There will never be a time when seeing police get away with taking a life won’t infuriate us as a people. We’ve seen enough. We’ve heard enough. We’ve had enough. Sadly, law enforcement officers will likely never say that THEY have had enough of killing us.
According to The Telegraph, three Washington County Sheriff’s deputies in Macon, Georgia, Rhett Scott, Henry Lee Copeland, and Michael Howell, have all been acquitted of murder after a 2017 incident where they tased Eurie Martin, a Black man, “15 or 16” times before he died.
A local resident dialed 911 to report Martin, who suffers from schizophrenia and heart disease, as a suspicious person after he asked her for a cup of water following a 30-mile walk from his home in Milledgeville to Sandersville. When the deputies arrived on the scene, they say that Martin was “uncooperative” and attempted to flee from them during questioning. An altercation ensued, and the taser was deployed and Martin would eventually die in police custody.
Macon.com reports that during the trial, the jury could not be convinced that the tasing directly resulted in Martin’s death. The coroner’s report cited cardiac arrhythmia as the cause of death, but did not mention the taser. Lawyers for the deputies argued that they had no prior knowledge of Martin’s physical and mental health conditions prior to engaging him. Like so many Black folks who were killed by police, Martin had a harrowing realization that death was imminent and yelled out: “They’re killing me! They’re killing me!” as his final words before dying moments later.
If there is any silver lining to this story, it is that after years of being insulated from consequences by the “stand your ground” statute, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed that decision and made way for justice to be served. Hopefully, that decision sets a precedent for other “blue lives” who try to skirt accountability in the future.
