Ending the Cycle: Unjust Inquests and the Laundering of Police Homicides in Black Milwaukee

When Milwaukee County’s District Attorney ordered an inquest into Ernest Lacy’s death in 1981, it marked the eighth time in thirteen years that government officials tried to rationalize police violence through a centuries-old medico-legal procedure rather than engage in direct prosecution. Throughout Milwaukee’s Black Power era, the state relied on inquests to launder police killings and deny Black families justice. District attorneys, sheriffs, and medical examiners absolved law enforcement of culpability in the wake of high-profile deaths. In the process, they pathologized Black victims and explained away police lethality using forensic and law enforcement testimony. A statute barred family attorneys from cross-examining inquest witnesses or calling their own.

Medico-legal investigations staged following racialized police killings devastated loved ones seeking justice, denigrated memories of the deceased, and criminalized blackness through the medicalization of police homicides. An added motive for the state was tempering Black dissent that confronted state violence. Inquests not only delayed the absolution of deadly policing but aimed to soften political insurgencies against white supremacy.

Yet, as the state persisted, Black citizens resisted. Inside and out of the Milwaukee Safety Building, rights activists protested, challenged police narratives, and negotiated reforms to prevent deaths similar to Lacy’s brutal asphyxiation. Their movement, led by the Lacy family, reflected a shifting terrain of struggle around the state’s capacity to whitewash police lies. The recent exposure of a fraudulent 1958 inquest and coverup helped neutralize the state’s capacity to legitimize subsequent police killings. As demands for a fair hearing intensified, officials fielded a racially diverse inquest panel that favored police prosecution. Nevertheless, Milwaukee’s DA alleged that social engineering tainted their decision. He refused to file charges, revising the status quo of police safeguarding. Upholding police power—never the sole province of police agencies—endured at the expense of Black lives, irrespective of the inquest’s results.