Ultimately, it was a discarded piece of gum, casually spit on the ground in 2021, that held the key to solving the cold-case murder of a college student that had baffled authorities in Oregon for more than four decades.

Robert Arthur Plympton had been under police surveillance since authorities determined that year that he had “likely contributed” to a DNA profile developed from swabs taken from the body of Barbara Mae Tucker, who was 19 when she was killed on the Mount Hood Community. University campus in 1980.

On Friday, Mr. Plympton, 60, was found guilty of Ms. Tucker’s murder after a three-week trial in Portland, Oregon. According to The Oregonian, that reported on the research And Mr. Plympton’s convictionIt was the oldest cold case murder in Gresham, Oregon, east of Portland.

On the night of January 15, 1980, Ms. Tucker was expected in a class at college where she was studying business administration. She never arrived.

Students heading to class the next morning found her “partially clothed” body on a brush-covered slope near a campus parking lot, The Oregonian reported at the time. There were signs that Ms. Tucker had been sexually assaulted and that she had struggled with her attacker.

For decades, authorities were unable to identify a suspect or make an arrest.

The first step toward a break in the case came in 2000, when vaginal swabs taken during Ms. Tucker’s autopsy were sent to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab for analysis. Laboratory technicians were then able to develop a DNA profile from the smears.

In 2021, Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia company whose services include DNA-based forensics, identified Mr. Plympton as “a likely contributor to the unknown DNA profile developed in 2000,” according to the Multnomah County Prosecutor’s Office. said in a statement. It was not clear how the DNA connection was made; The Public Prosecution Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Detectives from the Gresham Police Department discovered that Mr. Plympton lived in Troutdale, Ore., east of Portland and northeast of Gresham, and began surreptitiously monitoring him, prosecutors said.

When investigators saw Mr. Plympton spit a stick of gum onto the ground, they collected it and sent it to a state police crime lab, prosecutors said.

“The laboratory determined that the DNA profile developed from the chewing gum matched the DNA profile developed from Ms. Tucker’s vaginal swabs,” the district attorney’s office said.

Mr. Plympton was arrested on June 8, 2021, as he drove away from the Troutdale home he shared with his wife and son, The Oregonian reported.

He had a criminal record, including a conviction for second-degree kidnapping in Multnomah County in 1985, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections.

Mr Plympton was 16 when Ms Tucker was murdered. Witnesses reported seeing her with a man the night she was killed, and several people reported seeing her running into the street clutching her arms, perhaps in an attempt to ask someone for help, The Oregonian reported.

Kirsten Snowden, Multnomah County’s chief deputy prosecutor, said during the trial that there was no evidence that Ms. Tucker and Mr. Plympton knew each other, according to The Oregonian.

Mr. Plympton’s attorney, Stephen Houze, said during the trial that there was “undeniable, unavoidable reasonable doubt” about who killed Ms. Tucker, according to The Oregonian. He said witnesses had described the man seen with Ms Tucker – who was almost six feet tall – as being about her height or taller, but Mr Plympton was closer to six feet tall. He also said investigators never tested Ms. Tucker’s clothing for DNA evidence.

“We will appeal and we are confident that his convictions will be overturned,” Mr. Houze and his law partner Jacob Houze said in a statement on Tuesday.

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Amy Baggio found Mr. Plympton guilty of one count of first-degree murder and four counts of “various theories of second-degree murder,” the district attorney’s office said.

“To be clear, this court has no doubt whatsoever that Robert Plympton struck Barbara Tucker in the head and face until she died,” she said during the trial. “He did.”

Judge Baggio found Mr. Plympton not guilty of assault and said prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he assaulted Ms. Tucker while she was alive, The Oregonian reported.

Mr Plympton is expected to be sentenced on June 21. Based on his age at the time of Mrs. Tucker’s death: he faces a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 30 years for first-degree murder.

According to The Oregonian, two members of Ms. Tucker’s family cried and hugged after the verdict was announced. Ms. Tucker’s older sister, Alice Juan, said in a statement Tuesday that her family was “thrilled that this had finally been resolved.”

“I thought it might not be that way as the years went by, but Barbie was a special little girl,” she said. Her little sister, she added, “was smart, cheerful, caring, all those things.”

Kitty Bennett research contributed.

