Ex-BART cop accused of murder in rare group BART SHOOTING

Former Chandler police Officer Dan Lovelace turns around and kisses his wife, Trish Lovelace, after he was acquitted Friday, July 9, 2004, in Mesa, Ariz., of second-degree murder and endangerment charges in shooting death of an Ahwatukee woman. (AP Photo/Pool, Russell Gates) less Former Chandler police Officer Dan Lovelace turns around and kisses his wife, Trish Lovelace, after he was acquitted Friday, July 9, 2004, in Mesa, Ariz., of second-degree murder and endangerment charges in ... more Photo: Russell Gates, AP Photo: Russell Gates, AP Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Ex-BART cop accused of murder in rare group 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

It began as a routine radio call. A young woman, parked in a Walgreens drive-through lane with her year-old son in the backseat, was trying to pass a bogus prescription.

But as Officer Dan Lovelace steered his motorcycle toward the pharmacy in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler on Oct. 11, 2002, he was on his way to becoming something extraordinary: a cop accused of murder.

More than 350 people are killed in the United States each year by police officers. But prosecutors rarely file the ultimate charge, as they did against Lovelace and as they did against former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, who shot an unarmed man early New Year's Day on an Oakland train platform.

And if history is any guide, Mehserle has a good chance of avoiding serious punishment - just as Lovelace did after jurors accepted his account of why he fatally shot the drugstore suspect when she tried to drive off.

The Chronicle found just six cases in the past 15 years - not including the BART shooting - in which murder charges had been filed against officers who killed people in the line of duty.

The cases, involving a total of 13 officers, typically resulted in large civil payouts to victims' relatives. However, none of the officers was convicted of murder - and most were acquitted or cleared altogether.

One pleaded no contest to manslaughter and got three years in prison. Another pleaded no contest to misdemeanor negligent homicide.

Lovelace said in an interview that the woman he shot, 35-year-old Dawn Rae Nelson, had swerved her car toward him while fleeing, as if she intended to run him down. Prosecutors said Lovelace, who was on foot, had chased and gunned down a small-time suspect who could have been picked up later.

"You have to do your job," said Lovelace, 45, who was fired and is now a substitute teacher on Indian reservation land in Arizona. "She opened up a series of events. If she stopped and did nothing, like I told her to do in the beginning, she would be here today."

But Stacy Kray, a San Francisco environmental attorney whose cousin was married to Nelson, said Lovelace's acquittal sent a damaging message. "The lesson," she said, "is that if you want a free pass for murder, go get a badge."

Kray said most officers "deserve our respect, admiration and protection. But the bad ones deserve to be brought to justice."

Benefit of the doubt

Each murder case is unique. But people involved in the cases in which police officers have been charged echoed a common theme: Jurors are reluctant to second-guess officers whom they see as doing a dangerous job.

"There's almost always something else going on that involves police work that would arguably justify use of force," said Steve Schroering, an attorney who won acquittal for a Louisville, Ky., officer who killed a suspect in 2004.

"The question," he said, "becomes if too much force was used, which gets you into manslaughter or other lesser degrees of homicide."

Other common factors in acquittals included the presence of prominent defense attorneys hired through police unions; intense scrutiny of the victims and their role in sparking the confrontations; and intensive media coverage and community response, even rioting, that pressured prosecutors to file charges in cases that were difficult to win.

The cases were fought both inside and outside of court, attorneys said, with the location of the killing playing an important role.

For instance, when an officer was arraigned on a murder charge in predominantly white New Milford, Conn., hundreds of uniformed police officers lined up, at attention, across the street from the courthouse, said prosecutor John Connelly. The officer was white, while the man he shot was black.

Although the BART case also involves a white officer shooting a black man, the scene outside court has been quite different. Protesters chanted, "We are Oscar Grant!" - a reference to the victim in the Jan. 1 shooting - outside a recent bail hearing in Oakland for Mehserle.

