'Split-second decision': Supreme Court returns to the question of police killings
It took just seconds for a routine traffic stop on a Texas highway to escalate into a fatal shooting that left 24-year-old Ashtian Barnes bleeding to death in the driver’s seat.
HOUSTON — It took just seconds for a routine traffic stop on a Texas highway to escalate into a fatal shooting that left 24-year-old Ashtian Barnes bleeding to death in the driver’s seat.
What happened during those seconds and the minutes prior during the April 2016 incident is now central to a Supreme Court case being argued on Wednesday that could make it easier — or harder — to hold police officers accountable for the use of excessive force.
For Barnes’ mother, Janice Hughes, 55, who filed the civil rights lawsuit at the center of the case, the oral argument at the high court is the latest stop on a more than eight-year quest for justice on behalf of her only son, who was a Black man.
“I want out of this that my son was a victim. He was never a suspect … and I need that to be clear. He was a victim from the very beginning,” she said in an emotional interview at her lawyer’s home in Houston with her two daughters and granddaughter by her side.
Almost five years since the death of George Floyd, another Black man killed by a police officer, Hughes believes no progress has been made despite the mass protests and calls for social justice that followed.
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