One 2014 day when I entered a nearby courthouse, a sheriff’s deputy lamented the backlash of public opinion against police after police shot dead Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The unjustified police killings continued, including Eric Garner’s death on Staten Island following a police chokehold, the December 2014 death of Jerame Reed in New Jersey, Walter Scott (shot in the back in 2015 in South Carolina, with the shooting police officer now facing substantial prison time after his May 2, 2017, guilty plea), Eric Harris in 2015 in Tulsa (accidentally shot by a volunteer cop, and told to “F*ck your breath” by another), and Terence Crutcher in 2016 in Tulsa. Levar Jones amazingly survived his 2014 South Carolina police-inflicted gunshot wounds when he was going to retrieve his license from his car.

On April 29, 2017, the horror of unjustified police shootings continued, this time in Texas with fifteen-year-old Jordan Edwards as the homicide victim. The Balch Springs, Texas, police department initially explained that the shooting happened after the car in which Edwards was a passenger was driving towards police in a manner that threatened police safety. Not long after that, the police department backtracked, fired the shooting cop, and awaits the next step in the criminal investigation of the police shooting of Jordan Edwards.

Yes, as with all criminal investigations and criminal proceedings, Jordan Edwards’s alleged shooter is entitled to all Constitutional rights that all criminal suspects enjoy, including the presumption of innocence. At the same time, forming an opinion about the culpability of Mr. Edwards’s shooter is something we are entitled to do, and that opinion does not change the police shooter’s Constitutional rights in his criminal proceeding.

Sending condolences and prayers to Jordan Edwards and his family.