“Darren Wilson Walks”: No Indictment For Michael Brown’s Killer
Officer Darren Wilson will not face charges for the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The news came on Monday evening, when prosecutor Robert McCulloch announced that a twelve-member Grand Jury had declined to deliver an indictment.
The news brought to a close three months of deliberation, but not the controversy over what happened that day—or the national conversation over race and law enforcement that Brown’s killing started.
The August 9 shooting of Brown, who was black, by Wilson, who is white, set off protests and violent confrontations with police that lasted weeks. Behind those protests were long-standing grievances against Ferguson police and its political establishment. Residents of Ferguson, roughly two-thirds of whom are black, said they were routinely mistreated by members of the police department, which is overwhelmingly white. Among the evidence they cited: Statistics showing that African-Americans constituted a disproportionate share of traffic stops (86 percent) last year.
But exactly what happened on the streets of Ferguson that August day has never been clear. Everybody agrees that Wilson stopped Brown and a friend in the middle of the street—and that some kind of altercation followed. But there are different stories about when exactly Wilson shot Brown and under what circumstances. A key question has been whether Wilson felt that Brown posed a threat, to either the officer or to others.
The Grand Jury considered five separate charges, ranging from involuntary manslaughter (which is basically killing because of recklessness, and carries a maximum sentence of seven years) all the way up to first degree murder (which is basically killing with premeditation, and carries a maximum penalty of life). McCulloch, in a prepared statement, said that the Grand Jury became convinced by reams of evidence—including physical evidence and eyewitness testimony—that Wilson had reasonable grounds for shooting.
He added that eyewitness testimony was sometimes contradictory, and that some people changed their stories once confronted with physical evidence that undermined it. McCulloch also chastised media for reporting incomplete or incorrect evidence while the Grand Jury was deliberating.
McCulloch expressed sympathy for the Brown family and recognized that some would not accept the verdict. “I join with Michael Brown’s family,” McCulloch said, “in urging everybody to continue the demonstrations, continue the discussions, and address the problems in constructive rather than destructive way.”
By the time McCulloch made his announcement, most observers expected the Grand Jury to decide as it did. As Yishai Schwartz has explained in these pages, the law in Missouri and other states makes it difficult to convict police officers of murder, at least when the officers claim they acted in self-defense. As Gabriel Chin, a professor at the University of California-Davis, told the New Republic
The Ferguson grand jury’s decision not to indict was no surprise. “A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,” the saying goes, but that never applied to police. Of course, society requires police to carry guns and orders them to use them when necessary; therefore, they get the benefit of the doubt in close cases. I can’t recall an on-duty police officer being charged for homicide without clear and strong evidence of criminality; ambiguous, unclear, even suspicious circumstances are insufficient.
But critics have worried that McCulloch—who has close ties to the police department and whose father, a former officer, was killed by an African-American—would not pursue charges as vigorously as he could. McCulloch presented the Grand Jury with a wide array of evidence, without pushing them in one direction or the other. He also had Wilson testify in person. These choices were in some ways true to the original idea of a Grand Jury, which is supposed to be an investigative body. But they are relatively uncommon these days, since prosecutors more commonly use Grand Jury proceedings to build a case for indictments—leaving ultimate decisions of guilt and innocence to a trial. According to Chin,
If the prosecutor had wanted to bring charges, he could have proceeded by filing an information charging the officer with an offense, which would have resulted in a preliminary hearing before a judge who would have determined whether probable cause existed. To proceed by grand jury rather than information and preliminary hearing meant that the prosecutor believed charges were unwarranted, but that he wanted the grand jury to at least share responsibility for the decision. Under the circumstances, there is every reason to think that the prosecutor presented all relevant facts; early on, the prosecutor said he expected the testimony and other evidence to be released; if the presentation was biased or half-hearted then there will be consequences.
The prosecutor did err in his statement when he said “The duty of the grand jury is to separate fact from fiction.” The grand jury is obliged to determine whether there is probable cause, not what the actual truth is.
National polls have found a sharp racial divide on the case, with non-whites much more likely to favor indictment. It would have taken the votes of nine grand jurors to make Wilson stand trial and just three of the jurors are African-American. But it’s not clear whether voting broke down along racial lines and, at this point, nobody but the jurors know what evidence was made available—and how convincing it might have been. McCulloch has said he plans to make the evidence public, for the sake of transparency—maybe as soon as tonight.
