10 May—Talk about jury nullification. On Wednesday, an all-white jury from Chattanooga sitting in Memphis, after (only?) eight-and-a-half hours of debate, acquitted three black cops of all charges in the January 2023 death of black motorist Tyre Nichols. Video footage from the cops’ body cameras and a police neighborhood surveillance camera clearly showed that the cops restrained, tased, pepper-sprayed, kicked, punched, and beat their victim with a baton to within a centimeter of his life and then did nothing as he went into cardiac arrest at the scene of their crime.

Nichols died three days later in a hospital and an autopsy attributed his death from blunt force trauma to the head.

The two other black now-ex Memphis cops who took part in the homicidal traffic stop pleaded guilty last year and testified for the prosecution this year. They’re waiting to be sentenced. They must be regretting their decision to plead guilty and maybe even to testify against their pals—though that doubtless was made with the hope of reducing their sentences. In all events, given Wednesday’s acquittals, the two cops’ sentences are likely to be reduced, perhaps even suspended.

The trio of just-acquitted former law-enforcement officers were in fact convicted last fall of witness tampering for misleading superiors about their actions and one also was found guilty of violating the victim’s civil rights. And there’s more civil and criminal litigation pending.

But the point is, despite all the graphic evidence that one would have expected to guarantee conviction, the jury chose to acquit. It brings to mind the Los Angeles cops who were acquitted by a jury for beating the crap out of Rodney King in 1991 despite overwhelming video evidence of their guilt. King was lucky to make it out alive and drowned in his home swimming pool in 2012.

So when Luigi Mangione is tried for shooting a health insurance executive to death in New York, jury nullification isn’t out of the question . . .