On Friday, Jan. 28, the Department of Justice told Tamir Rice’s family that it wouldn’t reopen his case.
Rice’s family and their legal team wrote a letter to the Department of Justice and President Joe Biden’s administration to have his federal civil rights investigation of his death reopened after it was closed in 2020.
They sent the letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Apr. 16 2021, requesting him to reopen the case hoping that the Department of Justice would comply. The victim’s attorneys felt there weren’t any statute of limitations that would prevent the officer who shot and killed Rice, former Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann, from being charged for violating his civil rights.
“The election of President Biden, your appointment, and your commitment to the rule of law, racial justice, and police reform give Tamir’s family hope that the chance for accountability is not lost forever,” Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice’s, lawyers wrote in the letter to Garland on Apr. 16, 2021. “We write on their behalf to request that you reopen this investigation and convene a grand jury to consider charges against the police officers who killed Tamir.”
Rice’s family’s attempts would be one of the last ways to bring Loehmann to justice after a grand jury didn’t criminally charge him nor another officer involved in the incident, Frank Garmback, in 2015.
Unfortunately, On Jan. 28, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the Civil Rights Division, responded to the letter saying Rice’s death was a “tragic loss.” However, she said the government wouldn’t be able to prove that civil rights were violated “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“The United States Supreme Court has made clear that in prosecuting a Section 242 case, an officer acted ‘willfully’ if he did so with bad purpose — that is, with the specific intent to do something the law forbids — to deprive a person of their constitutional rights,” she wrote. “After viewing, and exhaustively evaluating the available evidence in this matter, in 2020, career prosecutors determined that the federal government could not meet this high standard.”
Clarke added that the court’s decision to close the case in 2020 was “based solely upon the applicable facts and law, without political input or influence.”
She said that’s also the reason for not reopening it.
“I think they’re pitiful and pathetic, and at this point, no one is going to get justice when it comes to police shootings in America. It’s disgusting. I don’t have an indictment for my 12-year-old son.” Rice’s mother said in a phone interview with Buzzfeed on Jan. 31.
Rice was shot in the torso and killed by Loehmann outside Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio, on Nov. 22, 2014. He was playing with a toy pellet gun when the officer fatally shot him.
