WILMINGTON - Christopher Long's fate rests with 18 New Hanover County citizens asked Monday to determine whether the former lawman likely broke the law when he shot and killed an unarmed college student in December.

Special prosecutors from the state Attorney General's Office asked a grand jury to indict Long on a charge of voluntary manslaughter for killing Peyton Strickland, an 18-year-old from Durham.

After nearly two hours of closed-door testimony, partly from Long himself, the grand jury called it a day. It will resume deliberations this morning and will hear more from Long and also from an agent with the State Bureau of Investigation.

Long will either walk free today or launch a fight to stay out of prison. A voluntary manslaughter conviction carries a punishment of at least three years in prison.

Long says he mistook the hammering of a fellow deputy's battering ram for gunfire when he opened fire on Strickland. His heavily armed paramilitary team had been drafted by campus police at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington to help search for a stolen PlayStation 3 video machine and arrest the teens they thought robbed and beat the student who owned it. They suspected Strickland and a friend from Durham, Ryan Mills, in the attack and robbery.

Long's case crossed into uncharted territory Monday and could set a precedent for law enforcement officers in North Carolina.

Officers are very rarely held criminally responsible for killing in the line of duty. In at least the past seven years, no officers have been charged for killing more than 100 North Carolina citizens.

Broad immunity

Case law and statutes give broad immunity to officers for split-second shots fired in the line of duty.

The team of prosecutors from the Attorney General's Office said these laws shouldn't protect Long. Patrick Murphy, one of the attorney general's special prosecutors handling the case, argued that Long used excessive force when he unleashed three to five shots at Strickland with his automatic submachine gun.

"It is cause for an indictment if you shoot an unarmed man through the door," Murphy told a judge Monday during a hearing on how to handle the grand jury proceedings.

The team of prosecutors brought charges to the grand jury Monday, five months after the local district attorney handed the case off. It had been plagued by courthouse fumbles from the start, and New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David felt residents would question his actions regardless of how he proceeded.

Foreman's error

David asked a grand jury to indict Long on a charge of second-degree murder just 10 days after Strickland's death. The foreman of the grand jury said he checked the wrong box on the indictment form, erroneously reporting that the grand jury found cause to charge Long with murder.

Suspicion has clouded the case since that moment and eventually prompted local officials to hand the case over to outsiders.

Monday, the new batch of court officials took great care with the grand jury proceedings. For more than three hours, prosecutors and Long's attorneys argued how the case ought to be presented to the grand jury. Michael Beale, a judge from Richmond County assigned to handle the matter, reminded grand jurors about their duties and questioned two about possible conflicts of interest.

Long's permission to testify before the grand jury was an unusual step in such proceedings. Testimony is typically limited to law enforcement officers who investigated the case.

An affidavit filed Monday captured a taste of what Long might have told the grand jury members. Long detailed his actions that night and described how fearful officers were to raid Strickland's home. Campus police suspected the young men would be heavily armed, spooked by a picture they found of one of the other suspects, Ryan Mills, clutching a weapon beside two other armed teens, according to search warrants. UNCW police warned sheriff's deputies in a briefing before the raid that there could be grave trouble at the house that night.

"The briefing included information of suspected gang activities by the subjects and mention that the AR-15 firearms that we had seen in the photos and which were believed to be in the residence were capable of penetrating our body armor," Long wrote in his statement.

Covering others

It was Long's job to provide cover for more than a dozen officers who had swarmed the property to search for the video game.

Strickland walked toward the front door when a deputy knocked and announced himself. Long said in the statement that he couldn't see Strickland's hands and saw him "dart suspiciously to the left" about the time he heard the battering ram strike the door. Long fired, thinking he was shooting down a gunman, he said in the statement. Long admitted in the affidavit that his hearing was obstructed by an earpiece, a black face hood and a helmet.

Prosecutors told the judge that they dispute Long's version of events that night.

"It is critical that we show that what he said did not physically happen," Murphy told the judge before the closed-door testimony began Monday.

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