Darren Wilson may have gotten 432,000 dollars in donations, but he didnt win the lottery. If he had been a private citizen, he would be standing trial. The key reason the grand jury declined to true bill any of the five possible charges is this: the applicable jurisdictional law that says that police officers are allowed to use deadly force if *they believe* that it is necessary to protect their lives or safety. In order for a grand jury to hand down an indictment, there would have had to have been a balance of evidence that the officer *did not fear for his safety or life*. This means that any time an officer is in a confrontation with someone who makes a sudden move, seems aggressive, seems hostile, is larger than them, is not following their orders, or does anything other than surrender, if it can plausibly be construed as frightening to the average person in a similar situation, the police officer will be allowed under that law to use deadly force. The grand jury wasnt a trial of the law, or facts. The grand jury was to decide whether or not there was any chance in hell of him being prosecutable. In order for an officer shooting to be indictable under this law, the person shot would have to be on their knees, in handcuffs, and for it to be prosecutable, the officer would have to brag about it on video. The DA who asked for the grand jury knew that, already. Thats why he asked for one — so that he wouldnt be targetted if the decision was made one way or another, wouldnt be targetted if he stood trial and the decision there went one way or another. How is this a matter of bias? The applicable jurisdictional law exists originally in order to protect and indemnify officers who shoot dangerous suspects while discharging their duties in good faith. Today, however, it is used to protect and indemnify officers who shoot people, whether or not they are acting in good faith and whether or not they are discharging their duties, if there is no clear evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt that the officer was acting in bad faith. Juries and judges default to believing the officer in his assertion that he believed he was in danger at that moment, because to believe otherwise is to believe that the system that is supposed to protect us is at fault. This makes an enormous loophole in the law, that gives anyone wearing the uniform a pass — because they are expected to shoot people in the discharge of their duties, they are excused for it when it happens, unless its painfully obvious that they were not discharging their duties or were otherwise acting in bad faith. This is bias. Because Michael Brown was 64 (over 194 cm), 290+ pounds (132 Kilos), was black, had run from the officer and had then turned around and confronted the officer, he is perceived as dangerous and aggressive to the average person. This is bias. Where there is bias, there are those who exploit it. This is power. Power corrupts. How should this have happened to prevent exploitable bias? First, the officer should have video recorded the entirety of the incident, dashcam and bodycam. The DA stressed over and over in his announcement about how the physical evidence was paramount. It wasnt ever paramount — if it were, the prosecutor would have called for improvements to the gathering of objective physical evidence — dashcams and bodycams. The officer should have called for and waited for backup as soon as he perceived that the suspect was someone he could not subdue on his own and was not compliant. He failed to do so — he escalated from the scuffle where a shot was fired, into chasing the suspect, on foot. He should have followed in his car, and he should have brought backup or his partner in to subdual. He did not — he grandstanded. The officer should have maintained ranged weapon distance (20+ feet) from the suspect when the suspect stopped and turned and confronted him. Whether he did or not isnt clear — we have crappy eyewitness accounts on all sides, all of them possibly biased, most of them absolutely biased. Eyewitness testimony is what convicts the innocent and frees the guilty. The officer should have drawn a taser or used pepper spray or mace to subdue an unarmed suspect. Did he have one on him? If he did, his choice to use the firearm demonstrates his choice to escalate the situation. If he didnt, that demonstrates an institutional policy choice that forces more confrontations to be lethal. This is bias. Once the actual facts and law were stood before a grand jury, the grand jury should have performed jury nullification — ignoring the unjust law that allows people in uniform to kill unarmed suspects and not be prosecuted without damningly being caught red handed in criminal activity — and handed down an indictment, passing it along to trial by jury, who should have performed jury nullification and convicted him of whatever he had been indicted for. I dont say this because I think Wilson should be convicted of murder (although I do believe he should be stood trial for it) — I say this because the law shielding him from prosecution is unjust, and because the jury system in the United States has the unique ability to escape being bound by unjust laws and deliver **Justice**, not merely finding facts and laws and performing menial legal calculus — for that is the function of judges. The function of juries is to escape that calculus. What can be done elsewhere to prevent the systemic exploitable bias? The particular legislation that shields officers should be reworked to remove from the balance of consideration their *feelings* and to consider their *actions*. Policies on how to respond to unarmed suspects need to be changed. Officers need to be provided with tools to gather objective evidence, wherever possible (and economic reasons are not an excuse. The US military hands down billions of dollars in equipment to police each year). Police need to be trained to detain and book *suspects* instead of spending their time performing stop-n-frisk / visibility manoeuvres. Much os police work is psychological — well, it is apparent that a significant amount of the psychology being employed by policy and practice is biased against anyone who cant afford an attorney or anyone who will be convicted on sight due to being large and strong and scary-looking.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:17:32 +0000
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