Justice in Dallas County, Texas: Echoes of Money, Mississippi

Ex-Balch Springs PD Officer Roy Oliver guilty in
the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards

The news that a Texas jury found former Balch Springs Police Officer Roy D. Oliver, II guilty on Tuesday for the unjustified fatal shooting of 15-year-old high school freshman Jordan Edwards is hardly a cause for celebration.

On a Saturday night back in April, 2017, Oliver pointed a high-powered rifle at a car full of unarmed teenagers who were driving away from a house party and pulled the tigger.


The fatal shot, one of three Oliver fired into the window of the vehicle, struck Edwards in the head as he sat in the passenger seat, killing him instantly - his brothers Vidal and Kevon (along with two friends) were inside the car when it happened.

I blogged about this incident last May if you're interested in reading about some of the details, but Edwards and his brothers were among approximately 100 teenagers milling around outside a party when a neighbor called Balch Springs PD because it was getting rowdy.

Oliver and his partner were actually in the house speaking with the home owner as teens were leaving when shots rang out outside, and as teens began scrambling for safety, Edwards, his brothers and their friends got in the car to leave the area.

Oliver, who'd ran outside when the shots were fired, saw the teens in the car and began yelling and cursing at the vehicle, aimed his rifle and fired three shots in the passenger window - just like that.

According to a Dallas Morning News article on Tuesday, those shots were actually fired from a nearby nursing home.

Since the vehicle was driving away from Oliver when the shooting happened, he tried to use the defense many police officers who've shot and killed innocent people have successfully used time and time again in America - he lied about what happened.

Oliver told police investigators that the car came toward him in an "aggressive manner", but police body-cam footage taken at the scene (along with witness testimony) revealed that the teens were simply driving away and that the vehicle was not driving towards Oliver.

14-YO Emmitt Till and Carolyn Bryant, the 21-
YO store clerk who accused him in 1955

It was moving away from him when he fired the shots - Oliver later tried to claim that he shot at the vehicle because he feared for his partner's safety.

But his partner testified on the stand that he never felt his life was in danger.

It only took the jury two days to find Oliver guilty of Edwards' death on Tuesday August 28th.

And as author Angie Thomas observed on Twitter on Tuesday, the date is also significant in the longer arc of American justice.


As she noted, Oliver was found guilty on August 28th, the very same date that 14-year-old Emmitt Till was brutally tortured and killed in Money, Mississippi back in 1955 by two white men enraged over accusations that he'd whistled suggestively at a 21-year-old white store clerk named Carolyn Bryant while he was buying bubblegum inside the small store she ran with her husband Roy Bryant.

A few nights later at around 2am, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam armed themselves and abducted Till from his great-uncle Moses Wright's home, savagely beat and tortured him, before shooting him in the head, tying his body to an engine block with wire and dumping it in the Tallahatchie River.

Exactly what happened between Till and Bryant inside that store has always been shrouded in mystery, but as was widely reported last year, Carolyn Bryant told writer Timothy Tyson that her original claims that Till had put his hand around her waste, verbally propositioned her and tried to physically touch her were not true.

62 years after the trial she admitted she made that part up.

J.W. Milam (left) and Roy Bryant celebrate after
their acquittal by an all-white jury  

Whether she admitted that to clear her own conscience at the age of 83 only she really knows.

But such an admission did Emmitt Till little good.

The horrifying photos of his mangled face, which sparked outrage around the nation and helped to spark the civil rights movement in America, attest to the depth of his suffering and the unfathomable cruelty and brutality of the crime.

Which both Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam freely admitted to in an interview with Look magazine after being acquitted by an all-white jury in less than an hour.

Part of what's tragic about Till's murder, something that hasn't been widely reported, is that Till's mother Till Mobley claims that her son had a slight speech impediment that caused him to stutter sometimes when he tried to say words beginning with the letter 'B'.

As Chris Jones reported in the Chicago Tribune back in 2008 she insisted that her son wasn't trying to whistle at Carolyn Bryant in a sexual way - she'd taught him to whistle quietly whenever he stuttered as a way to relax himself and stop the stutter.

Her son, who was trying to order 2-cents worth of bubblegum in the store, likely began stuttering and whistled to make it stop - Bryant likely misunderstood what was happening, and the rest is history.

Now the specific circumstances of the death of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in Texas last April are obviously very different from the death of Emmitt Till back in the summer of 1955.

Roy Oliver during sentencing on Tuesday 

But the context in which they both took place, against the backdrop of periods in American history defined in part by racial division, and the fact that they were both young black teenagers in the south who were innocent and unarmed when they were violently killed by enraged white men, links both cases in my view.

In ways that are emotional and even spiritual in some way given the complex backdrop of America's racial history.

To me, the outcome of this case occupies a larger dimension, not just because a police officer was held legally responsible for killing an innocent, unarmed American child for no reason (and then trying to lie about it).

It's also important because the circumstances touch on issues related to the two-tier justice system that still pervades the American legal system - this case bucked that trend.

At the time I'm writing this, none of the members of the jury have spoken out about the decision.

But I think there's little doubt that the atmosphere of divisiveness based on race, and the kinds of xenophobic retribution against undocumented immigrants that has been the hallmark of the Trump administration, weighed on the minds of the jury when they decided this case.

Both Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have made it perfectly clear that they have absolutely no interest in directing the resources of the the White House or Department of Justice to address, or investigate the cases of police misconduct or excessive use of force against unarmed, innocent people.

It's quite possible the members of the jury, who acquitted Roy Oliver on two counts of aggravated manslaughter, but found him guilty of Jordan Edwards' murder, felt a responsibility to send a message about the American justice system.

Not so much about race specifically, but to reaffirm that Americans believe that there is a definitive line between right and wrong in this country, no matter the color of your skin, where you hail from, who you love, or how you worship.

Such a decision taking place on the 28th of August, 62 years after the death of Emmitt Till in Money, Mississippi, offers hope that however long it may be, the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend towards justice.