Homeless woman present at police shooting could get life in prison for picking up officer's nightstick

A homeless woman who witnessed a fatal police shooting in Los Angeles could receive a sentence of life in prison for picking up a nightstick that an officer dropped during the incident.

On March 1, police say a man living on Skid Row named Charly Keunang grabbed an officer's gun when they were trying to arrest him on suspicion of robbery. The shooting was filmed by a bystander, who also captured footage of Trishawn Cardessa Carey, 34, briefly picking up the fallen nightstick. She has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon against a police officer and resisting arrest. Under California's three-strikes sentencing law for repeat offenders, if found guilty, she could spend 25 years to life behind bars. "These excessive charges are just updated Jim Crow," says supporter Suzette Shaw of the Los Angeles Community Action Network's Downtown Women's Action Coalition.

In the video, Carey is not shown hitting anyone. The prosecutor says he's not going to claim she did; instead, he will say she attempted to attack an officer by "picking up the officer's baton and raising the baton to strike the officer." Carey's defense attorney, Milton Grimes, told the Los Angeles Times his client is mentally ill, and did not threaten or attack anyone: "Is possession of a baton an assault? No. The legal basis appears to me to be a distraction or cover up of the killing of a man by the police."

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Carey said she does not remember picking the baton up, and was at the "wrong place and around the wrong people." On Wednesday, a judge reduced her bail from more than $1 million to $50,000, and said if she was somehow able to pay, she would have to go to A New Way of Life Reentry Project. Founder Susan Burton said she would be welcome: "Maybe, just maybe, she would get the first break of her life."