The man who shot and killed former NFL running back Joe McKnight in broad daylight on Thursday afternoon is walking free — an unusual outcome in an area of Louisiana typically eager to arrest and charge its residents.
After McKnight was killed in an apparent road rage dispute at an intersection in Terrytown, Louisiana, authorities identified the shooter as 54-year-old Ronald Gasser. But the next day, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office released Gasser from custody without bringing any charges against him.
There has been a massive outcry over the circumstances surrounding Gasser’s release — particularly because the case is playing out very differently from a separate killing of an NFL star earlier this year.
Photos by @MattHintonPhoto from the Terrytown memorial for Joe McKnight: https://t.co/MJfReKan8i pic.twitter.com/IPPG9cJjRJ
— New Orleans Advocate (@theadvocateno) December 3, 2016
In April, after former defensive end Will Smith was shot and killed following a similar road rage incident, New Orleans police arrested the shooter, booked him with second-degree murder, and set his bond at $1.75 million. The trial for Smith’s shooter, Cardell Hayes, is set to begin on Monday.
“I don’t know why they wouldn’t arrest this guy,” Ben LaBranche, a defense attorney in Baton Rogue, told the Times-Picayune in reference to Gasser. “It’s a very similar case to Cardell Hayes and they booked him immediately.”
One obvious difference between the parallel cases is that Hayes is black, while Gasser is white.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand has forcefully defended himself against accusations of racial bias. “Everybody wants to make this about race. This isn’t about race,” Normand said at a Friday press conference.
The sheriff suggested that McKnight’s case has been handled differently not because he is white, but because authorities need to consider how the state’s self-defense laws might affect bringing charges against him. (Hayes, however, is also claiming self-defense.)
Although Normand’s office appears to be treading particularly carefully with Gasser, the sheriff is not always so reticent to pursue charges.
For example, Normand recently went after a Baptist church for being too loud when it held a series of services in a tent outside as its building was undergoing construction. According to a lawsuit the New Orleans-area Baptist church eventually filed against Jefferson Parish, the sheriff waged a “campaign of intimidation” against churchgoers. Normand issued a criminal summons for the church’s executive director, threatened attendees with a “physical arrest” for playing music at their services, and at one point fingerprinted the pastor in front of his congregation.
More broadly, the area surrounding New Orleans has a long history of arresting and charging people for relatively minor offenses.
The New Orleans suburb of Gretna, which is the town right next to where McKnight was killed, has the highest arrest rate in the country. According to a recent analysis of FBI data conducted by Fusion, Gretna has an arrest rate about 14 times higher than the average U.S. town.
Two-thirds of the people who are arrested in Gretna are black, even though African Americans residents only make up about one-third of the town.
In this area of Louisiana, these racial disparities start early. The Jefferson Parish Public School System — the largest in the state—has been accused of civil rights violations because it arrests a disproportionately high number of black students for minor rule violations.
Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a complaint alleging the problem with arresting black students was only getting worse. SPLC is particularly critical of the fact that the school district contracts with the sheriff’s office to allow authorities to stop, search, and arrest middle school and high school students on school premises.
Overall, a disproportionate number of people in Louisiana end up behind bars. According to a 2012 investigation from the Times-Picayune, one out of every 86 adults are in prison in Louisiana — which means the state imprisons more people per capita than any other state or country in the world.
There still may be charges brought against Gasser. Officials in Jefferson Parish say the investigation into McKnight’s death is ongoing.