The Other Columbus: The many justices of the Adam Coy verdict

Only Andre Hill’s family can say whether or not Adam Coy’s conviction is justice. So long as Hill cannot be returned to them, we know that it can never be enough. “Enough” has rarely been a good gauge of justice. 

Prior to this conviction, the City of Columbus paid Hill’s family $10 million as the result of a civil suit. It is not the first settlement paid for a police killing here, but it is the largest ever paid in Franklin County. Some would say that was a sign of a conviction to come, but we should all know by now that these are frequently (to the point of being labeled regularly) restitutions paid when justice is not forthcoming by way of conviction. Lots of cities have paid many millions of dollars to wash their hands of a case like this. Again, only the family can determine if that action rises to the definition of justice. 

There is another justice to consider: public justice. This is the “Social Justice” part of the now practically pejorative SJW. It is second, always, to whatever justice the loved ones of a victim seek but is no less valid. The protests around Andre Hill’s murder were demanding justice, but defined by things a family may or may not seek. Public cries for justice want demonstrable change. We grieve, but not like a family grieves. And so, public outcry seeks to mobilize around the horrific act that binds the public to a personal death. Protestors not only want justice for the death that happened, but they also don’t want any more deaths under the same conditions. So, justice in the public mind is not only compensatory; it must install accountability. 

Justice can look like a lot of things depending on where you’re standing. 

Say you’re standing next to the president of the Fraternal Order of Police Capital City Lodge No. 9, Brian Steel, who declared that the verdict “sends a message that your split-second decision can lead to a murder conviction” and that “ever since 2020, the pendulum has overcorrected.” 

Or maybe you’re standing next to defense attorney Mark Collins, who called the verdict “devastating,” going on to state that “an officer in a close call situation, they won’t rely on their training and experience. They’ll pause, and that’s when people get hurt.”

Unless you’re new to the issue of policing as a matter of public concern, these statements should send chills up your spine. Shouldn’t a split-second decision lead to a murder conviction if a murder was committed? How can a pendulum whose bob has only ever stayed on one side of its pivot point be charged with overcorrection for going half a fraction in the other direction? 

The Coy verdict marks the first time a Columbus officer has been found guilty of murder while performing in the line of duty. In the face of all the people who have been killed by police, the many settlements that have been paid, and the rarity of police recrimination across the board, there is no pendulum to swing. That analogy only works if you think the police can’t commit murder while on the clock. And even then, it still doesn’t work. Never mind the fact that, contrary to Collins’ statement, someone did get hurt here. His name was Andre Hill.

It is these kinds of statements that make policing seem impossible to reform. And if it cannot be reformed, then someone has to explain why we keep an immutable system that indiscriminately kills random citizens in place. And the answer has to be better than that chestnut of a scare tactic about what will happen without them. What’s happening is already egregious, especially if you look like me and Andre Hill, or live in certain neighborhoods. 

For myself, I cannot stop thinking about how the last four years have been for former officer Coy. I think about how scared he sounded after pulling the trigger. I think about how he was fired less than a week after the shooting. And how it took four years to get to a trial that took less than two weeks to resolve. I think about how I called this conviction in five minutes flat back in 2020. I think about how Coy has been out on bond the entire time. I think about how he shot Hill three days before Christmas, and how he still got to celebrate four of them while Hill was present for none. I think about how Coy has cancer, and how that has been leveraged to keep him out of jail awaiting any kind of resolution. I think about how, if he were not a police officer, he’d have likely been receiving treatments in a clinic with bars on the windows. I think about how I wouldn’t know his name if he hadn’t killed a man in less time than it takes to ask that same man his name. I think about how many times an officer has changed the air in a room by just standing there, and how they know it, how they relish it. I think about how he is the first cop in Columbus to experience this level of justice. 

Mostly, though, in light of all the special treatment and the life he got to spend outside of prison in the years since he committed what seemed such an obvious crime, I fret over whether there has been justice at all. I know that it can’t not be justice. I also know that whatever justice was served came delivered in a spoon and not a plate, and certainly it isn’t on the menu. 

I also think about how saying all of this out loud diminishes whatever justice his family feels they have won. I hope they don’t read this. As I said at the start, I cannot speak on the justice they were seeking. I can speak to how this decision feels like what should have happened, but because it happens so rarely, it seems like a thing that can never be fully celebrated because of all the privilege on display to get here. 

I know that is the pessimist in me talking, but that dude is constantly rubbing shoulders with the pragmatist in me, who is rubbing shoulders against the historian in me, who is rubbing shoulders against the Black man that holds them all together. I, too, am permitted to seek a justice. Not because Andre Hill is mine, but because in a split-second, I could become Andre Hill. In this verdict sits a glimmer of hope that the chances of that happening are lessened. Even if it comes from an officer’s fear of losing their liberty or job, I’ll take that second. Taken in that view, the verdict is very much a justice.