and a half years, at the low end of state guidelines, and described how their client had joined the police force seeking to build trust with fellow Somali Americans in the city.
Prosecutors requested a term of almost five years, which the judge issued. Mr. Noor has already spent about two and a half years in custody and will receive credit for that time.
During the hearing on Thursday, Don Damond, who was Ms. Ruszczyk’s fiancé, spoke of her commitment to other people and her capacity for forgiveness.
“I have no doubt she would have forgiven you, Mohamed, for your inability to manage your own emotions that night, which resulted in you pulling that trigger,” Mr. Damond said on a video conference. “Justine was and is still my greatest teacher. Given her example, I want you to know that I forgive you, Mohamed. All I ask is that you use this experience to do good for other people.”
Mr. Noor said in court that he was “deeply grateful for Mr. Damond’s forgiveness” and “deeply sorry for the pain that I’ve caused that family.”
When jurors convicted Mr. Noor of murder in 2019, he became the first Minnesota police officer in decades to be found guilty in an on-duty fatal shooting. But a Minnesota Supreme Court opinion issued last month focused on the details of the “depraved mind” murder statute on which Mr. Noor was convicted, and found that his actions did not fit the definition of that crime because he was targeting a single person.
After Ms. Ruszczyk’s death, protesters gathered by the Black Lives Matter organization, the police chief resigned and Minneapolis officials promised to reform their police department.
In Australia there was outrage at this extreme response by police, and just how common it seems to be. Ms. Damond was one of more than 500 people shot and killed by the police in the United States that year. And even when population differences are taken into account, that is far more than in Australia. The number of people killed by the police in the United States is about five times the 105 killed by the police in Australia from 1989 through 2011, according to an extensive government study that is more comprehensive than anything compiled by law enforcement officials in the United States, where police departments are not necessarily required to report fatal shootings to any central authority.
Put another way, about four people are fatally shot by the Australian police each year, or one per six million people; in the United States, it is about one in 333,000, and that disparity is integral to the sense of bewilderment and fury in Australia.
Vince Hurley, a criminologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, said the shooting partly reflected what he called American law enforcement’s aggressive training and reliance on firearms.
In Australia, he said, “the reason there have been less shootings is police now have a wider range of nonlethal weapons.” Pepper spray has been standard since the early 2000s, he said. Tasers have been deployed extensively over the past several years.
“When I joined, you had a gun and a baton and handcuffs,” he said, referring to 29 years with the police in New South Wales. “To use a gun might be overkill, but you had no choice because the baton wasn’t going to be sufficient, and the handcuffs were only once they were restrained.”
Many American police forces have also put Tasers and pepper spray in the hands of officers and have added training to help officers better assess threats and de-escalate potentially violent situations. Training and the culture in many police departments, however, still tend to focus on forcible responses to potential threats, and usually that means guns.
Many American officers, even in small towns, often speak of their deep fear of being shot.
“We’re trained for Armageddon,” said one officer in rural Connecticut when The New York Times sent reporters to ride along with the police across the United States last year. “We’re trained for the worst.”
In comparison, Mr. Hurley said: “Here in Australia, we wouldn’t do as much officer survival training. We would have an equal amount of focus on sociology, psychology and awareness of human behavior.”
Australians have also seen their government successfully manage mass shootings with public policy. After a gunman massacred 35 people in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur in 1996, a public outcry spurred a national consensus to severely restrict firearms. The tightened laws, which were standardized across Australia, are more stringent than those of any state in the United States.
As a result, while this is a country where guns are deeply tied to history — where police officers have carried guns since the First Fleet from England arrived — there is little tolerance for the American idea that possession of guns should be treated more as a right than a threat.