Six former law enforcement officers who called themselves the Goon Squad will be sentenced starting today in Mississippi, months after pleading guilty to federal civil rights crimes for torturing and sexually assaulting two black men and a third white man who has so far remained anonymous.

Over the next three days, the officers, who could each be sentenced to 10 years or more in prison, will appear in federal court in Jackson. Prosecutors are expected to detail the officers’ violent actions, and victims will have the opportunity to share their stories.

The officers could speak publicly for the first time if they choose to talk about their crimes or ask the judge for leniency.

Hunter Elward, who pleaded guilty to shooting one of the victims, will be sentenced first Tuesday morning. The remaining officers will then be sentenced at individual hearings.

The sheriff’s department in Rankin County, a suburban community just outside Jackson, came to national attention last year after five Rankin County deputies and a Richland Police detective raided the home of Eddie Parker, 36, and his friend, Michael Jenkins , 33, after a tip about suspicious activity.

The officers handcuffed and tortured the men by repeatedly shocking them with Tasers, beating them and sexually assaulting them with a sex toy. Mr. Elward stuck his gun in Mr. Jenkins’ mouth and shot him, shattering his jaw and nearly killing him.

“I felt like I was looking the devil in the eye,” Mr. Parker said at a news conference on Monday.

The officers destroyed evidence and, to justify the shooting, falsely claimed that Mr. Jenkins had pointed a BB gun at them, federal prosecutors said.

Three department deputies have also pleaded guilty in a separate incident, but prosecutors have so far provided few details about what happened. Prosecutors are expected to read a statement written by the victim in that case, 28-year-old Alan Schmidt.

So far, charges against officers in Rankin County have focused solely on these two incidents, but residents of poor parts of the county say the sheriff has routinely targeted them with a similar level of force.

Last November, The New York Times and Mississippi Today published an investigation showing that officers from the Rankin Sheriff’s Department, many of whom called themselves the Goon Squad, had been barging into homes and handcuffing people for nearly two decades. torture for information or confessions.

In their pursuit of drug arrests, officers rammed a stick into one man’s throat until he vomited, dripped molten metal onto another man’s skin and held down and beat people until they were bloody and bruised, according to dozens of people who said that they witnessed or experienced the raids.

Many of those who said they experienced violence filed lawsuits or formal complaints detailing their encounters with the department. A few said they contacted Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey directly but were ignored.

Sheriff Bailey, who has denied knowledge of the incidents, has faced calls to resign from local activists and the NAACP. He has said he will not resign.

Malcolm Holmes, a professor of criminal justice and sociology at the University of Wyoming, said the Goon Squad case would “become one that will find its way into the chronicles of history.”

“There is so much well-documented evidence that this is a pattern of behavior,” he said, noting that the case “revealed something that we have kept hidden for a long time, especially in rural America.”

Sentencing hearings this week are expected to reveal more details about the violence committed by Rankin County officers, including what happened to Mr. Schmidt.

In an interview with The Times and Mississippi Today last week, Mr. Schmidt spoke publicly for the first time about what happened in December 2022 when a Rankin County sheriff’s deputy pulled him over for driving with an expired license plate.

According to the federal complaint, deputies Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward and Daniel Opdyke arrived on the scene shortly afterward. Two other officers, including the one who stopped Mr. Schmidt, were also present during the arrest, Mr. Schmidt said. Neither has been criminally charged.

Mr. Schmidt said the officers accused him of stealing tools from his boss, and then Mr. Dedmon pressed a gun to his head and fired it into the air before threatening to dump his body in the Pearl River.

“I thought this was it,” Mr. Schmidt said. “I will never see my family again.”

Mr. Dedmon and the other deputies beat Mr. Schmidt and held his arm in a fire anthill before shocking him repeatedly with a Taser, Mr. Schmidt said.

Mr. Dedmon also pressed his genitals against the man’s face and bare buttocks as he screamed for help and kicked at the deputy, Mr. Schmidt said.

“It still haunts me all the time,” Mr. Schmidt said of the experience.

Rankin County District Attorney Bubba Bramlett has started that review and dismiss criminal cases involving members of the Goon Squad, his office confirmed last week, but Mr Bramlett declined to share details of the cases investigated.

