Protests held in Pittsburgh after cop cleared in shooting
By MARK SCOLFORO Associated Press
PITTSBURGH (AP) — The father of a slain black teenager pleaded for peace Saturday after the acquittal of a white police officer triggered an apparent retaliatory shooting at the defense attorney’s office and touched off protests in the streets of Pittsburgh.
Police put officers on 12-hour shifts until further notice.
The verdict late Friday in the deadly shooting of 17-year-old Antwon Rose II angered his family and civic leaders and prompted hundreds of people to gather Saturday afternoon at an intersection called Freedom Corner in the Hill District neighborhood, the historic center of black cultural life in Pittsburgh. One man held a sign with the names of black men killed by police around the U.S.
“It’s very painful to see what happened, to sit there and deal with it,” Rose’s father, Antwon Rose Sr., told the crowd. “I just don’t want it to happen to our city no more.”
Afterward, he told reporters: “I want peace, period, all the way around. … Just because there was violence doesn’t mean that we counter that with violence.”
The mostly white crowd then marched through downtown Pittsburgh and other city neighborhoods, periodically blocking streets as they chanted, “Who did this? Police did this!” The protest soon moved onto the University of Pittsburgh campus. Police reported no immediate arrests or injuries.
Early Saturday, five to eight shots were fired into the building where the officer’s attorney, Patrick Thomassey, works, police in nearby Monroeville said. No one was hurt. Police said they had been staking out the place as a precaution, and the gunfire erupted after they left to answer another call around midnight.
Former East Pittsburgh police Officer Michael Rosfeld had been charged with homicide for shooting Rose as the unarmed teenager ran away from a traffic stop in June. Rosfeld testified that he thought Rose or another suspect had a gun pointed at him and that he fired to protect himself and the community.
“I hope that man never sleeps at night,” Rose’s mother, Michelle Kenney, said of Rosfeld after the verdict, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I hope he gets as much sleep as I do, which is none.”
Rose’s family is now pressing ahead with a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Rosfeld and East Pittsburgh, a small municipality about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from downtown Pittsburgh, where the trial was held.
Attorney S. Lee Merritt, who represents Rose’s mother in the litigation, said the verdict was based on Pennsylvania law regarding the use of force that he considers unconstitutional.
“The protest is an appropriate response to injustice,” Merritt said, adding that he believes the state law is why jurors reached their verdict of acquittal.
He also called the shots at Rosfeld’s attorney’s office “an act of cowardice and barbarism that does nothing but perpetuate the stereotypes often used to justify police brutality.”
Thomassey told reporters after the verdict that Rosfeld is “a good man, he is.” The defense attorney said he hopes the city remains calm and “everybody takes a deep breath and gets on with their lives.”
The leaders of two major Pittsburgh charities issued a statement expressing “shock and outrage” over the verdict.
“Pittsburgh now sadly joins a disturbing and ever-growing catalogue of cases across the United States where law enforcement or security officials have walked free after the killings of young black men under questionable circumstances,” wrote Maxwell King, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Foundation, and Grant Oliphant, president of the Heinz Endowments.
“We have asked the question, ‘Would Antwon Rose be alive today if he had been white?’ We, his family and African American community leaders believe that more than likely he would be.”
Pittsburgh was in the spotlight less than five months ago, when a gunman ranting about Jews killed 11 people at a synagogue.
Rose was riding in an unlicensed taxi that had been involved in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier when Rosfeld pulled the car over and shot the teenager in the back, arm and side of the face. Neither Rose nor another teen in the taxi was holding a weapon when the officer opened fire, though two guns were later found in the vehicle.
Rosfeld had worked for the East Pittsburgh Police Department for only a few weeks and was sworn in just hours before the shooting.
The 12-person jury — including three black members — saw video of the fatal confrontation. The jury took less than four hours to reach a verdict.
Prosecutor Jonathan Fodi argued that the video showed there was no threat to the officer. But a defense expert testified Rosfeld was within his rights to use deadly force to stop suspects he thought had been involved in a shooting.
The prosecution did not call its own use-of-force expert, a decision the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania questioned. But Mike Manko, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said prosecutors were confident they had what they needed to make their case.
Shortly before the traffic stop, another person in the taxi, Zaijuan Hester, rolled down a window and shot at two men on the street, hitting one in the abdomen. Hester, 18, pleaded guilty last week to aggravated assault and firearms violations. He said he, not Rose, did the shooting.
Prosecutors had charged Rosfeld with an open count of homicide, meaning the jury had the option of convicting him of murder or manslaughter.
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Associated Press journalists Michael Rubinkam in northeastern Pennsylvania, Ramesh Santanam in Pittsburgh and Keith Srakocic in Pittsburgh contributed to this story.