This is not the end of the legal saga. Wilson is subject to a federal investigation, to see whether he violated Brown’s civil rights. Most experts think he’s unlikely to be charged, as that’s even harder to prove than the direct criminal charges.
But the Ferguson police department is also under investigation, from the Justice Department, and that investigation could very well end in some kind of “consent decree” under which the police changed policies under close federal supervision. It’s happened that way in other jurisdictions where police have come under attack for mistreating racial minorities—and, as Rebecca Leber has noted, many experts think such arrangements have produced better policing and improved community relations.
By: Johnathan Cohn, The New Republic, November 24, 2014
“Protest 101, A Chance To Change The World Again”: Some Thoughts As We Wait To See Whether Ferguson Burns
Last week, I spent a day at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where some students and I talked about protest. Des Moines is six hours up the road from Ferguson, Missouri, the St. Louis suburb where Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot to death by a police officer in August, prompting weeks of often violent clashes between protesters, rioters and heavily militarized police.
Some of the kids have ties in that area, so they were waiting — even more tensely than the rest of us — to see if a grand jury would indict the officer and whether the failure to do so would mean renewed violence. These were serious-minded young people concerned about the state of their nation and they were wondering what they could do to effect change.
I’ve had similar talks on college campuses going back before most of us ever heard of Ferguson. I’ve lost count of how many students have told me: “I want to change things, but I don’t know how. What can I do?”
It amazes me that half a century ago people their age fought for civil rights, women’s rights and an end to a useless war in Southeast Asia using no technology more sophisticated than mimeograph machines and rotary dial telephones, while kids with iPads and social media accounts feel helpless to make themselves heard. I’ve walked away from many encounters with students feeling that they were earnest, well intentioned — and utterly clueless about their power to better the world.
Nor am I alone in that. I often hear older people, those who marched, leafleted and shouted for justice in the ’60s, complain that Kids These Days are too complacent. They lament what they would do if they were just young enough. Rep. John Lewis, the hero of the voting rights campaign in Selma, often puts it like this: “Young people today are too quiet.”
But here’s an idea: Instead of just criticizing them, why don’t their elders teach them? Meaning not just icons of the struggle for human rights like Gloria Steinem, Diane Nash and Tom Hayden, but lesser-known footsoldiers whose names never made the history books. Why don’t they put together college campus lectures, church basement meetings, podcasts?
Call it Protest 101, a seminar in how to organize effectively for change. It would be a gift to the next generation, one the elder generation is uniquely positioned to give.
I vacillate on what John Lewis said. Sometimes it seems to me that young people are, indeed, entirely too quiet, too narcotized by gadgets, games and irrelevancies to notice the world is going to heck around them. Other times, it seems that they simply don’t know what to do about it, that they have been made to feel too helpless and small to make a difference.
But as the Occupy movement a few years ago demonstrated and Ferguson reiterates, there is a new ferment among young people — and people not so young — as they see civil rights gains whittled away, as they see elections rigged like a casino slot machine by monied interests, as they see unarmed black boys gunned down without consequence, as they see robber barons too big to fail game the economy and get away scot-free while the full weight of American jurisprudence and media indignation drops like a brick on poor people and immigrants.
What a waste if that energy goes only into the breaking of windows. What a loss if that moral authority is burned up in fire.
This nascent, inchoate movement knows how to get attention, but has no idea what to do after that. It is undisciplined and unformed and does not know how to articulate an agenda for change. I submit that that’s where their elders come in.
The ’60s generation once changed the world. Here’s a chance to change it again.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, November 17, 2014
“The Scene Of The Crime”: Autopsy Results Aren’t Going To Answer The Essential Question: Why Did Michael Brown Have To Die?
In his account to investigators, Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson said Michael Brown charged him. Specifically, Wilson said Brown struggled for his gun during a scuffle in his police SUV and almost reached the trigger. After blocking his grab for the gun, Wilson fired two shots—hitting Brown in the hand—and fired again when, he says, Brown stopped running, turned around, and took another lunge.
On Wednesday, a new analysis of the official autopsy report—released by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch—seemed to support this account. The newspaper asked two independent experts who aren’t involved in the investigation to review the evidence. The first, St. Louis County Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Graham, says that the report “does support that there was a significant altercation at the car.” And while the report notes the lack of short-range gunpowder burns or stipple around Brown’s hands, Graham says, “Sometimes, when it’s really close, such as within an inch or so, there is no stipple, just smoke.”