State lawmakers introduced a bill in January that would expand oversight of law enforcement in Mississippi, allowing the state board that certifies officers to investigate and revoke the licenses of officers accused of misconduct, regardless of whether they face criminal charges. Lawmakers have said the Goon Squad and several other incidents of alleged police misconduct in Mississippi contributed to the bill’s passage.

The Mississippi House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill last week. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure in the coming weeks.

Tuesday's guilty verdict against the mother of a Michigan teen who killed four students in the state's deadliest school shooting in 2021 is likely to ripple through the nation's legal landscape as prosecutors weigh a new path to seeking justice in mass shootings.

But, legal experts say, don't expect a rush of similar cases.

“I've heard many people say they think a guilty verdict in this case will open the floodgates for these types of prosecutions in the future,” said Eve Brensike Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan. “To be honest, I'm not convinced that's true.”

That's because prosecutors in Michigan had particularly compelling evidence against the mother, Jennifer Crumbley — including text messages and the accounts of a meeting with school officials just hours before the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School — that jurors found she should have done. I knew the mental state of her son, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time.

Ethan pleaded guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mrs. Crumbley was convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each student who killed her son. She faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, and sentencing is scheduled for April 9.

Mrs Crumbley's husband, James Crumbley, 47, will be tried separately in March.

“Can more prosecutors file charges, emboldened by these types of statements and the verdict?” said Professor Primus. “Certainly. Do I think they will be successful across the country by sustaining charges if they don't have the requisite facts to demonstrate true knowledge? No.”

Still, Professor Primus and other legal experts who have followed the case say the successful prosecution of Ms. Crumbley, 45, provides a template for prosecutors across the country to prosecute similar cases.

“I think in many ways this case will certainly cause prosecutors to look at their work differently when it comes to negligent parents, in terms of how they handle guns around the home, and how they make guns available to their children,” he said. George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney.

The issue of parental responsibility for children's crimes is something Mr. Gascón has considered before, with a recent case involving a minor charged with vehicular manslaughter.

“I was really excited to go after the dad,” he said. “Ultimately I was advised against that and we didn't do it. It would have been very new. I thought there was a lot of parental responsibility there.”

In the aftermath of mass shootings by teens and young adults, the spotlight often falls on parents, both to weigh the specific circumstances of the crime and to learn something that could prevent the next shooting somewhere in America.

“The discussion was: what can we do about this?” said Lewis Langham Jr., professor emeritus at Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan. “The parents should have done something. But it never got to the point where the parents were actually charged and now convicted, at least one of the parents here in Michigan. That is what is unique about this case.”

Experts expect prosecutors across the country will consider similar charges in mass shootings. But some said they also worried the tactic could be applied to many other circumstances, thereby widening racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Evan Bernick, a law professor at Northern Illinois University, said the Crumbley case was “horrific.” But he added: “No one who is serious about rolling back mass incarceration should welcome an expansion of criminal liability, let alone an expansion of criminal liability, let alone an expansion that makes it easier for prosecutors to put parents in prison for the crimes of their children.”

He pointed to past examples where supervised parents led to racial inequality, such as truancy laws, which allowed prosecutors to go after parents for their children's school absenteeism. He now worries about higher stakes in the wake of the Crumbley case.

“If we have kids who are at risk of gang activity and their parents just haven't seen the signs and something terrible happens, I don't think we can trust prosecutors to comply, only in situations this heinous like this,” Mr. Bernick said.

Legal experts also say they worry the case will become a way for prosecutors to extract plea deals from parents, away from the national spotlight that the Crumbley case had.

“Having this tool as a way to threaten, warn, coerce or induce parents to accept settlement agreements – like so much of criminal law, I fear it will cost lives completely out of sight,” says Ekow Yankah, a law professor at the University of Michigan.

He added that the Crumbley case upends one of the most fundamental principles of criminal law that he teaches to his first-year students: “You are not responsible for the actions of someone else.”

The trial, its implications for justice and where the jury would end up have consumed conversations among Mr. Yankah's fellow professors in recent weeks.

“Honestly, we were all over the place,” he said. “Some people thought yes, some people thought no. Intellectually I thought it could go either way. But I have to admit, even though I say that, when I saw that she was actually found guilty, the first word out of my mouth was, “Wow.”

