State v. Pagotto

The majority today decides that evidence pertaining to an incident, in which Preston Barnes was killed allegedly as the result of the violation, by police officer Stephen Pagotto (“the respondent”), of three police departmental guidelines; was legally insufficient to sustain the jury verdict convicting the respondent of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of reckless endangerment. To reach its decision, the majority purports not to have weighed the evidence, but to have neutrally concluded that the respondent’s conduct, judged from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, similarly…