Jury acquits officer in Maryland county’s first police murder charge in shooting handcuffed man

The Associated Press

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (AP) — A Maryland jury has acquitted a police officer who had been charged with murder after shooting a handcuffed man. The jury acquitted Michael Owen Jr. on Wednesday of all four charges he faced, including second-degree murder, first-degree assault, voluntary manslaughter and misconduct in office. It took the jury less than two hours of deliberations to deliver the not guilty verdict. Owen fatally shot the handcuffed man while he was sitting in the front seat of the officer’s police cruiser in 2020. Owen’s attorneys claimed at trial that he acted in self defense during a struggle in which William Green, 43, tried to grab his gun.