It’s been a week since the Ferguson grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson and the controversy shows no sign of going away.
Nationwide protests continue (including here on campus) and President Obama spent all day Monday in crisis mode at the White House.
While some media coverage has focused on the riots and looting or the racial divide over the case, I think the greater story is the failure of the American justice system.
This is not the first high-profile case in which the verdict does not match public opinion. However, in the cases of George Zimmerman, Casey Anthony and even O.J. Simpson, there was no rioting. Why? I think it’s because all those individuals received a trial and were acquitted. Wilson faced no trial despite shooting an unarmed man.
That isn’t to say that Wilson would have been convicted. The forensic evidence could line up with Wilson’s account. Wilson may very well have feared for his life.
However, police officers are trained to de-escalate confrontations, not to fire 10 shots at an unarmed assailant. Combine that with Wilson’s lack of remorse, decision to not carry a taser and conflicting witness testimony and an indictment on involuntary manslaughter doesn’t seem so far fetched. Now Wilson will be convicted in the court of public opinion without a trial, to his disadvantage.
The best parallel to this case is Rodney King. King, like Michael Brown, was no saint. However, the police beat him senseless after he resisted arrest. Despite catching the police brutality on video, King’s four attackers were all acquitted by a jury with no black members. Riots that burned Los Angeles followed.
George H.W. Bush’s administration charged King’s attackers with federal civil rights crimes and two were convicted. President Obama must now take the same action in this case, so that a trial can commence with cross-examination of witnesses and Wilson himself and a proper instruction of the law — which did not come in this case.
Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, whose father was a police officer killed in the line of duty by a black suspect, is mostly to blame for the miscarriage of justice. Despite his bias and his track record of siding with police, he refused to recuse himself and showed he had no interest in indicting Wilson. However, there was no attempt to remove him by the state of Missouri.
The pledge of allegiance promises justice for all, regardless of whether they are white, black, a criminal or a cop. The real story here, aside from race and policing, is how the justice system failed and what we need to do to reform it, so something like this never happens again.