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Police killed 1,194 people in the United States in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence. That’s pretty much been the case over the past decade.

97 percent of those killings were the result police shootings.

Police were charged with a crime in only 9 of those 1,194 killings—roughly 1 percent. Yet 22 of the officers involved in these killing had killed someone before with an additional 8 officers having been involved in multiple shootings.

But the most striking finding in the 2022 annual report issued by Mapping Police Violence is that 101 of the victims killed by the police were unarmed—more than half of whom was Black or Hispanic.

On April 8, 2023, Yahoo News carried a report about 7 cases, which garnered national media attention, in which police killed Black people after mistakenly thinking they had a gun. They were:

• 2006 Sean Bell: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of 50 bullets fired New York City plainclothes officers the day before his wedding.
• 2010 Aiyana Mo’Say Stanley-Jones: Unarmed, shot and killed by Detroit, Michigan police. The 7-year-old was shot through her neck as she lay in bed with his grandmother. The officer involved in the shooting was ultimately cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.
• 2018 Stephon Clark: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of 20 bullets fired by Sacramento, California police the backyard of his grandmother’s home.
• 2020 Frederick Cox: Unarmed, shot and killed by High Point, North Carolina police. The 18-year-old teenager was shot multiple times in the back.
• 2022 Tyrea Pryor: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of 15 bullets by Independence, Missouri police following a raffic stop.
• 2022 Jayland Parker: Unarmed, shot and killed in a hail of an estimated 90 bullets fired by Akron, Ohio police, of which 46 struck Parker, during and following a car chase.
• 2022 Donovan Lewis: Unarmed, shot and killed by Columbus, Ohio police as he lay in his bed. He was shot less than a second after the officer opened the bedroom door.

These cases, and thousands more like them over the past two decades, demonstrate that police have a virtual license to kill people, especially people of color, with no accountability.

That’s police justice.

But what about a person of color—a reputed drug cartel member, no less—who kills a police officer’s K9 partner?

During a police chase in January 2019 that began in Karnes County and ended in shootout in Bexar County, Texas, Matthew Mireles shot and killed K9 Chucky after the 5-year-old Belgium Malinois had been sic on him by his handler.

Mireles was ultimately given three life sentences—one of which was for killing K9 Chucky.

That’s dog justice.

Thirty-four years ago Crosley Green, a Black man, was charged with killing Charles Flynn in Titusville, Florida. He maintained his innocence.

Not so sure about its case because investigators had written in their notes that they had doubts about Green’s involvement in Flynn’s killing, the prosecution offered him a 7-year plea deal. He refused the deal. He was then convicted by an all-white, non-unanimous jury and sentenced to death—a sentence that was later reduced to life imprisonment at the request of the State of Florida.

He still maintained his innocence.

Some three decades later a federal district court judge reversed Green’s conviction because the prosecution had failed to disclose to the defense the investigator’s notes doubting Green’s involvement in the crime.

The prosecution appealed the judge’s reversal order to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The federal judge then ordered Green released from the Florida prison system pending the appeal of the new trial order.

He was released from prison in April 2021.

Despite the fact that three prosecution witnesses have recanted their testimony linking Green to Flynn’s killing and eight witnesses who provided an alibi for Green at the time of Flynn’s killing. a three-judge federal panel in an exhaustive, convoluted 182-page decision issued on March 14, 2022 reversed the federal judge’s new trial order and reinstated Green’s conviction.

On February 27, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the Green case, foreclosing any other avenues for judicial relief.

After two years of freedom, Green was ordered on April 5, 2023 to return to prison to continue his life sentence.

The evidence is compelling that another innocent Black man will remain in prison for the rest of his life.

That.s Black man justice.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a justice system that finds criminal wrongdoing in just 9 of the 1,194 police-on-citizen killings in one year—especially given that more than 100 of the victims were unarmed, were people of color, and killed by White officers.

Yet that same justice system gives a man a life sentence that kills a police dog sic on him by the police dog’s handler after the risk to public safety had passed. The officers simply wanted revenge because Mireles has shot at them.

And that same justice system re-incarcerates a Black man that police do not believe committed the crime; the prosecution offered him 7 years to plead guilty; secured a death sentence against him after he refused the deal’ the State admits the death sentence was wrong; the court vacated the death sentence after three prosecution witnesses recanted their testimony against the him; the man has eight alibi witnesses to his innocence; and the man has spent more than three decades in prison.

This 65-year-old innocent Black man was returned to prison to complete a life sentence imposed upon him for an unconstitutional (blatant prosecutorial misconduct) conviction because he did not timely follow proper court procedures to have his innocence claims reviewed.

These kinds of disparities in justice are systemic in the nation’s justice system. They occur every day in police-on-citizen killings, unconstitutional traffic stops, illegal searches and seizures, prosecutorial misconduct, unfair trials and sentencing, and judicial review of unconstitutional convictions.

That is the system in which criminal defense attorneys must fight diligently and unrelentingly to eke out a measure of fairness and justice for the clients they represent.

It is a seemingly insurmountable task that they must embrace each day they walk into a courthouse.