There hasn't been a lot of posting here on this topic, perhaps because in many ways it's a re-run of Andy Lopez and it's already been said. But I'll say something more,if only to stop it running like a hamster wheel in my head.
I won’t pretend to know the absolute facts of the killing of Michael Brown. No one does, it seems: no one can doubt that there was extreme difference among the witnesses.
What does stand forth is the oddity of this procedure, at least as outlined in the NY Times. Normally, the prosecutor is a prosecutor, presenting the evidence that points to guilt. There’s no “defense,” and it’s simply the grand jury’s job to decide if there’s sufficient evidence to warrant a charge. It’s the trial jury that determines the credibility of that evidence.
(A friend forwarded an opinion written by Justice Scalia some time ago that made the same point: first time I've ever found myself in agreement with Scalia, and I guess what I'm saying is in line with conservative thinking, despite myself.)
Of course the D.A. must decide if his witnesses are credible or if he’s going to look like a driveling idiot making his case. But it’s no news that, in the main, prosecutors regard their job as being to go for the throat. The vast judicial wasteland of forced confessions, mishandled evidence, confused witnesses, deals with jailhouse snitches, etc., is glaringly clear in the number of death-sentence DNA reversals. Prosecutors do what the public elects them to do: nail the dude. Unless the dude wears blue.
Indeed, an indictment for murder or even involuntary manslaughter is a serious act, and one could argue that this prosecutor — in challenging witnesses, pointing out discrepancies to the grand jury, refusing to “argue a case,” was doing something that more prosecutors should do: try to ascertain the truth rather than simply smell blood.
But would the procedure have been the same, it's been asked, if Brown had killed Wilson? Has Mr. McCulloch, in his 23 years in office, pursued the same “impartiality” in the cases he’s brought? Has he ever pursued a case where the evidence was conflicted?
I have no way of knowing what happened on that day. I wasn’t standing on the curb or inside Officer Wilson’s head. I can well imagine he feared for his life: with the proliferation of guns, the rage in the streets, the growing image of police as an occupying army, it’s not crazy to react as if you’re in Afghanistan.
But that D.A. (like our own D.A. in enlightened Sonoma County) did no policeman a favor by his fair-and-balanced cop-out. The body politic is beset with a wasting disease, and it smells of rot.
Peace—
Conrad