In closing arguments at Jennifer Crumbley's trial on Friday, attorneys for the prosecution and defense differed sharply on whether jurors should take the extraordinary step of holding a mother responsible for her child's heinous crimes .

But both sides agreed on one point: this was a unique process.

Prosecutors are seeking to hold Ms. Crumbley partially responsible for the shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan on Nov. 30, 2021. Her son, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time, killed four classmates at the school and injured seven others in the deadliest shooting on record. a school in the state.

“It's a rare case,” said Oakland County Prosecutor Karen D. McDonald, who represents Ms. Crumbley charged with negligence, but acknowledged the high burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she committed a crime.

“It will take the unthinkable,” Ms McDonald added. “And she did the unthinkable, and four children died because of it.”

Since last week, jurors have heard shocking testimony from witnesses, combative debates between lawyers and hours of testimony from Mrs. Crumbley, 45. The charges against her and her husband, who each face four counts of involuntary manslaughter, are leading. on the edge of an effort by some prosecutors to hold parents accountable when they are accused of enabling deadly violence by their children.

The husband, James Crumbley, 47, will be tried separately in March.

Ms Crumbley's lawyer, Shannon Smith, said her client should not be punished for the bloodshed her son initiated, in part because Ms Crumbley could not have foreseen what would happen. Ms. Smith also argued, using examples from her own life, that parenting can be a messy and unpredictable job.

“This case is very dangerous for parents,” she told jurors on Friday. “It just is. And it's one of the first of its kind.”

Since Ms. Crumbley's trial began last week, prosecutors in Oakland County have called 21 witnesses, including law enforcement officers, friends of Ms. Crumbley and those who witnessed the shooting, to testify about the day of the crash and the events leading up to it.

Ms. Smith took part in cross-examination but called only one defense witness, Ms. Crumbley, who testified Thursday that she had always tried to protect her son but did not expect him to hurt other people.

“I wish he'd killed us instead,” said Mrs. Crumbley.

Throughout the trial, the defense tried to portray Ms Crumbley as a “hypervigilant mother” who was concerned about her teenager's whereabouts and attentive to the mundane details of his life, such as tricky braces, geometry figures and bowling practice.

“I ask that you find Jennifer Crumbley innocent,” Ms. Smith said Friday. “Not just for Jennifer Crumbley, but for every mother who is doing her best and who could easily be in her shoes.”

But prosecutors have suggested that Mrs. Crumbley paid more attention to her two horses and her extramarital affair than to her son's needs, ultimately missing glaring warning signs that he was about to commit unspeakable violence.

This week, lawyers also argued over who was responsible for Ethan Crumbley not being sent home from school before the shooting, despite a violent drawing he made. The drawing showed a gun and the phrase “blood everywhere,” prompting school officials to meet with his parents just hours before the attack.

“He drew a picture for her,” Mrs McDonald said on Friday. “Pretty egregious and unique circumstances.”

Also introduced into evidence at the trial were months of communications between Mrs Crumbley and her son, including text messages from months before the shooting in which Ethan had told his mother that their house was haunted, possibly by a demon.

Ms. Crumbley, prosecutors noted, was not always responsive.

But Ms Crumbley said in her testimony on Thursday that Ethan and his parents had joked for years about whether their house was haunted. “He was always sarcastic,” she said. “We are always being messed with.”

On Thursday, a detective walked jurors through the pages of Ethan's diary, which was found at the school after the shooting. He had written about a plan to cause bloodshed, with drawings of weapons and pleas for help regarding his mental health. “My parents won't listen to me when it comes to help or a therapist,” he wrote.

But Mrs Crumbley said she had never seen the diary entries or heard her son ask for a therapist.

Prosecutors also spent time discussing Ethan's access to the Sig Sauer pistol he used in the shooting. The evidence shows that Ethan's father had purchased the gun as a Christmas present for the teen.

While Mrs. Crumbley accompanied Ethan to a shooting range a few days before the disaster, she testified Thursday that her husband, who was more familiar with firearms, had been responsible for putting the gun away. But prosecutors accused her Friday of trying to distance herself from the gun.

Mrs. Smith had hoped to question Ethan. But the judge, Cheryl A. Matthews, said she would not require him to testify because he was expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Although he pleaded guilty, Ethan's life sentence without parole is still eligible for appeal.

Now jurors in the trial of his mother will decide whether she is guilty of enabling his violence.

