Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Tyre Nichols’ life was priceless. As are the lives of each and every Black man and woman who have had theirs cut short by those who took an oath to “serve and protect.” There’s no price that you can put on those hopes, dreams, love, and influence that will never come to fruition. However, you can push cities and police departments into financial ruin as a consequence for their bloodlust.
According to FOX 13 Memphis, the city’s attorney of record is scared to death of Memphis going broke as he prepares to defend against a $550 million civil lawsuit filed by Nichols’ mother RowVaughn Wells. Court documents show that the unnamed attorney is arguing that being forced to pay a $550 million settlement would “essentially bankrupt the City of Memphis.”
Boo hoo.
Source: Lucy Garrett / Getty
This response is a result of a protective order that Wells and her legal team filed to bar the city’s attorney from access to Tyre’s text messages and other correspondence with friends and family. Let the defense tell it, they want to verify Nichols’ “enjoyment of life, strength, and capacity to work and for earning money,” in addition to his “personal habits of sobriety and industry.”
They want to smear this man’s name in order to keep the family from achieving the best semblance of justice that is available to them at this point. They aren’t even hiding it.
“(Wells) objects to the discovery of essentially any independent source of information about Mr. Nichols beyond what (Wells) or her immediate family members can provide. (Wells), understandably, seeks to present Mr. Nichols’ life story in a positive light. However, (Wells) attempts to prohibit any independent corroboration,” the city’s lawyer wrote.
What does Tyre Nichols character, habits, lifestyle, or personal communications have to do with him being beaten to death by a gang of pigs? We’ve seen this movie before, police and prosecutors arguing that Black victims of police brutality “deserved it” because of some irrelevant inferences about their character.
We hope the Wells family gets every red cent of that $550 million.
In related news, NewsOne reports that lawyers for two of the three former Memphis police officers who were convicted in the Tyre Nichols case filed motions for their acquittals. The attorneys for Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith argue that the burden of proof was not met by prosecutors, and they’re fighting for their release.
We sincerely hope they remain in jail, right where they belong.
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