Joe McKnight’s Killer Released After Just 8 Years, Sparking Outrage Over Injustice
Ronald Gasser, the man who shot former NFL player Joe McKnight to death during a road-rage incident, has completed his prison sentence less than eight years after the killing. Gasser’s release marks the end of a complicated legal ordeal which included an overturned murder conviction, a subsequent guilty plea to manslaughter, and the Supreme Court ruling that non-unanimous jury verdicts are unconstitutional. The case spotlighted Louisiana’s “stand your ground” law. Gasser initially claimed he shot McKnight in self defense, and was initially given a 30-year sentence for manslaughter in 2018, a conviction later overturned because of a non-unanimous verdict. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter again in 2022 and received a 10-year sentence, a significant portion of which he’d already served.
John Q. Hosedrinker