Schurr’s lawyer want to erase the murder of Patrick Lyoya, but we must never forget what happened and which institutions were responsible

On Wednesday, August 6th, MLive posted an article entitled, Christopher Schurr wants records from high-profile murder case destroyed. 

The article partly rehashes a vague and misleading narrative about what happened the day that Christopher Schurr shot and killed Patrick Lyoya. Since Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker has refused to re-try Schurr, as has AG Dana Nessel, Schurr is free of any legal consequences of his actions that resulted in Patrick Lyoya’s death. The MLive article then states: 

Now, defense attorneys Matthew Borgula, Mark Dodge, and Mikayla Hamilton are asking the judge to remove Schurr’s arrest record from ICHAT, which is the Michigan State Police’s Internet Criminal History Access Tool.

The motion requests any entry related to the murder charge be removed from the Law Enforcement Information Network, or LEIN.

Attorneys are also requesting any arrest records held by Michigan State Police and the Grand Rapids Police Department be destroyed.

Becker told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press on Wednesday, Aug. 6, that his office has no grounds to oppose the motion.

The Kent County Prosecutor once again demonstrates his loyalty to power, by not objecting what Schurr’s lawyers want to do. However, the main issue is what Schurr’s lawyers are hoping to do, plus the significance of their request.  GRIID has been documented the actions of Schurr’s lawyers, ever since Schurr retained them in June of 2022. I want to revisit what I have written, primarily to demonstrate that the current request to have any record of Schurr’s brutal killing of Lyoya is consistent with how his lawyers have acted over the past 3 years.

From the very first story about Schurr’s lawyers in June of 2022, they attempted to control the narrative about Schurr’s killing of Lyoya, which I wrote about here.

In a September 2022 article I noted that one of Schurr’s lawyers had previously represented another GRPD cop who was found not guilty of intentionally discharging his firearm when approaching a Black man.

In October of 2022, I wrote about ongoing news coverage of the hearing about the Schurr case, which not only relied heavily on what Schurr’s lawyers had to say, but the witnesses they had speak during the hearing.

In January of 2023, Schurr’s lawyer submitted a 45-page legal brief to argue that Kent County Circuit Judge Christina Elmore should dismiss the case.

In February of 2023, Schurr’s lawyers demanded (and were granted) a delay in the trial date. There were two reasons submitted by Schurr’s lawyers as to why the trial should be delayed:

• They needed more time to, “mull over more than 30,000 pages of files in the case.”
• Matthew Borgula, one of Schurr’s attorneys, explained to the judge that one of the members of their trial team recently died, and his co-counsel also recently lost an immediate family member. 

GRIID also noted how Schurr’s lawyers continued influence the local news coverage leading up to Schurr’s trial last April. At the time I wrote: The legal team representing Schurr was definitely on the offensive with their own public statements and Press Releases, with MLive being the primary news agency to generate stories based on Schurr’s legal team. 

Seeing how Schurr’s lawyers have operated from the very beginning, helps us to understand exactly why they are now calling for the the judge to remove Schurr’s arrest record from ICHAT, which is the Michigan State Police’s Internet Criminal History Access Tool, and for any arrest records held by Michigan State Police and the Grand Rapids Police Department be destroyed. All of this tracks, since from the time that Schurr retained these lawyers in June of 2022, they have made it their mission to not only justify Schurr’s killing of Patrick Lyoya, they have also attempted to re-write the public narrative about what happened.

Of course there are those that want control public narratives around policing and there are those that want to suppress any record of state violence. What these systems of power don’t realize is that we will never forget what Christopher Schurr did to Patrick Lyoya, nor what the GRPD did, along with Grand Rapids City officials did to minimize and justify the shooting of Patrick Lyoya. 

The Zapatista movement in southern Mexico says, “Estamos en una guerra en countra el olvido,” “We are in war against forgetting.” The systems of power and oppression in Grand Rapids do not want us to know what happened to Patrick Lyoya and we can’t let them win by forgetting what happened. We need to re-member, to put back together again, to make whole what happened to Patrick Lyoya and how that has impacted his family and community. Re-membering is resistance, re-membering is community care, re-membering is love. Never Forget! #Justice4Patrick