Excessive force, according to a federal jury in San Francisco today. Mehserle and four other BART police officers were deemed not guilty of using excessive force in a civil trial over a 2008 confrontation at the Oakland Coliseum/Airport Station.

The plaintiff, 43-year-old Kenneth Carrethers of Oakland, maintained that the officers "knocked him to the ground without warning him he was being arrested and that the five officers allegedly then piled on top of him and kicked, punched and hog-tied him." Carrethers ended up in the hospital followed by a two-day stint in jail after being charged with threatening an officer and resisting arrest. Those charges were later dismissed, but in the civil trial, both sides agreed that Carrethers had been cursing at the officers and accused them of being "lazy and incompetent" during the scuffle that occured roughly six weeks before the Oscar Grant incident.

Mehserle was reportedly, "overwhelmed with emotion as the verdict was read." No word yet on what Todd Mehserle has to say about the verdict.

Previously: Todd Mehserle Banned from Court Room For Cell Phone Photos, Being a Jerk, All Johannes Mehserle coverage on SFist.
[KTVU]