One of the experts—Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco—was even more certain on the autopsy’s implications. It “supports the fact that this guy is reaching for the gun, if he has gunpowder particulate material in the wound,” she said. “If he had his hand near the gun when it goes off, he’s going for the officer’s gun.” What’s more, she said that the autopsy didn’t support witnesses who claimed Brown was running away. “The wound to the top of Brown’s head would indicate he was falling forward or in a lunging position toward the shooter,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a summary of her remarks.
But there’s a problem here. Melinek says she was misconstrued. “I’m not saying that Brown going for the gun is the only explanation. I’m saying the officer said he was going for the gun, and the right thumb wound supports that,” she later told MSNBC. “I have limited information. It could also be consistent with other scenarios. That’s the important thing. That’s why the witnesses need to speak to the grand jury and the grand jury needs to hear all the unbiased testimony and compare those statements to the physical evidence.”
That the autopsy is consistent with Wilson’s account is a godsend for the police officer. And to that end, there’s speculation that the autopsy was leaked as a prelude to news that Wilson would escape an indictment from the grand jury.
At the same time, it’s important to note the extent to which this autopsy agrees with one conducted in August by Dr. Michael Baden, former chief medical examiner for New York City. According to his autopsy, Brown was shot six times, including twice in the head. “This one here looks like his head was bent downward,” he said, referring to the wound at the top of Brown’s head. “It can be because he’s giving up, or because he’s charging forward at the officer.”
And both autopsies fit the opposing accounts from other witnesses. “[Wilson] reached out the window and tried to choke my friend. We were trying to get away, and he tried to pull my friend into the car,” said Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown, saw the whole encounter, and never claimed there wasn’t a fight at the police vehicle. The question, rather, is what precisely happened. Later, we learned of two witnesses who saw the shooting and filmed their near-instant reaction. “He had his f-ckin’ hands up,” said one of the men, echoing other reports.
The Justice Department is conducting its own autopsy, and it’s likely to fit the results of the previous ones. (It has also condemned this leak, calling it “irresponsible and highly troubling.”) Which is to say that—barring new evidence—we’re stuck with the facts we’ve had since August, none of which gives a conclusive answer to the key question in the case: Who started it? And even if it did—and even if Brown was at fault for the whole encounter—we’re still left with the other important question: Why did Wilson keep firing after Brown moved away?
At this point, any answer is tied tightly to your sympathies. Side with Michael Brown and the Ferguson protesters, and you’re likely to think Wilson overreacted or—at worst—actively abused his power. And if you support Darren Wilson, you’re just as likely to see an honest cop just defending himself from a dangerous aggressor.
Put another way, Ferguson is still thick with tension from Brown’s shooting, and if Wilson isn’t indicted, it could explode into a new round of protests. Indeed, it’s possible this is why Gov. Jay Nixon—who received low marks for his initial response—has announced a Ferguson Commission devoted to studying the social and economic conditions that led to the initial August protests. “The commission will be empowered to call on experts to address topics ranging from governance, poverty, education, and law enforcement,” said Nixon. “The commission will also recommend changes to make the region a ‘fairer place for everyone to live.’ ”
It’s a fine goal. But given the anger on the ground, it’s hard to believe that any commission—however well-meaning—could bring normalcy to Ferguson. For that, the people of Ferguson need accountability from the police, and on that score, all signs point to disappointment.
By: Jamelle Bouie, Slate, October 23, 2014
“The Usual Sorry For Your Loss”: Ferguson Police Chief’s Sad Excuse For An Apology
It took four hours for the police in Ferguson, Mo., to remove the body of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager killed by a police officer, from the street where it lay. It took the police chief nearly seven weeks to issue an apology to Mr. Brown’s family. His videotaped comment was late, oddly staged and very unclear about what exactly he was apologizing for and why (apart from perhaps a desire to keep his job).
The videotape (http://nyti.ms/1BceEnw) by the police chief, Thomas Jackson, was bizarre in many ways. Appearing before an American flag and what looks like a city flag of Ferguson, he was not just in plain clothes instead of his uniform but he was wearing a golf shirt.
He started by talking about how the shooting of Michael Brown had sparked a national “conversation” about race and the role of the police “in that conversation.” Well, no. It sparked angry protests that were met by police armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, armored vehicles and tear gas. It sparked some rioting and looting. And it sparked outrage among African Americans around the country and not just in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis that is heavily black but has a town government and police force that is almost entirely white.
