Less than a year after a Black man died in police custody in Mississippi, a grand jury indicted three former Jackson cops on murder and manslaughter charges, the county district attorney announced in a press conference Wednesday. Newly released body camera footage shows Kenya McCarty, Avery Willis, and James Land pinning Keith Murriel to the ground and repeatedly shocking him with stun guns as the 41-year-old begged the cops to stop. Authorities said the officers detained Murriel just before midnight on New Year’s Eve in 2022 for allegedly trespassing at a local hotel. During the arrest, Willis joked to another officer that he hoped Murriel was asleep so it could be “a good ride” and used a racial slur, CBS News reported. Willis and McCarty now face second-degree murder charges, and Land faces a manslaughter charge. “Although the family would much rather have Keith here with them, there is a level of comfort knowing that the officers have been indicted for the egregious crime they committed last December,” the attorney representing Murriel’s family said in a statement to ABC News. The network has reached out to officials for a copy of Murriel’s autopsy.