The judge told jurors she would give them their instructions when they returned to the courtroom Monday morning to begin deliberations.

Just a day after being sentenced to 10 years in prison, Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Wednesday in a separate case, dealing another major blow in his bitter feud with the country's powerful military.

The new verdict was handed down eight days before scheduled national elections in which Mr Khan's party is taking part ravaged by ever-increasing repression, came in a case involving state donations. His wife, Bushra Bibi, also received a fourteen-year prison sentence. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

Announcing the verdict at the high-security prison where Mr Khan, 71, was held for months, the judge also said the former prime minister and his wife would be banned from holding office for 10 years.

Mr Khan questioned the fairness and impartiality of the trial during the hearing on Wednesday. He asked the judge: 'Why are you in such a hurry to announce the verdict? I didn't even record my final statement.” Mr. Khan then left the courtroom and the judge announced the verdict in his absence.

His lawyers said they would appeal the verdict. They have also said they will appeal the 10-year prison sentence Mr Khan received on Tuesday in a case involving state secrets.

“These things are not processes; this is a drama,” Syed Ali Zafar, a senior legal assistant to Mr Khan, told reporters. “The Constitution and the law have been violated; There is no doubt that this sentence will soon be suspended.”

But analysts said Mr Khan's fate was less a legal than a political issue, following a well-known pattern in which popular politicians in Pakistan have been excluded from politics after falling out with the military establishment. Top generals have long run the country's politics behind the scenes.

In 2017, Nawaz Sharif, a three-time prime minister who has also clashed with the military in the past, was removed from office after the Supreme Court ruled that corruption charges had disqualified him.

Mr Sharif appears to have now been rehabilitated by the military after his previous sentences were overturned and he was allowed to return to Pakistan from exile. He is now running an election campaign in the hope of becoming prime minister for the fourth time.

His rival, Mr Khan, a former world-famous cricketer, was removed from power in April 2022 after a parliamentary vote of distrust, which arose shortly after a rift between him and the army's high command.

Since then, he has led a vigorous political campaign, defiantly taking on the generals and causing a wave of discontent and anger among much of society. His popularity among citizens remains high, despite attempts to sideline him.

Still, analysts said Khan's legal troubles had significantly reduced the chances of success for his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), at the February 8 polls.

“These convictions will certainly hit the morale of Mr. Khan's party workers,” said Sabir Shah, a political analyst in the eastern city of Lahore.

When a jury of military officers is convened this week at Guantanamo Bay, it will be asked to choose a sentence of between 20 and 25 years for two Malaysian detainees who admitted conspiring with an Al Qaeda affiliate that carried out a deadly killing committed. bombing of Indonesia twenty years ago.

But behind the scenes, through a secret deal negotiated with a senior Trump-era official, the men could be returned to Malaysia before the end of the year.

The sentencing proceedings for Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, 48, and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, 47, are part of a US government strategy to resolve national security cases at Guantanamo through settlement negotiations. The men spent years in secret CIA prisons after their arrest in 2003. By reaching an agreement, prosecutors avoided lengthy torture lawsuits that involved two capital cases, the September 11 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole stood.

The two men were captured along with a former Qaeda member, an Indonesian known as Hambali.

Last week they pleaded guilty to conspiracy in two suicide bombings on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people on October 12, 2002. As part of the settlement, they were questioned by prosecutors on Sunday and Monday, possibly for use in Mr. Hambali's trial, which prosecutors plan to hold next year.

The testimony is secret for now. But in their plea, they said they had no first-hand knowledge that Mr Hambali was responsible for the attack. They said they later learned from internet news reports that Mr Hambali was wanted for a series of attacks by the Jemaah Islamiyah movement and that they had helped him evade arrest.

Part of the plea deal that provides for their return to Malaysia is also secret.

The judge, Lt. Col. Wesley A. Braun, announced in court that the plea deal limited the jury to a sentence of not less than 20 and not more than 25 years. He did not reveal whether the sentence could be reduced as part of the cooperation agreement.

But the judge made an unusual exception to the requirement that they drop all appeals against their convictions. If they are still at Guantanamo 180 days after a senior Pentagon official approved the sentence, they can ask a federal court for their release.