If that is Mr. Jackson’s idea of a conversation, I’d hate to see his idea of an argument.
Mr. Jackson allowed that Mr. Brown’s death was “the central issue that brought us here today.” And he said to the slain teenager’s family: “I’m truly sorry for the loss of your son. I’m also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street.”
Please note: He’s not apologizing for the actual killing of Mr. Brown. He’s just offering the usual “sorry for your loss” that police offer people whose loved ones are killed – say in an automobile crash. And as for his apology for the four-hour delay in which the boy’s body lay on the street, that seemed pretty conditional too.
“The time that it took involved very important work on the part of investigators who were trying to collect evidence,” he said, adding that the investigators “meant no disrespect” and were “simply trying to do their jobs.”
He then apologized — actually seeming sort of sincere about it — to “peaceful protesters who did not feel I did enough to protect their constitutional right to protest.”
But it was not that you did not do enough to protect that right, Mr. Jackson, but you sent your small-town trained, big-war equipped cops out to deny them that right with the threat of deadly force.
As I said, I’m not sure why Mr. Jackson made this video. But it’s far too late, far too confused and far too self-serving to matter a whole lot.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, Taking Note, The Editorial Page Editors Blog; The New York Times, September 26, 2014
“We’ve Seen This Before”: Michael Brown No Angel? Why Should It Matter?
You’ve probably never heard of Claudette Colvin. And yet, had history twisted in a slightly different direction, she might loom as large in American memory as Rosa Parks does now while Parks herself would be a little-remembered seamstress.
Colvin, you see, did what Parks did, nine months before Parks did it. In March of 1955, the African-American high-school girl refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Local civil rights leaders had been seeking a test case around which to build their fight against segregation on the buses and briefly considered rallying around her.
But it turned out Colvin had used some pungent language in defending her right to her seat. She cried and struggled against the police who arrested her. Worse, the 15-year-old was pregnant. Knowing white Montgomery would seize upon these things to attack her, civil rights leaders passed on Colvin and bided their time.
Their patience paid off in December when bus driver J.F. Blake demanded the dignified and reserved Parks, 42, give up her seat. She said, “No,” then submitted quietly to arrest. Still, most of us would agree Colvin’s pregnancy and behavior had no bearing upon the only salient question: Was segregation wrong? Although civil-rights leaders had no practical choice but to take those issues into account, they were nevertheless irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Much as many of the questions being asked about Michael Brown are now. In the days since the unarmed 18-year-old black man was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, some of us have acted as if the important questions here are: Did he shoplift cigars from a convenience store? Did he strong-arm the proprietor? Was he a bad kid?
Here’s a blanket answer: Who cares?
Not to deny those things are newsworthy. But they are also useless in answering or even framing the one question that really matters: Was Brown, as witnesses say he was, standing with hands raised in surrender when he was killed? If the answer to any of those other questions is yes, they justify him ending that fateful day in jail — not lying face-down on a street.
We’ve seen this before. The national dialogue on the shooting of Trayvon Martin came to be dominated by arguments over how he was dressed, his suspension from school and his marijuana use instead of the central question of whether George Zimmerman was justified in following and shooting him.
Now here’s one Linda Chavez writing in the New York Post that it is somehow misleading — too sympathetic, perhaps — to describe Brown as an “unarmed … teenager,” although he was, in fact, exactly that. Meantime, The New York Times observes that Brown “was no angel.” But do you need to be an angel not to deserve getting shot while unarmed?
Some of us, it seems, need Brown to be the personification of hulking, menacing black manhood. Others, it must be said, need him to be a harmless teddy bear. But he was, by most accounts, just a middling man of both flaws and promise, challenges and hope who was yet in the process of becoming — not unlike many kids his age, black and white. Not unlike Claudette Colvin.
Has nothing changed since 1955? Must we await the coming of the Rosa-Parks-of-getting-shot-while-unarmed before we can address how the nation’s perception of young black men as somehow inherently dangerous too often leads to undeserved suspensions, dismissals, incarceration and death?
Shame on us if that’s what it takes. Human rights are not contingent upon character reference and background check. So it is immaterial whether Michael Brown was a bad kid. Or, for that matter, a good one.
He was a kid who may not have deserved what he got. And that’s the only thing that matters.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist, The Miami Herald, August 27, 2014
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