Major difference: videos

The BART case has unique factors. Perhaps most important, Grant's shooting on the Fruitvale Station platform was video-recorded by fellow passengers. The footage, showing Grant face-down as he was shot, is expected to play a key role at Mehserle's trial.

"You can't understate the importance of the videotape," said John Burris, the attorney for Grant's family and a former prosecutor. "In the other cases, you don't have enough evidence to offset the testimony of the police officers."

In another major difference, Mehserle's attorney, Michael Rains, said the officer had accidentally killed Grant, mistaking his pistol for his Taser stun gun. The few officers elsewhere who have been accused of murder knew they were using deadly force and argued it was justified.

In any event, Mehserle must convince a jury he was justified in using force on Grant.

Reasonable fear

In conservative Maricopa County in Arizona, the question for jurors was whether Lovelace, who is Latino, had been reasonable in fearing for his life when he shot Nelson, a white mother of three from Phoenix who had struggled with addiction.

All agree on certain facts: Lovelace, the first officer at the drive-through, parked his motorcycle in front of Nelson, who had forged a prescription for a muscle relaxer.

He told her to turn the car off and put the keys on the dashboard, and he circled behind the car to call in the license plate number. Nelson complied initially, but then started the engine and accelerated, hitting the motorcycle.

Prosecutors said Lovelace had chased after Nelson on foot before killing her from behind. But Lovelace, in his testimony, placed himself farther forward in the drive-through lane at the moment Nelson tried to flee. He said he had feared he would be crushed by the car - which he said had actually struck him on the leg.

Former Maricopa County District Attorney Rick Romley, who filed the murder charge, recalled in an interview that he had considered Lovelace to be "extraordinarily reckless," firing despite the presence of Nelson's infant son. The boy was not hurt.

Tough case going in

Romley said he had wanted to send a message to police in his county, whose "aggressiveness was beginning to grow substantially."

He also said he had known he might fail.

"Jurors are just not inclined to convict (a police officer) unless you have some extraordinary circumstances," Romley said. "In our case, I thought we did."

He added, "Law enforcement has a lot of power, but it's not an absolute power."

Under forceful questioning by a Chandler internal affairs investigator a week after the shooting, Lovelace maintained that he had felt his life was in danger. But he also wept and, according to a transcript, said, "I messed up."

After a monthlong trial, jurors acquitted Lovelace in 2004. Some kept in touch with him afterward and tried to help him in his unsuccessful bid to get his job back.

"I felt really bad for the girl," said Lyn Caldwell, a 58-year-old Mesa resident who was an alternate juror. "Obviously, she was in need of some kind of help. Clearly, though, it just wasn't a case where he just shot her for the heck of it.

"I think there are good cops and bad cops," Caldwell said. "In this particular instance, I just feel his story was credible."

Settlement, but still hurt

Nelson's family received a confidential, multimillion-dollar settlement from the city of Chandler. But her husband, John Nelson, remains hurt by the verdict and said he has trouble explaining the case to people he meets.

"I'll say, 'She was murdered by a police officer,' but then I have to add, 'But he was acquitted,' " Nelson said. "It's like you lost the game."

Nelson said he was glad he lives "in a country where a police officer can be held responsible for his actions." But he said he remains convinced that Lovelace had killed his wife after he "lost his temper."

"If he sat in jail for three years or 10 years, it's not going to change anything," he said. "But it might help."

Lovelace, who said he had dreamed of being a cop as a child, said that going from officer to murder defendant had left him despondent, with the jury verdict lifting "a huge mound off my shoulders." He said he had lost weight after the shooting, couldn't sleep and often vomited.

"The depression is so bad that I wouldn't wish it on the worst suspect," he said. "It's like you were fighting the battle and you were left behind enemy lines."

Lovelace moved out of Chandler. He still wants to be a police officer, but nobody will hire him.

"There's a long road ahead," he said. "Life never comes back to where it was. You can wish and wish and wish, but there's no such thing as moving on."