Soon after the death of Chavis Carter hit the internet, emails started coming in. Did I see it? What did I think? And, naturally, can you believe the Jonesboro, Arkansas cops just murdered this kid?

Carter suffered a single, fatal gunshot wound to the head. He was detained on Saturday night following a traffic stop in Jonesboro, about 2 1/2 hours north of Little Rock, after officers said they found marijuana and empty baggies. Officers searched him twice, handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a police car, police said. Not long after, police said, he was found slumped over, with his head in his lap and a gunshot wound to the head.

Well sure, I can believe.  But I don’t know it. Nothing about the death of Chavis Carter makes sense.  Twice searched, yet he still had a gun in his possession?  Possible, but highly unlikely.  The windows of the police cruiser were closed, so no shot fired from a third part outside.  The bust was for a small amount of pot, hardly anything for a young man to commit suicide over.

So it’s got to be the cops? Except witnesses bear out the cops story, that they placed him in the cruiser and a short while later found him dead.  To execute a cuffed prisoner this way is nuts.  It’s not that I can’t believe it might conceivably happen, but it’s such an absurd thing to do that absent some piece of evidence to support it, it’s hard to believe.  

Jonesboro Police Chief Michael Yates says the police-claimed circumstances of Carter’s death “defies logic.” He called it “bizarre,” and, for once, no one disagrees.

Those inclined to find the police at fault rushed to find the police at fault.  And they may be right, but their fury and hatred proves nothing about what happened. It proves only that they are as inclined to rush to judgment as the other team is to blame a defendant.  They seized upon possible minute distinctions in media reports of the police write-ups to show it was a murder and a cover-up. 

“I think they killed him”, said Teresa Carter.  In an administrative summary released Friday, officers said Carter was not handcuffed in the back of the car, at first. Then was taken out, handcuffed, and searched.   

Monday officers said a metal thumping noise first alerted them to the shooting. Now they are saying a smell, maybe gunsmoke alerted them and they found carter slumped over.

The mind plays tricks when trying to make sense of the senseless, but it’s neither a discrepancy nor an answer.  It is a grieving mother trying to understand why her son is dead.

The FBI is now going to investigate the case.  Maybe they will make sense of it, but they only have limited information available.  Coming after the fact, without so much as seeing the scene, make it difficult.  There is a dash cam, which may answer all questions, but why, if it does, has it not been disclosed?  This factors tends to militate strongly toward blaming the cops.  If the dash cam showed something else, one would suspect the Jonesboro police to paste it on Youtube within seconds, proving they did nothing wrong.

But it’s still speculation at this point, which is why I wrote nothing about what Charles Blow calls the Curious Case of Chavis Carter.  While his words drip with skepticism, Blow does all he can do. Ask the unanswered questions.

Yet, “specifically, how Carter suffered his apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound remains unexplained.”

That is the question, isn’t it? How do police officers search a man twice and find a small amount of marijuana but miss a handgun? And how does that man, who had been handcuffed, use that gun to shoot himself in the head?

It’s not impossible.  It’s certainly far-fetched.  People have offered scenarios that reflect Carter trying to rid himself of a concealed weapon that somehow survived the frisk, by dropping it on the floor and trying to move it under the seat of the police cruiser so it wouldn’t be discovered.  With his body contorted, his hands behind his back, trying desperately to slide the gun off the seat and onto the floor, it fired and struck him in the temple.  That’s one bizarre, twisted story, but as any criminal defense lawyer can tell you, bizarre twisted stories happen.  Not often, but sometimes.

When people sent me emails and links about this death, they expected me to write something.  After all, this was certainly a fascinating case, and clearly within my ballpark.  Yet I wrote nothing.  I was stymied.

Blow asks all the right questions, but there is nothing as yet, and there may well never be, meaningful answers to these very hard questions.  So what do we do?  Retreat to our respective teams and root for our side?  We ridicule the other side for doing this, and yet should we do the same?

There are times when a fascinating, horrible story comes to light.  A young man is dead under circumstances that defy logic.  And there is nothing more to add.  To think there is some insight to what happened to Chavis Carter given the known “facts” is to indulge in speculation colored by bias.  That enlightens no one, and feeds the mindless antagonism that too often frames the debate over police abuse and misconduct.  No side is entitled to fill in the blanks with whatever serves their agenda.

I had nothing.  I wrote nothing. That’s the best I can do until there is information that changes the landscape.  I’m sorry to have disappointed those of you who think I should have had an answer, but I’m not sorry for coming up empty when that’s the only legitimate view one can have under the circumstances.