New York Times columnist Charles Blow, somewhat uncharacteristically, limits himself mostly to a recitation of the bizarre known facts of the death of Chavis Carter in Jonesboro police custody. Police believe that Carter, while handcuffed in the back of a patrol car, shot himself fatally with a gun they’d missed in earlier searches. Concludes Blow:

The F.B.I. is now monitoring the investigation while a nation waits for answers and wonders about a “suicide” that “defies logic.”

My hunch is that this will never be wholly resolved. The seeming physical obstacles to Carter shooting himself are large. But large also, maybe larger, is the question — if an alternate theory is your leaning — why a police officer with other witnesses present would shoot a handcuffed, patrol car-contained non-violent petty drug suspect in the head (and have a stolen weapon handy to do the job to plant on the suspect)?

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Jonesboro police lean heavily toward the conclusion of a self-inflicted wound.

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