People throughout St Louis, Missouri are very angry, and rightly so! Naturally, they have been protesting for a while now. I do not blame them. People are being killed in broad daylight and in cold blood! But what is worse is that their hunters are being allowed to walk free amongst them. When the courts deny the evidence as it slaps them in the face, they are accessories to these crimes in some way.

You'll recall the shooting that occurred in St Louis, Missouri. It happened in December of 2011. Shot five times, Anthony Lamar Smith, died that same day.

I don't know what Anthony was doing that day. He is no longer with us. He can no longer tell his story. Judging guilt or innocence is the responsibility of a judge or jury. Summary judgment is not, however, the purview of a man or woman sworn to, "protect and serve," and therein lies the problem.

Anthony was a father, son, and a fiancee. A suspect. A human being.

I want to talk about the murder victim, Anthony Lamar Smith. I do not wish to speak about him as a heroin dealer, not even as a black man. I want to talk about the father of a baby girl, a son to a loving mother and a fiancee that now must raise their child alone knowing his murderer walks free. I want to talk about a human being.

Even though he was a suspect, life still stood before Anthony, as did his chance to redeem himself through the eyes of his children.

That is the same chance that every human being is entitled to. Is it not? That chance was ripped from Anthony’s hands. His may have been a bleak future, or it might just as easily have taken a turn for the better, but we will never know.

No one can know what a person’s future holds, and certainly, no one has the right to decide that for anyone.

The bitter reality? That will never be known about Anthony. Jason Stockley made sure of that when he acted out of anger, vengeance, hatred, and bigotry and shot Anthony Lamar Smith four times in succession. He then followed those shots 15 seconds later with a kill shot. Taken in context with his statement of clear intent, it is clearly a case for premeditated murder.

Anthony might have been called a drug dealer. He is likely to have been racially profiled, but before that, he was just a human being. These days, if you're a black man in Missouri, the fact that you are a human being is but a vague suggestion to a police officer.

Anthony was the father of a daughter who was just a year old when his life was snuffed out. He was murdered by what, according to evidence, was a hateful, angry man bent on punishing Anthony Lamar Smith. I recall Jason Stokely's recorded words, taken by his dash cam, just minutes before he gunned Anthony down. These words should echo in the minds of all human beings until it becomes an irreducible roar in our collective conscience, “We’re killing this motherf#cker.

Don’t you know?”

Timothy J. Wilson: Judge that set free a violent murderer who swore to protect and serve

Judge Timothy J. Wilson acquitted a cold-blooded murderer. His bias is apparently so profound it has impaired his ability to remain impartial. I think it goes without saying that he should no longer be permitted to preside over a court. I just don’t want us all to lose focus on what the real tragedies are here.

A mother will never see her son redeem himself. A daughter will never know her father. And a cold-blooded murderer, who should never have taken an oath to protect and serve, is now walking free in Missouri.

Of all that I don’t know about Jason Stockley, the one thing I believe I do know is that he should never rest again.

He should be made pariah and hated for the murderer that he is, for the rest of his life. If we cannot punish murderers through the courts, if we can’t trust that system, we still have the First Amendment.