Policeman in US shooting death bailed

[Gimli]

Policeman in US shooting death bailed

AAP
January 5, 2016, 7:18 pm

A white police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed black man after a South Carolina traffic stop has been released from jail on $US500,000 ($A696,000) bail.

Michael Slager, a North Charleston police officer who was sacked after the incident, has been in jail since his April arrest over the death of Walter Scott, 50.

The fatal shooting was caught on video by a bystander and intensified a national debate on police treatment of minorities.

Judge Clifton Newman set bail for Slager, 34, at $US500,000 on Monday, and the Charleston County Sheriff's Office said he was released from jail. Newman scheduled Slager's trial for October 31.

Slager will be under house arrest, said Justin Bamberg, a lawyer for the Scott family who reached a wrongful death and civil rights settlement with North Charleston and its police department late last year.

Bamberg said Scott's family was not happy that Slager had been granted bail.

"As far as him being out (of jail), it does hurt. It hurts a mother and father who have to go visit their child in a cemetery, he said.

"Everybody is just looking forward to and preparing for the trial."

The judge had denied Slager bail in September, saying that releasing him "would constitute an unreasonable danger to the community".

Defence lawyers argued that Slager was not a flight risk and had been violently attacked by Scott in a confrontation after Scott fled a routine traffic stop and Slager chased him.