title:  Colorado Police Officer Convicted Of Murder In Jack Jacquez Shooting (VIDEO)
text: On Thursday, June 23, 2016, a Colorado jury convicted former Rocky Ford police officer James Ashby of second-degree murder. Ashby s conviction stems from the 2014 killing of 27-year-old Jack Jacquez.Jacquez was skateboarding near his home in Rocky Ford when he was stopped by Ashby. The on-duty officer followed Jacquez to his house. He shot him in the back as his mother was opening the door.While Ashby claimed that Jacquez had  mouthed off  to him during the stop, witness testimony contradicted his version of events.As New York Daily News reported in February, 2015:The brother of a police officer who was on a ride-along with Ashby that night, Kyle Moore, contradicted Ashby s account. He said Jacquez did not talk back to Ashby and walked straight from the street to a side entrance to his house, where his mother opened the door for him.Ashby also claimed that Jacquez produced a baseball bat from the house and attempted to swing it at him. The coroner s report showed that the man could not have been in an attack position when Ashby fired his weapon.Ashby was the first Colorado police officer to be charged with murder associated with an on-duty incident in more than 20 years.On the same day the Colorado jury convicted Ashby, two other widely recognized cases involving law enforcement officers were also decided. Those cases had much different outcomes.On Thursday, Baltimore police officer Caesar Goodson Jr. was acquitted of all charges associated with the in-custody death of 27-year old Freddie Gray.The news of Goodson s acquittal was followed by news that a Texas judge declined to charge officer Eric Casebolt for his actions at a pool party last summer. A video showing Casebolt throwing a Black teen to the ground and drawing his gun on two other teens during a pool party in McKinney, Texas went viral last June.While Ashby s acquittal suggests that we re making progress toward getting criminal cops off the streets and holding them accountable for their actions, the Goodson and Casebolt decisions show there is still a long way to go.Here s more on this story from KOAA. KOAA.com | Continuous News | Colorado Springs and PuebloFeatured image via wikimedia commons