A lawsuit brought against the San Francisco Police Department by the family of an unarmed man gunned down by cops was rejected by a jury Wednesday, with the court ruling that officers had acted reasonably when they shot and killed Asa Sullivan in 2006.

The suit, which was tried in U.S. District Court in Oakland, alleged that police had illegally entered a Parkmerced townhouse in June 2006 and had used excessive force when they killed Sullivan, 25, in a hail of bullets, as the Chron reports.

The family's attorney, John Burris, found the verdict disheartening. "The family is extremely disappointed," said Burris, who has represented numerous Bay Area victims of police violence. The jury ultimately found that Sullivan's death was the result of "suicide by cop," Burris said.

Police were called to the townhouse after a neighbor reported there was drug activity at the apartment in the southwest corner of the city, not far from San Francisco State University. Officers entered the unit and put one resident in handcuffs after they found a knife near him. Sullivan was found in a darkened attic where a 12-minute standoff with police ensued.

The Chron reported that during the standoff, Sullivan kept one hand concealed, reportedly telling police, "Kill me or I'll kill you." Two officers, John Keesor and Michelle Alvis, opened fire after they said Sullivan made a sudden move with his arm with some type of object in his hand. That object turned out to be an eyeglass case, according to the cops, but a lawyer for Sullivan's family alleged that it was found in Sullivan's pocket, not under his arm as originally claimed by police, who Burris said changed their story after the fact to justify the shooting.

Burris told the Chron that someone had banged on the ceiling from the floor below the attic, leading Keesor to think that Alvis had been shot. Keesor began shooting and Alvis did too "in response to the other officer shooting," according to Burris.

The case has been through a number of different legal venues. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal judge's refusal to dismiss the suit in 2010, saying there were factual disputes about whether the police had entered the unit legally, even though they were without a search warrant. The court of appeals ruled that a jury should decide whether the officers' actions were lawful, whether they provoked the violence in the townhouse attic that day and if Sullivan even posed a threat at all.

The case went as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in 2012, denied requests from the city and various police organizations to dismiss the lawsuit, but Wednesday's verdict likely marks the final decision regarding Sullivan's death.

But, with a lawsuit in the works from the family of Alex Nieto, the man shot and killed in Bernal Heights over the summer, this week's uproar over the officer-involved shooting of Oshaine Evans near AT&T Park, and a weekend of protests underway in Ferguson, Missouri, where a white cop gunned down Mike Brown, an unarmed black man, the subject of police brutality is likely to stay at the forefront of national conversation for some time.

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