RHONE: Georgia sheriff shouldn’t rely on badge to avoid accountability

The woman, April Tinsley, was deputy sheriff of Clinch County. She had stopped at the QuikTrip with her husband and boss, Stephen Tinsley, who was the sheriff of Clinch County. The Tinsleys were transporting an inmate to Atlanta.

April Tinsley went inside to get coffee. She was backing away from the machine when she and Rice collided.

April Tinsley then told her husband that Rice had groped her behind. Stephen Tinsley, without investigating those claims, handcuffed Rice.

The Tinsleys both appeared on video holding Rice’s cuffed arms just before Stephen Tinsley pulled Rice to the ground, knocking him unconscious.

Rice has said any physical contact with April Tinsley was accidental. Witnesses said Rice never resisted arrest.

This could dissolve into a “he said, she said” account of what happened. But video evidence, witness corroboration and the fact that the sexual battery charges against Rice were never prosecuted offer some insight.

Viral videos show Rice and his girlfriend, April Jackson, standing outside the gas station as the Tinsleys engage in a frantic exchange.

Jackson was recording on her cellphone when April Tinsley snatched the phone from her hands and tossed it into the seat of the inmate transport vehicle.

Responding officers acknowledged this action should have resulted in robbery charges against April Tinsley but a superior officer declined to charge her with a crime.

A scuffle ensued between April Tinsley and Jackson, as Tinsley, who had not yet identified herself as a deputy sheriff, attempted to twist Jackson’s arms behind her back and handcuff her.

The video is hard to watch. Witnesses were screaming in the background. Stephen Tinsley yelled at April Tinsley, who yelled back at him. One witness entered the camera frame trying, unsuccessfully, to calm everyone down.

When officers from the Henry County Police Department arrived on scene, reviewed the camera footage and talked to witnesses, they concluded that any physical contact between April Tinsley and Darius Rice was accidental.

Then the Henry County Sheriff’s Office took over the investigation and Rice was charged with sexual battery.

Two years go by and the statute of limitations to prosecute a misdemeanor passes. The charge against Rice was automatically dropped.

“We believe they failed to prosecute because there was no crime committed,” said Rice’s attorney, Harry Daniels.

But for Rice, the damage to his life had been done.

The former Marine lost his $200,000 a year job as an overseas government contractor and was unable to regain security clearance while he waited for the case to be prosecuted, Daniels said.

Stephen Tinsley lost his reelection bid for Clinch County sheriff in May. In June, he took a 10-day vacation to Honolulu, according to his social media posts.

I haven’t stated until now that Darius Rice is Black, and the Tinsleys are white.

This is America. This is the South. If there was credible evidence that a Black man sexually battered a white woman, the case would have been prosecuted and that man would be behind bars.

Attorneys for Rice have compared his case to that of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black youth who died at the hands of white men for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

Till lost his life over what his accuser decades later acknowledged was an exaggeration, if not an outright lie.

We may never know what really happened that day in 1955 in Money, Mississippi.

Similarly, we may never know exactly what happened that night in 2022 at a gas station in Stockbridge.

But as of last week, we do know that a federal judge found Stephen Tinsley’s actions were not protected by qualified immunity and that Rice has sufficiently alleged that Stephen Tinsley acted with malice.

Rice lost his job and has been unable to travel to do the work he once did.

Stephen Tinsley lost an election and a few weeks later, hopped on a plane for an island getaway.

Rice is asking for $11 million as compensation for mental distress, humiliation, loss of income (present and future), depression and anxiety — all of which he has experienced as a result of a random encounter with April Tinsley.

This is the weight of racism in this country, the many ways in which a Black person’s life can be derailed by a single interaction with a white person.

We can look away, rationalize away or wish away these injustices that are so deeply embedded into every aspect of our lives — but that doesn’t make them disappear.

Read more on the Real Life blog (ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/), find Nedra on Facebook (facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.