BART officer pleads not guilty

OAKLAND, Calif., Jan. 16 (UPI) -- A former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in the death of an unarmed man at an Oakland, Calif., BART station.

Johannes Mehserle, 27, was arrested in Nevada late Tuesday night and waived extradition to California to faces charges in the New Year's Day shooting death of Oscar Grant III. Mehserle's attorney, Christopher Miller, entered the not guilty plea Thursday on his behalf, the Oakland Tribune said Friday.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert McGuiness set a bail hearing for Jan. 26. Mehserle was arrested on a no-bail warrant, the Tribune said.

The shooting, which came during an apparent scuffle, led to protests in the Bay Area after cell-phone videos showed what appeared to be the officer shooting Grant in the back. Protests turned violent for several hours Jan. 7, but otherwise have consisted mainly of public pressure on BART officials to prosecute the case.

The courtroom was packed for Mehserle's arraignment, the newspaper said, with relatives of both Mehserle and Grant in attendance.

Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff declined to say why Mehserle was in Nevada, other than to say that he had been moving about and that the incident that brought death threats against him.

Orloff said authorities knew where the former BART officer was at all times, just across the California-Nevada border in Lake Tahoe's Zephyr Cove area.