Rev. Jesse Jackson in an interview on Friday compared the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. to “a state execution.”
“[H]ow many times was he shot?” Jackson asked in a segment on MSNBC. “And where was he shot? And why was he lying in the street for several hours? That was kind of a state execution.”
It wasn’t the first time Jackson had used the phrase: During a vigil in Greenville, S.C. on Thursday night, he employed it more directly, according to a report by USA Today.
“If it’s done by an official with a badge on and a gun, it is a state execution,” he said.
The previous day, Jackson also published an op-ed in the USA Today, calling for calm from all sides in Ferguson while also ascribing much of the unrest to a broader problem of economic inequality.
h/t Politico