The police chief indicted by a South Carolina grand jury on the same day a New York grand jury refused to indict the officer involved in Eric Garner’s death has ended without a verdict, as a deadlocked jury forced a judge to declare a mistrial. The late-night episode delivered the sudden closing of a case that had shown – albeit temporarily – how local courts might prosecute police who kill the citizens they are sworn to protect.
Judge Edgar Dickson urged jurors to attempt to reach a consensus in the charges against former Eutawville police chief Richard Combs, but around 2am on Tuesday, after 12 hours of deliberation, the judge declared a mistrial, Columbia-based WLTX reported.
Combs shot and killed Bernard Bailey, a 54-year-old former corrections officer, in May 2011 after attempting to arrest him on an obstruction of justice warrant. Combs said he feared for his life when Bailey allegedly attempted to run Combs down with his Chevrolet Silverado.
But prosecutors told a different story, insisting that Combs was bitter about a traffic stop more than a month earlier, in March. Then, Combs had pulled over Bailey’s daughter for a broken taillight. The elder Bailey arrived at the traffic stop to speak to Combs, then again to the police station to attempt to resolve the ticket. It was then that Combs attempted to arrest Bailey for obstruction of justice.
When Bailey reportedly refused arrest, Combs followed him out to the parking lot, WLTX reported. What happened next is the crux of the trial, and what the jury failed to rule on: did Bailey use his truck as a weapon, or was the police chief merely angry?
The South Carolina Post and Courier reported that townspeople believe the shooting was simply a case of “bad policing, not racism”, but the case resonated nonetheless for Orangeburg County prosecutors securing an indictment against Combs at all. Grand juries, despite issuing indictments for civilians the vast majority of the time, rarely indict police officers.
The same day that Orangeburg County prosecutors secured an indictment in Combs’s case, a grand jury in declined to indict a New York City police officer in the killing of an unarmed black man. There, onlookers filmed as officer Daniel Pantaleo held Staten Island resident Eric Garner in a chokehold that led to his death after police say they had attempted to arrest Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes.
Staten Island prosecutor Daniel Donovan’s failure to secure an indictment stoked national anger, already primed by high-profile cases of police violence against unarmed black men, and has led to weeks of continued national protests. For many advocates, the Combs case in South Carolina was a bright spot in the fight to hold police accountable.
Grand juries that have not indicted officers, most prominently the failure to indict the white police officer who shot unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, had led to reforms both local and national. A White House taskforce on community policing was scheduled to hold its first meeting on Tuesday in Washington.
Prosecutors in Combs’s case was said they will seek a retrial. The town of Eutawville (population 315) has already reached a $400,000 civil settlement with Bailey’s family.
Bailey’s family released a statement through attorney Carl Grant saying they appreciate the jury’s service and would continue to seek justice for his death.
