This is a guest post by Andrew Dilts . It is cross-posted at their personal website and available in a modified form in the Journal of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (behind paywall).
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This essay, in a slightly different form, is forthcoming in the journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities . I wrote this essay on and off in the years since the acquittal of George Zimmerman and sent it to the journal shortly before a Baltimore jury failed to arrive at a decision in the prosecution of Officer William Porter’s involvement in the death of Freddie Grey, and before prosecutors in Ohio decided not to charge Officers Timothy Loehmann or Frank Garmback for the murder of 12-year ol
That, in the short time between when this short essay was finished and it could appear in print, two more instances of the criminal punishment system’s failure to hold police officers accountable for the violent deaths of two more black people in this country is itself too much to bear. [1]