Declaring that “I have a job to do and I'm doing it,” Albuquerque District Attorney Kari Brandenburg filed murder charges against two Albuquerque police officers in the shooting death of James Boyd, a mentally ill homeless camper, last spring in a case captured on a police video that shocked the nation, the Albuquerque Journal reports. The charges against officer Dominique Perez and retired Detective Keith Sandy appear to be the first against an Albuquerque officer for an on-duty fatal shooting in at least 50 years.
Sandy's attorney, Sam Bregman, said that charging the officers was a “terrible, terrible decision.” “There is not one shred of evidence to support any … criminal intent on the part of Keith Sandy,” Bregman said. Brandenburg said that neither the high-profile nature of the Boyd shooting with widespread airing of the video, nor recent cases around the U.S. where police were not charged by grand juries, entered into her decision to file the charges and proceed with a preliminary hearing.