Former University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing will officially walk away after shooting and killing an unarmed black man after the voluntary manslaughter and murder charges against him were formally dropped Monday.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Leslie Ghiz dismissed the charges with prejudice, meaning that the criminal case has been dismissed permanently. Nonetheless, U.S. Attorney Ben Glassman said that his office is still looking into the case for possible civil rights violations.
“My office will now undertake to acquire and review the evidence from the state court trials in order to assess whether there are possible federal civil rights offenses warranting investigation and potential prosecution,” Glassman said in a statement, although he gave no clue as to when that decision would be made.
Tensing’s attorney argued Monday for Ghiz to acquit the charges stemming from the 2015 shooting death of Sam Dubose, but Ghiz ended up dismissing the case and confirming that she would unseal certain documents in the case.
Prior to the dismissal of the case, two other juries failed to come to a unanimous verdict on the murder and voluntary manslaughter charges that Tensing faced. The most recent trial ended in a hung jury late June after six days of testimony, one day of closing arguments and almost 30 hours of deliberations over a five-day period.
Previously, prosecutor Joe Deters had confirmed that discussions with “multiple jurors” after the first two mistrials caused him not to seek another trial.
“They have, to a person, said ... that we will never get a conviction,” he said at a news conference last week, the Enquirer notes.
Read more at the Cincinnati Enquirer.