On Tuesday, authorities in Wisconsin announced they would not be prosecuting Rusten Sheskey, the officer who shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake in August of last year — an incident that set off protests and riots in Kenosha, a city near the Illinois border. To justify this decision, they released two reports, one from the Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office and another from Noble Wray, a retired police chief and Obama-administration police reformer who’d been asked to render an independent assessment.
Some important details of the shooting remain unclear, largely because Kenosha police did not have body cameras at the time. The incident was captured only on bystanders’ cell phones, videos from which do not show the whole situation. But when it comes to the question of a criminal prosecution, the documents are highly compelling: There is no way to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Sheskey fired without justification. If anything, the evidence tips in the opposite direction.
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