In addition, Colonel Braun also awarded the defendants a number of undisclosed convictions for the prosecution's failure to provide lawyers with evidence in a timely manner, according to legal staff who saw the ruling. It has not been made public.

The plea deal was reached by Jeffrey D. Wood, who served as supervisor of the war court, or Convening Authority, from April 2020 until about three months ago. His successor, Susan K. Escallier, will assess whether the Malaysian men have fully cooperated with the government and whether any promises by Mr. Wood about a reduced sentence should be kept.

The process is complicated. In the hybrid military-civilian court that President George W. Bush built after the September 11 attacks, the regulator has the power to reduce a prisoner's sentence but not to order a prisoner's release. A federal court judge could do that, but the State Department would have to negotiate an agreement to transfer the detainee to another country that meets the security concerns of the Secretary of Defense.

So there is no immediate prospect of a plane taking the men home – even if it goes to Malaysia's respected jihadist rehabilitation centre.

In their written guilty pleas, the men admitted that they had gone to Afghanistan in June 2000. There, they trained at a Qaeda camp in “basic military tactics, topography and firearms,” ​​including firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

In late 2001, Mr. Hambali arranged a meeting with Osama bin Laden, in accordance with the agreement. They swore an oath of allegiance to him and agreed to become suicide bombers in an operation that was later canceled. The trainees traveled to Thailand in December 2001 and agreed to help Mr Hambali evade capture. They also surveilled an Israeli aviation counter in Bangkok and obtained weapons and fake passports, and at least one of them collected cash from a Qaeda courier from Pakistan.

It is unclear what this means for Mr Hambali. James R. Hodes, his attorney, has said he is awaiting evidence from the government in preparation for trial. Some of the most sensitive and classified information concerns what CIA agents did to detainees in an overseas prison network, where waterboarding, sleep deprivation, beatings and other abuses were part of a program of now-banned “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

In 2003, according to a Senate study of the CIA programan interrogator told Mr. Hambali that he would never go to court because “we can never let the world know what I did to you.” That investigation was released in 2014 and whatever the interrogator did to Mr. Hambali has not been disclosed.

When a French police officer was found guilty Friday of assaulting Théo Luhaka, a 22-year-old black man, during a 2017 identity check that led to his arrest, lawyers from both sides left the courthouse claiming victory in one of the most publicized courts of France. cases of police abuse.

Mr Luhaka, now 29, was officially recognized as a victim of police brutality after a seven-year legal ordeal. But the officer received only a one-year suspended sentence and was acquitted of the more serious charge that he had permanently mutilated Mr Luhaka. Neither side appeared to intend to appeal.

On Saturday, residents in Aulnay-sous-Bois, the northeastern Paris suburb where Mr. Luhaka was attacked and where he still lives, said they felt more disillusioned than encouraged. To them, progress in punishing police misconduct felt like the biting winter air: frigid.

“There is a two-tiered legal system,” said Mohamed Djezzar, 29, a computer engineering student. Although the officer and two of his colleagues were convicted, the sentences were too light, Mr Djezzar added. Friends often complain of repeated, Unjustified identity checkshe said, and this case will do little to dispel the deep-seated hostility toward police.

“I was under no illusions,” Mr. Djezzar said, his breath forming misty clouds of condensation in the frigid air. “It is always the same.”

Mr. Djezzar was training in a hilly, snow-covered park, not far from the low-slung concrete apartment buildings that Mr. Luhaka cut through in 2017, when three officers subdued him during an identity check. One of them stabbed a baton at Mr Luhaka's thigh and caused a four-inch tear in his rectum.

The incident sparked several days of rioting, prompted François Hollande, the then French president, who was a Socialist, to visit Mr Luhaka in hospital, and prompted Emmanuel Macron, then a presidential candidate, to promise to create a police force which was better attuned to the situation. local communities.

A preview government report later discovered that much of the looting, arson and vandalism that week was opportunistic. But simmering anger over heavy-handed police tactics in France's poorer urban suburbs, often home to people with immigrant backgrounds, provided the initial spark.

Sébastian Roché, a police expert at France's National Center for Scientific Research, said Mr Luhaka's case was “emblematic” of “ongoing” problems in those suburbs, such as identity checks being a cover for racial profiling, or the disproportionate use of non-lethal but potentially dangerous weapons such as tear gas canisters and rubber bullets.

