At Least 15 Officers Mistook Guns for Tasers. Three Were Convicted.

Prosecuting police in cases of so-called weapon confusion has happened before, but the legal landscape is complex.

It happened in a flash. A deputy drew what he thought was his stun gun on a Black man who was fleeing, announcing his choice of weapon with a shout of “Taser!” But it was a pistol he pulled out, not a stun gun, and the man died. “Oh, I shot him,” the deputy says on video. “I’m sorry.” Though the facts sound eerily familiar, that was six years ago in Tulsa, Okla., in a case that closely echoed what occurred this weekend in Brooklyn Center, Minn. There was the same announcement, the same tragic result, the same shocked response.