As we approached the Ferguson grand jury decision, people have
inadvertently describing it as though it’s a “verdict” as opposed
to a decision whether to indict. I was listening to Fox Business
Network’s Neil Cavuto making this mistake earlier tonight, and I
slipped myself and called it a “verdict” in a headline earlier
today.
It was not a verdict and this grand jury decision was not
intended to settle once and for all that Officer Darren Wilson was
guilty of homicide (or lesser charges) when he shot Michael Brown
to death. But it certainly played out that way, didn’t it? St.
Louis Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch described a grand
jury that could have been confused with a full trial, though it was
not. The Washington Post has a nice walk-through of how
the grand jury process works in Missouri
here.
Given that a grand jury had a lower threshold (probable cause)
to call for an indictment and it didn’t have to be unanimous, it’s
worth wondering whether a criminal jury would have convicted Wilson
anyway if they had indicted him. Whenever the prosecution of police
for abusing or killing citizens is debated, I am now almost always
drawn to the Kelly Thomas case out here in Fullerton, California.
Thomas’s vicious beating was caught on camera and recorded, images
of his brutalized face were widely spread, and two officers
involved were prosecuted. They were
completely exonerated.
Based on the information McCulloch described tonight it may seem
unlikely Wilson would have convicted, and perhaps that would have
been the right decision by a criminal jury. That raises yet another
question, though: Should we be upset at the amount of deference and
effort made to find reasons not to indict Wilson in this case or
should we be upset that the same doesn’t happen to the rest of us?
Is the outrage that a grand jury didn’t indict Wilson or is the
outrage that the grand jury indicts just about everybody else?
Below, McCulloch details the results of the grand jury
investigation:
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