SOS Racism, one of France's leading anti-discrimination groups, said in a rack on Friday that Mr Luhaka's case should prompt French authorities to “finally open a debate and initiate reforms to ensure this never happens again.”

But Mr Macron, now president, and Gérald Darmanin, his tough-talking interior minister, have shown little appetite for these kinds of changes. French officials have rejected allegations of systemic problems with racism and violence among police.

At a recent press conference, Macron promised that police would clear up notorious drug smuggling spots every week and double the number of police on the streets. But he was less specific about ways to reduce discrimination, focusing instead on measures such as school uniforms and mandatory services for teenagers, which he said would promote national unity.

Police unions have also fought back against attempts to curb aggressive police methods, arguing that officers face increasingly dangerous working conditions in areas where drug trafficking is high.

In 2020, following angry union protests, the government softened key provisions of a proposal to ban chokeholds during arrests following the death of Cédric Chouviat, a delivery worker who was pushed to the ground and put in such a hold.

Linda Kebbab, spokeswoman for Unité SGP Police, one of France's largest police unions, told reporters at the courthouse on Friday that the three officers convicted of assaulting Mr Luhaka could not be blamed for doing “difficult” work in a “very complicated situation”. 'drug trafficking place. As she spoke, anti-police brutality activists tried to drown her out with chants.

“Some want the heads of police officers as trophies,” Ms. Kebbab shot back.

Bruno Pomart, head of an association that organizes police outreach workshops, said French authorities had long been suspicious of a softer approach to local policing. Mr Macron ever mocked the idea that an officer's job was to 'play football with young people'.

“During my 36 years in the force I had a lot of difficulty getting people to agree to this approach,” says Mr. Pomart, a retired police officer who founded the Raid Aventure association in 1992. Police DNA.”

Attitudes have changed somewhat, he said. Every year his group organizes more than 100 workshops, with sports activities, first aid lessons or explanations of police methods, led by volunteer officers in cities throughout France.

But many high-profile lawsuits alleging police misconduct have yet to go to trial — or never will — after years of tortuous investigations, further fueling feelings that the system is rigged against victims of police brutality.

An investigation into the case of Adama Traoré, who died in 2016 after three officers pinned him to the ground during an arrest, closed in September without charges being filed. In the case of Zineb Redouane, an 80-year-old woman who died in 2018 after being hit by a tear gas canister as she closed her windows during a Yellow Vest protest in Marseille, no one has been charged.

Officers have been charged in the case of Michel Zecler, a Black music producer who was beaten by police in 2020 in the vestibule of the building where he has his music studio — but no trial date has been set.

“Every time a case like this occurs, we go backwards,” said Réda Didi, community organizer who heads Grains de Francean association that tries to improve relations with institutions such as the police with writing or theater workshops and conversations with famous athletes.

Last summer, one of the group's programs at a high school in Nanterre, the suburb where Mr. Merzouk was killed, had to be paused for a month because tensions rose too high, he said.

While the pace of institutional change is slow, experts see signs that public opinion is moving a little faster, especially with the ubiquity of video. Mr. Merzouk's shooting and Mr. Luhaka's to arrest were both caught on camera.

Mr Roché, the police expert, said the growing number of cases in recent years – coupled with the rise of small but active interest groups, often around victims' families – has changed what kind of police methods society considers acceptable.

“Public opinion comes first and then the courts,” Mr. Roché said, noting that while convictions of officers accused of misconduct are still unusual, more cases are coming to trial.

By September, five officers were based in Pantin, a northern suburb of Paris found guilty of violent attacks and writing false police reports. This month, a police commander stood trial in Nice for ordering an indictment against the Yellow Vest protesters in 2019. left one protester with a fractured skull.

“There is a tension in every democracy” between civil rights and the rules governing the use of intrusive or violent tools by police, Mr. Roché said. “What's at stake is how you adjust the cursor between the two,” he added. “And that's what these cases highlight.”

In Aulnay-sous-Bois, many felt that the cursor still needed to be adjusted.

Yamina Abdel, 50, said the officer convicted of wounding Mr Luhaka “should have served at least some prison time.” Dressed in a beige winter coat and a giant scarf, she kept her arms moving to stay warm in the bitter cold.

“Wasn't that the case seven years ago?” she added. “It feels like it was yesterday.”