How much does the life of a black dad matter in Eutawville, South Carolina? Kill one, and you might just get grounded for a few months.
A small-town South Carolina police chief who killed an unarmed black man in 2011 was just sentenced to roughly the same punishment I got when we stayed out too late on a Friday night in high school. After copping a plea deal, he was sentenced to one year of house detention, where he'll presumably play with his toys. Or something.
In 2011, Eutawville police chief Richard Combs shot 54-year old Bernard Bailey after a disagreement at city hall. The dispute started when Combs pulled over Bailey's daughter for a traffic violation. Bailey came to the aid of his daughter, apparently asking some questions, but behaving in a manner that another officer on the scene said "would not constitute interference with an officer." By all accounts, Bernard Bailey just wanted to make sure everything was alright as his teenage daughter got pulled over, and Richard Combs took great offense to this.
Rather than behaving like a normal person, Combs decided to use his bully pulpit to seek an "obstruction of justice" warrant against Bailey. For reasons that can scarcely go beyond "judge in Eutawville, SC grants any warrant the police chief asks for," the judge signed off on this absurd charge. Rather than going to arrest Bailey, Combs waited to ambush him with the warrant.
Combs came to the police station to do what fathers sometimes do - ask for a stay on his daughter's traffic ticket court date because she was off at college. In a sane world, this would have played out with the court clerk extending the court date by a month or so, with all parties going their separate ways. Except, of course, that Richard Combs was waiting with a warrant for a felony that carries up to ten years in prison.
According to reports, Combs sprung the unexpected warrant on Bailey, who was as confused by the whole ordeal as he probably should have been. Bailey attempted to leave the police station, getting in his car. Combs reached into Bailey's car to turn off the ignition, and there was some kind of struggle. Likely, it was the kind of struggle that might ensue any time a deranged person reached his body into an innocent man's car. Combs then pulled out his gun and killed Bailey.
It's not hard to understand how and why this story played out the way that it did. Eutawville is a small town near Orangeburg, a short drive to the south and east of Columbia. Its population is less than 1,000, and Richard Combs was the only police officer at the time of the shooting. Simply put, he was the law, and he didn't take kindly to those who might question his supreme authority.
Twice the state tried Combs for murder with a jury option of assessing manslaughter. Twice the jury deadlocked. In his first trial, the jury featured seven black members and five white members. Predictably, three of the members voted to acquit, hanging the jury.
The next trial moved to Richland County after defense attorneys argued that the heavy concentration of black people in Orangeburg, combined with the recent #BlackLivesMatter developments, would not allow Combs to get a fair trial there. As one might expect, the jury hung again in the second trial, with only a handful of jurors wanted to acquit.
This time, attorneys for the state sought a plea agreement, noting just how hard it is to convict a white police officer of killing an unarmed black man in the state today. According to a report from The State:
"But Pascoe acknowledged the difficulty of getting a jury of 12 people to agree on a verdict. 'In my 20-plus as a prosecutor, I don’t know if I’ve had a more polarizing case.'"
Polarizing, indeed. In some respects, the state can be commended for seeking to re-try Combs after the first mistrial, and for being prepared to try the case a third time if Combs had not reached a plea agreement. In neighboring North Carolina, prosecutors just decided not to re-try the killer of Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed black man shot down after running to police for help after he crashed his vehicle. And it's easy to sympathize with the plight of a prosecutor who understands that no matter how clear the evidence might be, a handful of jurors will never choose to vote for a conviction.
But it would be difficult to classify this result as anything resembling justice. Combs's defense lawyer told a tale of woe following the plea agreement, noting that Combs "is financially and emotionally exhausted. He has been through four years of not knowing. ... he wants finality not just for himself, but for the community."
The existence of an emotionally and financially destitute defendant has never stopped South Carolina prosecutors from going forward with a trial before, even in a state where public defender funding is woefully inadequate. But all involved, from the judge to jurors to the media, seemed sympathetic to the cause of a police chief who escalated an otherwise benign situation knowing full and well that no matter what he did, consequences would not follow.
Worst of all is that Combs was right in his assumptions. A small-town police chief can kill a concerned father over a perceived slight to his authority, get saved at trial by a handful of racist hold-outs, have his next trial moved to a more friendly venue, take advantage of jury composition in that trial, then receive a year's worth of house detention after agreeing to plead guilty to something other than murder.
That's how the "justice" system works in South Carolina when the described parties are involved.
Following the trial, Combs's attorney said:
"If we tried this case five more times, we would have five more mistrials,”
And he's right. He's depressingly right.