Jury in N. Charleston police officer Michael Slager shooting trial appear "torn"

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Nine hours into their verdict deliberations Thursday, jurors sent a note to a judge presiding over the trial of the former North Charleston policeman who killed Walter Scott: They asked for the difference between "fear" and "passion."

The judge didn't immediately answer, but the question made it apparent that they were torn over voluntary manslaughter, the lesser of the charges that Michael Slager now faces at the end of his month-long murder trial.

While Slager said he feared for his life when he fatally shot Scott, killing someone in the "heat of passion" is the central element of manslaughter under South Carolina law.

"This question isn't artfully worded," Circuit Judge Clifton Newman said, "but I think you get the gist of what they're pondering."

Slager, 35, was arrested on a murder count last year after an eyewitness video showed the white officer shooting Scott, a black man, in the back. It wasn't until his trial neared an end this week when prosecutors proposed that the jury also consider the lesser crime that carries between two and 30 years in prison, opposed to murder's 30 years to life. The judge agreed.

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