Bernard Bailey ... alive and well, before being killed by Police Chief Richard Combs
Before Mike Brown, before Eric Garner, before Trayvon Martin, a beloved man in small-town South Carolina named Bernard Bailey
was murdered by his local police chief in 2011.
For four years Bernard's family, friends, and church community have fought for justice in this case. In two different trials, a total of 17 jurors voted to convict Officer Richard Combs of murder, but they just could not come to a unanimous consensus. When white police officers kill African Americans, the odds of getting a conviction, no matter how outrageously egregious, are less than 1 percent.
This case falls in that 99.5-percent category.
Prosecutors agreed to drop the murder charge against 38-year-old Richard Combs, the former police chief of the small town of Eutawville, in exchange for his guilty plea. Combs stood trial twice on the murder charge, but both cases ended with hung juries. He would have faced 30 years to life if convicted of murder.
Instead, he faced up to 10 years behind bars on the misconduct in office charge. Combs' lawyer said he decided to plead guilty to the lesser charge because he was emotionally and financially exhausted.
So, before we even get in the details of the case, let me summarize.
Officer Richard Combs kills Bernard Bailey.
Combs is charged with murder and 17 jurors in two trials find him guilty, but they can't get to a unanimous vote.
Poor Officer Combs is exhausted by the process and decides to plead guilty to misconduct, which has a 10-year prison sentence, but, for the love of white supremacy, he doesn't have to serve a single damn day in prison and gets something called "home detention" (also known as a DirecTV vacation).
When you can, read the powerfully written summary of the grave injustice done to Bernard Bailey here.
I've included a long sample of it below.
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.