Attorney For Officer Shooter’s Son Wants His Client Released

June 9, 2016 10:20 PM

No-bill decision, followed by re-file of charges – now questions of civil rights violations

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – The attorney for the 21-year-old man a Grand Jury declined to indict on attempted capital murder charges stemming from the shooting of Fort Worth police officer Matthew Pearce wants his client released from jail.

Attorney Brian Walker represents Ed McIver Junior. McIver Jr. and his father ran from police as officer’s tried to pull over and arrest Ed McIver Sr. in March 2016. His father was shot and killed in a shootout with police after authorities said McIver Sr. fired shots at officer Pearce.

Walker asked a judge Thursday afternoon to consider releasing McIver Jr. from jail. He isn’t happy the Tarrant County DA’s office re-filed charges of attempted capital murder and drug possession right after a Grand Jury decided not to indict his client in the shooting.

“The sheriff is holding him there I believe illegally,” Walker told the judge Thursday afternoon. The jail has housed McIver Jr. since March 15 on a $2 million bond. In court the judge set a hearing in McIver Jr.’s case for 9 a.m. Monday.

Walker filed court papers asking for an examining trial, essentially trying to determine if there’s probable cause to continue holding McIver Jr. in jail.

“They don’t have evidence that he directly fired at the officer. They’re going to have to have some evidence that proves that he was an accomplice to his father, that he assisted him in someway in that particular criminal act,” said former chief of the felony trial division at the Dallas County DA’s office, Toby Shook.

Shook said the Tarrant County DA’s decision is legal, but rarely used.

“It was our practice, if a case was no billed by a grand jury, you didn’t re-submit that case unless you had new evidence generally,” said Shook.

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