Judge Overturns Conviction Of Florida Cop Who Shot Autistic Man’s Caretaker

Many of you will remem­ber this shock­ing abuse of pow­er and the wan­ton impuni­ty with which this cop shot and seri­ous­ly wound­ed an African-American man for absolute­ly no reason.

Well, a judge has now over­turned the con­vic­tion of the cop who opened fire

In 2016, we saw footage of care­tak­er Charles Kinsey and Arnaldo Rios-Soto being approached by a group of police, result­ing in Kinsey being shot after lay­ing on the ground with his hands in the air. The offi­cer who shot Kinsey, Jonathan Aledda, just had one of his charges over­turned by the South Florida appeals court, report­ed CNN.

Aledda’s con­vic­tion for mis­dem­neaor cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence was over­turned by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, report­ed CNN. His charge were con­sid­ered invalid because pros­e­cu­tors did not allow a SWAT com­man­der who trained Aledda to tes­ti­fy in the June 2019 trial.

From CNN:

In a state­ment emailed to CNN, Florida State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said the deci­sion is “dis­ap­point­ing to all who believed that this shoot­ing inci­dent was unnec­es­sary and incor­rect.” The office may ask the appeals court for a re-hear­ing, the state­ment continued.

Eric Schwartzreich and Anthony Bruno, attor­neys for Aledda, told CNN, “We look for­ward to the State drop­ping the charges or in the alter­na­tive to Mr. Aledda being found not guilty.”
“He took the shots because he believed that a hostage was in dan­ger,” Schwartzreich and Bruno said in a statement.

Aledda was one out of 13 offi­cers who respond­ed to the July 2016 inci­dent. Rios-Soto, who has devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, was in the mid­dle of an inter­sec­tion play­ing with a toy while Kinsey tried to bring him back inside. CNN report­ed the toy was a sil­ver truck but offi­cers respond­ed after a bystander report­ed it may have been a gun.

When offi­cers arrived, Kinsey laid on the ground with his hands raised to sig­nal he was non­threat­en­ing and announc­ing he was a care­tak­er. Aledda shot at Rios-Soto three times and hit Kinsey in the hip. In 2017, Aledda was charged with attempt­ed manslaugh­ter, one mis­de­meanor of cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence for shoot­ing Kinsey and one for endan­ger­ing Rios-Soto, per CNN’s report.

Aledda was acquit­ted of his oth­er cul­pa­ble neg­li­gence charges and manslaugh­ter charges in 2019, report­ed CNN.