Month: November 2024

A former Ohio police officer was convicted of murder Monday in the shooting of Andre Hill, a Black man who was holding a cellphone and keys when he was killed. Adam Coy, who served nearly 20 years with the Columbus police force, shot Hill four times in a garage nearly four years ago. Coy, who is White, was fired after the shooting.

Franklin County Judge Stephen McIntosh set a sentencing date of Nov. 25 for Coy, who is undergoing cancer treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma. Coy faces at least 15 years in prison, with the jury also finding him guilty of reckless homicide and felonious assault. Defense attorney Mark Collin later said they would be appealing the verdict.

Police body camera footage showed Hill, 47, coming out of the garage of a friend’s house holding up a cellphone in his left hand, his right hand not visible, seconds before he was fatally shot by Coy. Almost 10 minutes passed before officers at the scene began to aid Hill; he was pronounced dead at a hospital. Coy told jurors that he thought Hill was holding a silver revolver that turned out to be keys, testifying: “I thought I was going to die.”  However, after he rolled over Hill’s body and saw the keys that he realized there was no gun: “I knew at that point I made a mistake. I was horrified.”

Weeks after the December 2020 shooting, the city of Columbus reached a $10 million settlement with Hill’s family, the largest in city history. The Columbus City Council also passed Andre’s Law, which requires police officers to render immediate medical attention to an injured suspect.

Brian Steel, president of the police union in Columbus, said he was shocked by the murder conviction: “Your split-second decision can now be led to murder. It is absolutely insane. Officers are willing to die for their community, they are willing to die for this job. They do not want to go to prison for this job.”

Editorial credit: Eric Glenn / Shutterstock.com

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to to decide the ongoing legal redistricting dispute in Louisiana that could determine whether the state maintains a congressional map that includes two majority-Black districts after the 2024 election. The court’s decision to hear the appeal from a group of Black voters and the state marks at least the third time it will be involved in the legal battle over voting lines for Louisiana’s U.S. House districts that were drawn after the 2020 Census. The high court is expected to begin hearing oral arguments before the end of its current term in June; it will have no impact on this year’s election.

According to court filings on behalf of Phillip Callais and 11 other plaintiffs, Louisiana “should be ashamed” of using race in order to draw congressional district lines that “over-represents Black voters” which could result in the loss of GOP control in the House of Representatives.  However, state’s Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga wrote in court documents that Louisiana is “stuck in an endless game of ping-pong .. and the State is the ball, not a player, the state will be sued again no matter what it does.”

Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature had overridden a veto by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards over the state’s new congressional map. However after state officials and voting rights advocates had made an emergency judicial request in efforts to finalize the state’s congressional district map in order to meet required legal deadlines, in May the supreme court cleared the way for Louisiana to use its current map with two majority-Black districts for this year’s election.

In January, Louisiana lawmakers approved a new congressional map to increase the number of majority-Black districts to represent the state’s population (which is nearly 1/3 Black). The approval came after a 2022 Supreme Court ruling reinstated Louisiana’s Republican-drawn congressional map, which froze a lower court ruling that says the Republican map violated the Voting Rights Act. Currently, the map leans towards Republicans in districts held by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise.

Editorial credit: Aashish Kiphayet / Shutterstock.com