MONTGOMERY, AL — Monday, an Alabama judge said that a police officer who shot an armed Black man who was standing in his own front yard did not prove that he was acting in self-defence. This was because body camera footage showed the officer firing 18 bullets less than two seconds after identifying himself as a police officer.
Mac Marquette, who is 25 years old, is charged with murder in the shooting death of Steve Perkins just before 2 a.m. on September 29, 2023, while Perkins was at home in Decatur with a tow truck driver to take back his pickup truck.
During a self-defence protection hearing, Morgan County circuit judge Charles Elliott turned down Marquette’s request to throw out the case. The new trial date is set for June, but the defence can go to the state high court and disagree with Elliott’s choice.
People who use deadly force in Alabama are not prosecuted as long as they are in a place they are legally allowed to be and have a good reason to think they are in danger. This is called the “stand your ground” rule.
Elliott wrote that when Marquette shot Perkins, the jury will have to decide if he was “acting in his capacity as and officer of the law.”
He said, “This case’s door swings on this hinge.”
Lien papers presented as evidence show that Perkins’ creditor gave tow truck driver Caleb Combs permission to take back the truck because Perkins was months behind on his payments. But the judge said Marquette couldn’t help Combs because of an Alabama law that says police can’t be involved in a seizure without a court order, which the officers didn’t have.
At a previous meeting, the judge heard different accounts of why Marquette, Williams, and Mukadam were at Perkins’ house in the first place.
Williams and Mukadam testified that Marquette, Mukadam, and Williams were sent to help Combs after Perkins pointed a gun at him when the tow truck driver first tried to take Perkins’ car. Combs ran into the police at a nearby tow yard.
Before going back to take back Perkins’ car a second time, Combs waited for the three cops to quietly set up around his house. When Combs came back, all three cops were hidden from Perkins’ front door. Perkins then came out of his house with his gun and pointed it at Combs.
The video from Marquette’s body camera showed that he loaded all of his gun’s bullets in less than two seconds after coming out from hiding on the side of Perkins’ house. The judge wrote that even then, Marquette had some trouble because of Perkins’ truck bed. Elliott says that Perkins turned to face Marquette and tried to move his gun away from the officer for a short time before Marquette started shooting.
The order said that before Combs went back to Perkins’ house, the police should have told him “that he could bring anyone he wanted to help with the repossession, but it could not be law enforcement without due process.”
Both of the officers who were with Marquette said they were there to “keep the peace” and “investigate” Perkins for pulling a gun on Combs, which could have been a misdemeanour charge of threatening if Combs had chosen to file one.
According to the state agent who looked into the case, it was common for police to go with people to help keep things calm. But he also said that “visibility” is usually needed to keep the peace and that the way the police set up was “unusual” for looking into what was going on because that’s how they “do it at an active crime scene.”
Elliott said that Marquette was “acting outside the scope of his authority” to look into a menacing claim because there was no active crime scene when the police came. He was also a trespasser because he was waiting outside of Perkins’ house.
Elliott said it would be up to the jury to decide if Marquette was at Perkins’ house to keep things calm.
The decision said that the jury would have to decide if Marquette was acting in line with his duties as a police officer and if that means that a “reasonable” officer would have killed Perkins in the same situation.