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This story has been corrected to show that shots were fired into the lawyer’s building early Saturday, not early Friday.

Barr preparing a summary of Mueller report’s key conclusions
By ERIC TUCKER, MICHAEL BALSAMO and CHAD DAY Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr scoured special counsel Robert Mueller’s confidential report on the Russia investigation with his advisers, deciding how much Congress and the American public will get to see about the two-year probe into President Donald Trump and Moscow’s efforts to elect him.
Barr was on pace to release his first summary of Mueller’s findings on Sunday, people familiar with the process said.
The attorney general’s decision on what to finally disclose seems almost certain to set off a fight with congressional Democrats, who want access to all of Mueller’s findings — and supporting evidence — on whether Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the election and whether the president later sought to obstruct the investigation.
No announcement was expected Saturday as Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and oversaw much of his work, analyzed the report and labored to condense it into a summary letter of main conclusions. Mueller delivered his full report to Barr on Friday.
The Russia investigation has shadowed Trump for nearly two years and has ensnared his family and close advisers. And no matter the findings in Mueller’s report, the probe already has illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts.
Barr has said he wants to release as much as he can under the law. That decision will require him to weigh the Justice Department’s longstanding protocol of not releasing negative information about people who aren’t indicted against the extraordinary public interest in a criminal investigation into the president and his campaign. Democrats are already citing the department’s recent precedent of norm-breaking disclosures, including during the Hillary Clinton email investigation, to argue that they’re entitled to Mueller’s entire report and the underlying evidence he collected.
Even with the details still under wraps, Friday’s end to the 22-month probe without additional indictments by Mueller was welcome news to some in Trump’s orbit who had feared a final round of charges could target more Trump associates or members of the president’s family.
The White House sought to keep its distance, saying Saturday it had not been briefed on the report. Trump, who has relentlessly criticized Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt,” went golfing and was uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter. Not so one of his guests, musician Kid Rock, who posted a picture with the president and the tweet, “Another great day on the links! Thank you to POTUS for having me and to EVERYONE at Trump International for being so wonderful. What a great man, so down to earth and so fun to be with!!”
In a possible foreshadowing of expected clashes between the Justice Department and Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to members that Barr’s offer to provide a summary of principal conclusions was “insufficient.” Pelosi later told Democrats on a conference call that she would reject any kind of classified briefing on the report and that the information must be provided to Congress in a way that would allow lawmakers to discuss it publicly.
The conclusion of Mueller’s investigation does not remove legal peril for the president. He faces a separate Justice Department investigation in New York into hush money payments during the campaign to two women who say they had sex with him years before the election. He’s also been implicated in a potential campaign finance violation by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who says Trump asked him to arrange the transactions. Federal prosecutors, also in New York, have been investigating foreign contributions made to the president’s inaugural committee.
As for Mueller, with no details released at this point, it was not known whether he concluded the campaign colluded with the Kremlin to tip the election in favor of the celebrity businessman. A Justice Department official did confirm that Mueller was not recommending any further indictments, meaning the investigation had ended without any public charges of a criminal conspiracy, or of obstruction of justice by the president.
In a letter to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the congressional Judiciary committees, Barr noted on Friday that the department had not denied any request from Mueller, something Barr would have been required to disclose to ensure there was no political inference. Trump was never interviewed in person by Mueller’s team, but submitted answers to questions in writing.
In a Saturday conference call to strategize on next steps, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a warning for his fellow Democrats, some of whom have pinned high political hopes on Mueller’s findings: “Once we get the principal conclusions of the report, I think it’s entirely possible that that will be a good day for the president and his core supporters.”
A handful of Trump associates and family members have been dogged by speculation of possible wrongdoing. They include Donald Trump Jr., who had a role in arranging a Trump Tower meeting at the height of the 2016 campaign with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was interviewed at least twice by Mueller’s prosecutors.
All told, Mueller charged 34 people, including the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and three Russian companies. Twenty-five Russians were indicted on charges related to election interference, accused either of hacking Democratic email accounts during the campaign or of orchestrating a social media campaign that spread disinformation on the internet.
Five Trump aides pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller and a sixth, longtime confidant Roger Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to Congress and engaged in witness tampering.
Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel, said Saturday that the case of former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates will be handed off to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Gates was a key cooperator in Mueller’s probe and court papers show he continues to help with several other federal investigations.
Justice Department legal opinions have held that sitting presidents may not be indicted. But many Democrats say Trump should not be immune from a public accounting of his behavior. Though the department typically does not disclose negative information about people who are not indicted, officials have at times broken from that protocol.
