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Tyre Nichols was murdered.

Not killed. Not lost. Not a life that simply “ended.” He was murdered. He was ripped from the fragile thread of existence by the deliberate choices of men who decided that his life did not matter. His life was stolen, snatched from the world beneath the fists, boots, and batons of men who wore the authority of the state on their chests.

Dragged from his car on a January night in 2023 for alleged reckless driving on a dark Memphis road. Five officers beat Nichols mercilessly, fists crashing into his face, boots smashing his ribs, a baton splitting the air and cracking against his skull. They laughed while he screamed. They mocked him while he begged for his mother. They called him a “bitch”— and worse—while his voice broke, his fear exposed, his dignity stripped, his life withering beneath their hands.

Again, Nichols was accused simply of reckless driving, the kind of claim that should mean a ticket, a court date, an argument over a fine. Not a death sentence. The kind of accusation that, in the eyes of the Constitution, is supposed to be met with a process, a calm exchange, a conversation beneath the protection of rights. A chance to contest, to be heard, to be seen. But for Black Americans, the promise of due process is too often a mirage, a pledge written in ink that fades when touched. In its place is the law of the street. In its place is the verdict of the badge. In its place is violence.

Three of the officers who brutalized Tyre Nichols have been acquitted, found not guilty by a jury drawn not from Memphis, the city where Nichols was beaten to death, but from a different part of Tennessee, insulated from the pain, from the streets still stained with his blood. A jury of Americans that looked at the footage of a man being battered to death and saw an open question. A jury that stared at the blows, the........

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