Charleena Lyles: The Latest Victim of Extrajudicial Execution

Police shout "get back, get back" within one second of that command a volley of shots are heard. Multiple shots from two guns. Two bullets find their target - one to the chest and one to the abdomen - the kill zone.

Charleena Lyles was a 30 year old African American mother of three. She and her child in utero are dead. They were the latest African American victims of extrajudicial execution. The shooters were two white police officers. Their names have been withheld to protect them from something, prehaps shame, but certainly not punishment. They are on paid administrative leave.

We mourn the loss of Charleena Lyles and her unborn child. But mourning without prevention is like a lion without teeth.With each passing day the handwriting on the wall becomes clearer and clearer. It says "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

The United States Constitution provides that no person shall be held to answer for an infamous crime without indictment by a grand jury. And, no person may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. It follows that a law enforcement officer who kills a person for some real or imagined crime has, in effect, as an official arm of the state, taken the person's life without indictment and without due process of law in clear violation of the Fifth Amendment. In fact the officer has performed, as an agent of the state, an extra judicial execution. Why this fact is never mentioned is understandable from the law enforcement community but not from the African Americans who are the primary victims of extrajudicial execution. Can you say execution without indictment or trial? We must start calling these killings what they really are - executions. Judicial executions are no less heinous than lynchings. Both resulted from arbitrary decisions by white people that black people were guilty of some real or imagined crimes and should be summarily executed. Again, without indictment or trial. It is time that we stand up! Our young men are being slaughtered and now a pregnant young woman. We will allow Frederick Douglas to have the last word. "Find out just what any people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Frederick Douglas'(1857).

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Johnnie Cordero holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Doctorate in Jurisprudence. He is author of Total Black Empowerment: A Guide to Critical Thinking in the Age of Trump