Imagine your killer gets the final word
Avery Jackson is a student at Morehouse College and is active in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Imagine this. You are young and in love. You are in a relationship with the beautiful love of your life. You are still in your youth, but you’ve lived enough to have the wisdom of an adult. You love music. Making songs is expressive healing for you. You put your life and mental stability on the line for your country. You fought in the bloody battlefields of Afghanistan.
You are then discharged after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A disorder likely triggered by the traumatic experiences of being on a battlefield on behalf of the U.S.A. After your diagnosis, you enter an entirely new battle. You must properly fight the stigmas associated with your neural differences while simultaneously finding the treatment that works best with your lifestyle and body.
You have not been prepared for this new form of combat. A battle likely initiated by your sacrificial act of service as a soldier for your country. You are trying different treatments, each time hoping it is the best fit. Eventually, the fight begins to get tougher. The symptoms of your mental differences begin to show and the pressure for the right treatment increases.
One day, the symptoms intensify much more than they have before. You are experiencing your first bipolar episode. You are in the middle of a mental combat zone. The people around you at the time are not trained on how to assist you in this battle, but they want to help you. So they do what they have been ingrained to do, call 911 in an emergency. You had aspirations to become an officer and consistently advocated for their ability to serve.
The police officer is dispatched and he arrives. His name is Officer Robert Olsen. He sits idly in his car for a few minutes. You are still experiencing your first bipolar episode and it is typical for your body to overheat during a bipolar episode, so you took off all of your clothes because you wanted to cool down. Neighbors are watching. Officer Olsen gets out of the car, and within the next two minutes you are shot and killed.
You join the ranks of the thousands of black people publicly executed by law enforcement. Your family, friends and an entire community you never got to meet begin to do everything in their power to get justice. Finally the District Attorney agrees to purse a criminal indictment for the police officer who killed you. But there is one catch; Georgia law allows the person many believe murdered you to give the last word in the hearing of your case. The last voice the jurors hear before deciding whether your life deserves a trial is the voice of your killer.
Imagine you live in the state of Georgia and you are publicly executed at the hands of a police officer. Imagine the pain of your family when they sit through an entire hearing, never getting to say a word, and then they watch as your killer takes the stand for the finale.
You don’t have to use your imagination. This is the reality for Anthony Hill, his family and the community that seeks justice for him. The reality is the state of Georgia, by law, would rather protect a possible murderer than give justice to the murdered.
