9 Decisions That Obliterated Our Confidence in the American Legal System. December 15, 2014 1. Darren Wilson Grand Jury A St. Louis County grand jury on Nov. 24 decided not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the August killing of teenager Michael Brown. The decision wasn’t a surprise — leaks from the grand jury had led most observers to conclude an indictment was unlikely — but it was unusual. Grand juries nearly always decide to indict — or at least, they nearly always do so in cases that don’t involve police officers. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, and grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them. Grand jury non-indictments are equally rare in state courts such as the Ferguson case. The decision prompted angry nationwide protests as many Americans have begun to realize the justice system is much less likely to yield justice for Black 2. George Zimmerman Acquittal On Saturday, July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman walked free from a Florida courtroom after being acquitted of murdering 17-year-old unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin, in a case that was closely monitored by a nation that was forced to have an intense debate about race, the lives of Black boys and the irrational fears of whites. African-Americans were devastated that a boy who went to the store for a pack of Skittles could be killed by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain and he get away with it. After the three-week trial, the jury accepted Zimmerman’s contention that he shot Martin in self-defense, believing his life to be in immediate danger. 3. Assata Shakur Labeled a Terrorist In May 2013, the FBI decided to put the 65-year-old grandmother, Assata Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, on its Most Wanted Terrorist list — the first woman to make the list of top terrorists. Shakur, the step-aunt of rapper Tupac Shakur (her brother was Tupac’s stepfather), for decades has been a despised figure in law enforcement circles, where she is seen as a dangerous cop-killer and terrorist. But to many Blacks, Shakur is a hero for standing up to law enforcement while she was a leader of the Black Liberation Army in the 1970s and for her forceful writings and commentary on the conditions of Black people after she fled to Cuba sometime around 1984. She has been the subject of films, documentaries and rap songs over the years. Under questionable evidence, Shakur was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973 and became an underground legend in 1979 after she made a daring escape from prison — with the help of accomplices who took two guards hostage — and fled to Cuba, where she has been living in exile the last 30 years. atlantablackstar/2014/12/15/9-decisions-that-obliterated-our-confidence-in-the-american-legal-system/2/
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 22:20:47 +0000
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