[Op-Ed] 6-Month Jail Sentence For White Man Who Killed 2 Black Women Is Not Justice

On  Dec. 27, 2025, a 19-year-old white man in Charlotte, N.C., killed two Black women and seriously injured a child while driving more than double the speed limit in his  BMW coupe, resulting in a high-speed crash. He was convicted on two criminal charges, for which he will spend six months in jail.

Yes, you read that correctly: six months is all the lives of two Black women were worth.

According to WBTV 3, on June 28, Jason Anthony Scott pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury in the deaths of 45-year-old Lorin Manley and her mother, 81-year-old Gloria Manley, and the injury of an unidentified 12-year-old girl, who was in the passenger seat of the vehicle the Manleys were driving.

The crash reportedly occurred around 7:45 p.m. at the intersection of Ardrey Kell Road and Red Rust Lane, when Scott’s BMW collided with the Honda CR-V Lorin was driving. According to an affidavit, Lorin was found unresponsive and trapped in the driver’s area of the vehicle, and her mother, Gloria, was found unresponsive and pinned in the right rear seat. Both of them were pronounced dead at the scene. The 12-year-old was trapped in the front passenger area of the vehicle before bystanders removed her. She suffered internal bleeding and a crushed pelvis, according to police.

Scott, who was clocked by officers traveling 100 mph in a 45 mph zone, suffered a broken arm and fractures to his back.

Scott was initially sentenced to 2 years and 7 months in prison. This was already a sentence that was far too lenient a punishment for an act of extreme and intentional recklessness that resulted in the deaths of two adults and nearly resulted in the death of a pre-teen. But it wasn’t enough to satisfy a society that tends to default to the perception of the wide-eyed innocence of whiteness. So, Judge Matthew Osman suspended the sentence, according to court documents, allowing Scott to get away with just six months in jail, three years of probation, and the revocation of his driving privileges.

Of course, y’all already know where this is going, right? What if the races were reversed?

As Black people, we find ourselves asking this question often. It’s difficult to imagine that if a Caucasian Karmelo Anthony stabbed a Black Austin Metcalf in Frisco, Texas, after Metcalf and a Black twin brother roughed Anthony up just for existing where they didn’t want him, Anthony still would’ve been found guilty of murder and promptly sentenced to 35 years in prison the same day he was convicted.

But, honestly, we don’t have to look at individual cases to see the racial bias. We don’t have to compare Anthony to George Zimmerman, or highlight cases like that of Jordan Neely‘s killer, Daniel Penny. We can look at the government data that shows Black males receive sentences 13.4 percent longer than those of white males found guilty of the same crimes.

Either way, we’re seeing just how easy it is to toss Black lives to the wayside while the same system bends over backward to be as lenient as the law will allow when deciding what a white life is worth, even when that life is guilty of the most egregious crimes.

Data aside, it’s hard not to individualize these cases when a white man is getting a six-month sentence for a crime that killed two Black people in the same country that tried to put two Black women in prison for five and six years just for registering to vote while ineligible.

But again, we don’t have to be anecdotal. The stats consistently show that Black victims whose families actually receive justice — such as George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Sonya Massey — are outliers (especially considering how hard the “justice” system tried to bury the Arbery case). Far more often than not, justice for us is an uphill battle we don’t succeed in climbing.

In six months, Jason Anthony Scott will be a free man. The Manley family will still be suffering the losses of Lorin and Gloria. And America will still be debating the merits of Black Lives Matter, and calling us “race-baiters” for how we feel about cases like that of Nolan Wells.

And rinse and repeat.

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