Former FBI Director James Comey famously held a July 2016 news conference in which he criticized Hillary Clinton as “extremely careless” in her use of a private email server but said the FBI would not recommend charges. The Justice Department also took the extraordinary step of making available to lawmakers the details of a secret surveillance warrant obtained on a Trump campaign aide in the early days of the Russia probe.
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Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire in New York, Deb Riechmann in Palm Beach, Florida, and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

Verdict reached in trial of white cop who killed black teen
By RAMESH SANTANAM Associated Press
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A jury reached a verdict  of  not guilty Friday night in the trial of a white former police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teen fleeing a high-stakes traffic stop outside Pittsburgh.
Former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld fired on 17-year-old Antwon Rose II last summer outside Pittsburgh in a killing that sparked weeks of unrest.
Jurors informed the court Friday night that they had reached a verdict of not guilty.
Rosfeld, 30, shot Rose in the back, arm and side of the face after pulling over an unlicensed taxi that had been used in a drive-by shooting. Rosfeld ordered the driver to the ground, but Rose and another passenger got out and began running away.
Jurors saw video of the fatal confrontation, which showed Rose falling to the ground after being hit.
Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Fodi declared in his closing argument Friday that Rosfeld had acted as “judge, jury and executioner.”
Rosfeld could have waited for backup or given chase, Fodi said, adding that teenagers sometimes run from police. “Is it foolish? Yes. Does it deserve death? No. Is it reasonable? Absolutely not,” Fodi said. “There was no need to use deadly force.”
Rosfeld told the jury he thought Rose or the other passenger had a gun. The defense said the shooting was justified because Rosfeld believed he was in danger and couldn’t wait for other officers to get there.
“He’s a sitting duck,” defense attorney Patrick Thomassey told jurors in his closing, asking them to consider “the standard of what a reasonable police officer would do under the circumstances.”
The defense asked Judge Alexander Bicket to acquit Rosfeld, but the judge declined.
“We believe the jury has enough information to arrive at the right conclusion: that Antwon Rose was murdered,” the family’s attorney, S. Lee Merritt, told The Associated Press in a courthouse hallway. Merritt said “it’s pretty obvious” Rose was not a threat to Rosfeld.
Rose had been riding in the front seat of the cab when another occupant in the back, Zaijuan Hester, rolled down a window and shot at two men on the street, hitting one in the abdomen. A few minutes later, Rosfeld spotted their car, which had its rear windshield shot out, and pulled it over.
Hester, 18, pleaded guilty last week to aggravated assault and firearms violations. Hester told a judge that he, not Rose, did the shooting.
At the beginning of the trial’s fourth day Friday, a defense expert, retired Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Clifford W. Jobe Jr., returned to the stand and repeated his belief that Rosfeld followed his training when he shot Rose.
Under cross-examination, Jobe agreed with Fodi that a police officer can lie, violate the law or be unreasonable. He also agreed with the prosecutor that, in some circumstances, it is reasonable to refrain from shooting or to disengage from a situation.
But Jobe said that Rosfeld was within his rights to use “deadly force” to stop fleeing suspects he thought had been involved in a shooting.
“What did Michael Rosfeld do wrong on June the 19th?” asked Thomassey, the defense attorney.
“I don’t think he did anything wrong. He was following his training,” Jobe replied.
A day earlier, Rosfeld testified that he thought Rose or the other passenger had pointed a weapon at him. Neither teen was holding a gun at the time, though two guns were later found in the car.
“It happened very quickly,” Rosfeld said. “My intent was to end the threat that was made against me.”
Prosecutors say Rosfeld has given inconsistent statements about the shooting, including whether he thought Rose was armed.
A prosecution witness has said that after the shooting, he heard Rosfeld say repeatedly, “I don’t know why I shot him. I don’t know why I fired.” Another prosecution witness said he heard the officer ask, “Why did he do that? Why did he take that out of his pocket?”
In his closing, Fodi said the video evidence shows “there was no threat” to Rosfeld, who he said “squared up” on the taxi “with plenty of time to do something about it.”
“We don’t shoot first and ask questions later,” Fodi said.
But Thomassey said prosecutors did not produce a single witness “to say Michael Rosfeld did not do what he was supposed to do. They knew he was doing it by the book.”
One juror, a white woman who had taken copious notes, was dismissed from the panel Friday and replaced with a white man. No reason was given for her dismissal. The jury now consists of seven men and five women. There are three black jurors.
Also Friday, Bicket lifted a gag order he imposed on the parties in the case. Thomassey made the request, saying that while he and prosecutors had abided by the judge’s order, the attorney for Rose’s family had not. Merritt released a letter to the media this week that Rose’s mother wrote to prosecutors urging them to show what a “kind, loving and funny” person her son was.

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