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| Photo appeared in The Guardian |
What we do know is that the grand jury
did not return an indictment, that the proceedings of that grand jury
were deeply flawed, and that there is an underlying assumption about
the actions of young black men that leads to tragic and unnecessary
deaths.
From the start with the release
of the shoplifting video and the police account of the shooting that erroneously gave the distance of Michael Brown from where the shooter's SUV was parked as 35 feet (later estimated by an independent source to be 148 feet), the judicial and public relations decks were being stacked against Michael Brown. The usual media suspects created a prejudicial atmosphere towards the victim by character assassination. For some, the story became less about
whether the shooting was justified and more about whether Michael
Brown was a boy scout or honor student.
The grand jury proceedings were
another blow. The non-indictment decision, as Judd Legum explains in
a post at ThinkProgress.org, was "the result of a process that
turned the purpose of a grand jury on its head." Legum quotes
none other than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: "It is the
grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation
[the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s
defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is
made’ by the prosecutor. ...neither in this country nor in England
has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been
thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence
presented." (United States vs. Williams, 1992)
Of course, Prosecutor McCulloch took another course. "McCulloch
allowed Wilson to testify for hours before the grand jury and
presented them with every scrap of exculpatory evidence
available...The only reason one would present such evidence is to
reduce the chances that the grand jury would indict Darren Wilson."
[ThinkProgress, Nov.26]
And so we come to the inconsistent
testimonies, the differences in accounts between what Officer Darren
Wilson said happened and what others said happened. Trying to answer
five key questions, Mother Jones summarizes the prosecution's statement and the discrepancies between the statements of Darren Wilson and of Dorian Johnson, a friend of Michael Brown's
who was with him at the time the officer approached in an SUV. What happened
during Wilson's initial encounter with Brown and Dorian Johnson? How
did the situation escalate? What exactly happened during Wilson and
Brown's "tussle"? Did Wilson shoot at Brown and Johnson as
they ran away? What was Brown doing when Wilson shot him? Read MJ's article for yourself but, to me at least, it appears that if the grand jurors believed the account of Dorian Johnson, they should have indicted - at the very least on "wrongful death".
And it's not just Johnson's account. Other eyewitnesses support elements of Johnson's
testimony. PBS' Newshour did an exhaustive analysis of the 500 pages of testimony released by the prosecutor's office. Here’s a
breakdown of the PBS analysis:
•"More than 50 percent of the witness
statements said that Michael Brown held his hands up when Darren
Wilson shot him.
•Only five witness statements said
that Brown reached toward his waist during the confrontation leading
up to Wilson shooting him to death.
•More than half of the witness
statements said that Brown was running away from Wilson when the
police officer opened fire on the 18-year-old, while fewer than
one-fifth of such statements indicated that was not the case.
•There was an even split among
witness statements that said whether or not Wilson fired upon Brown
when the 18-year-old had already collapsed onto the ground.
•Only six witness statements said
that Brown was kneeling when Wilson opened fire on him. More than
half of the witness statements did not mention whether or not Brown
was kneeling."
Protests against the shooting began in
Ferguson where Michael Brown's body lay in the street for four hours. Protests spread through the US and then "became a global story
when local police — outfitted in tactical hardware that made them
seem more like an occupying army than a force meant to 'protect and
serve' the people — cracked down on protesters and detained
journalists. Palestinians tweeted advice to Ferguson protesters
about how to deal with tear gas, as Israel launched airstrikes on
targets in the Gaza Strip. Hong Kong protesters, who began their
pro-democracy demonstrations more than a month after Brown's killing,
adopted the "hands up, don't shoot" as a tactic in homage
to the Ferguson protesters." [USA Today, Nov. 25] The grand
jury decision last week re-sparked protests from Ferguson to London. International reaction in the world
press was quick in coming. Editorials and op-eds from across Europe to China were replete with negative comments on the grand jury decision and
what it has to say about justice in the US, a country that likes to think of itself as a champion of human rights. [BBC News, Nov. 26]
What could have been done to
prevent this tragic death of an unarmed teenager? A body camera -
which some are saying should be mandatory for police - would have
provided an accurate depiction of the actual chain of events and, perhaps, changed the response of the officer. The New York Times interviewed law enforcement experts about the shooting and the experts offered several suggestions:
- Had Darren Wilson been carrying a taser, non-lethal force might have been applied (he preferred not to carry one because it is large and not 'very comfortable.')
- In his testimony, Officer Wilson said he never had any thought to fall back, even if only to make a tactical retreat to reassess and perhaps wait for backup officers...“To back up and maybe follow him until backup arrived, in retrospect it might have been a better choice, but we don’t know that Officer Wilson saw that as a valid option,” [Vincent] Henry,[an expert in the use of force by the police] said.
- For some experts, "the shooting and the events that preceded it raised broader policy questions, particularly about how officers engage with communities they patrol. In his initial encounter with Mr. Brown and his friend in the street, Officer Wilson never exited his vehicle, voicing commands through the window of his cruiser instead. “The notion of riding through neighborhoods yelling, ‘Get up on the curb’ or ‘Get out of the street,’ is not where you want your officers to be,” [Fred] Bealefeld, [a former police officer and commissioner] said.
Darren Wilson resigned on Saturday in
light of the continuing protests. He
had been on the force three years and recognized that his
"continued employment may put the residents and police officers
of the City of Ferguson at risk."
The Justice Department has opened has
opened two civil rights investigations in Missouri -- one into
whether Wilson violated Brown's civil rights, the other into the
police department's overall track record with minorities. In a
speech in Atlanta that was interrupted by protesters, Attorney
General Holder also said he plans to announce "rigorous new
standards" for federal law enforcement "to help end racial
profiling, once and for all." [CNN International, Dec. 2]
Clarification (12/4): The original post gave the distance from the shooter to Michael Brown as 148 feet. 148 feet was the distance from Darren Wilson's SUV to the point where Michael Brown had run.
Clarification (12/4): The original post gave the distance from the shooter to Michael Brown as 148 feet. 148 feet was the distance from Darren Wilson's SUV to the point where Michael Brown had run.
