It took a jury less than an hour of deliberation to acquit a Black man who was “racially profiled and falsely accused” near his home last year, according to a California public defender’s office.
As Trevon Morgan, 21, was walking to a nearby store from his San Francisco home the morning of Aug. 24, a white man “who appeared to be unhoused and mentally ill started yelling racial slurs and following him,” the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office said in a Jan. 17 news release.
When Morgan left the store, the man continued, leading to an argument, attorneys said.
As the pair argued, a bystander, who is also white, drove up beside them and took the side of the man yelling at Morgan, attorneys said.
“The bystander called the police and claimed that Morgan threatened to kill him and rob him, and that Morgan dented his car,” attorneys said.
One of the police officer’s body-camera footage showed “that even the officer expressed skepticism about the bystander’s claims,” attorneys said.
In the footage, attorneys said the bystander also tells the officer the damage on his car was from an unrelated incident.
Morgan, however, was arrested and subsequently charged by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office with “felony attempted robbery of the bystander’s reading glasses,” attorneys said.
San Francisco police did not immediately return McClatchy News’ request for comment.
The district attorney’s office declined to comment on Morgan’s acquittal in a Jan. 19 email to McClatchy News.
Morgan was released from custody under the condition he “wear an ankle monitor and be subject to home detention,” according to attorneys.
As he awaited trial for five months, attorneys said “Morgan lost his job as a security guard and was not able to provide for his pregnant girlfriend.”
A jury acquitted Morgan on Jan. 11 after 45 minutes of deliberation, attorneys said.
“The allegations in this case were reminiscent of other ‘Karen’ cases where someone called the police on a Black person who had done nothing wrong,” Deputy Public Defender Ilona Yañez, who represented Morgan, said in the release.
Yañez said the bystander racially profiled Morgan and “assumed the worst about him and falsely accused him of wrongdoing based on the color of his skin.”
Further, Yañez added, police and prosecutors took up the “case without any corroborating evidence of a crime.”
“When prosecutors bring charges and are unwilling to look at the merit of the evidence, it is severely damaging to the accused and a waste of public resources,” San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said in the release.
