Ephraim Nelson has a lot of questions about how his 20-year-old brother was killed by Kent Police this past August. Police say Ephraim’s brother, Eugene, resisted arrest and dragged a police officer with his car when two Kent police officers unleashed a slurry of bullets into Eugene’s vehicle. But Ephraim and his godmother question the validity of the police’s account of that evening.
The county uses a process called inquest hearings to try to answer these questions. The hearings are structured like a trial, with a judge and a jury, but instead of the jury deliberating on criminal charges or civil penalties the jury instead answers a series of yes or no questions at the end of the inquest. Anytime a cop kills someone in King County, officials convene an inquest hearing, but some lawyers say Ephraim is unlikely to get a fair shake from that process.
