I've been trying since about halfway through The Robert McCulloch Show last night to write a piece about the Ferguson verdict. I've started several and deleted them.
McCulloch is, of course, the St. Louis County prosecutor who controlled the Grand Jury (or at least the process) that absolved a Ferguson police officer of wrongdoing in the controversial killing of Michael Brown. In the piece I was trying to write, I was trying to make the following points…
- The verdict may well have been correct given how the laws are currently written.
- If it is, maybe those laws are written to favor law enforcement too much…and that would not be McCulloch's (or any individual's) fault.
- Engaging in peaceful protests is a good way to sell the point that the verdict may not have been correct or that the laws might need to be changed.
- Burning and especially looting are a good way to sell the point that the police should feel free to shoot more people.
- McCulloch should have known that given the history of race relations in Ferguson and the nature of this particular crime, what was needed was not merely a process that would be legally correct but which would be widely perceived as not rigged by white people in favor of a white cop. It's a maxim that judges need to not only avoid impropriety but also the appearance of impropriety. That goes for the entire judicial process.
And this is where I got lost trying to write something about it all…how to say why McCulloch's long — and at times, condescending — announcement of the verdict sure made it sound like a rigged game. Some of it was the nature of the man himself. Much of it was the unusual way in which this particular Grand Jury seems to have been utilized.
Even before McCulloch was done, one of my favorite political reporters, Eric Boehlert, tweeted: "shorter prosecutor: we already held a trial for the Brown killing. it's called the grand jury. and it was held in private." That sure sounded like the problem to me but I was somehow unable to expand on that thought in what I was writing. This morning though, I read a piece by David Feige that I think nailed it: The Grand Jury process was used to try and insulate McCulloch and his office from responsibility while still getting to the desired (or at least, the expected) outcome.
And that may have been the correct outcome from a strictly legal standpoint. I'm not saying it wasn't. The problem is that a decision has been made and the folks who feel Michael Brown did not do anything that warranted killing him do not feel they had an advocate in that process. It was done behind closed doors to preempt an open trial in which they could have had an advocate. It feels like they arranged it so there'd be someone in the room who had an interest in defending the officer but no one to argue on behalf of Brown. This is not a problem with most Grand Juries because most Grand Juries indict. This one could have too, had McCulloch felt it was in the community's interest to have an open trial.
I have no sympathy for the rioters and looters. The rioters, like I said, just make a large section of the population wish there were more cops out there ready to shoot minorities. The looters just look like opportunists who are even more deserving of being stopped by bullets. So they're at fault, too. I just really feel sorry today for all of us — of any color — who have to live in a nation of increasing racial unrest.
The car I bought a few years ago came with a small defect. The dashboard light that told me when my headlights were on sometimes lied to me. As a result, I got stopped three times by police for driving at night without headlights before I figured out it was lying to me and had it fixed. I was never scared to be stopped by the cops, nor was I even ticketed…but then, I was white, I was driving a new car and I was in Los Angeles, where the police seem to have a better (though by no means perfect) attitude about race than some cities. If I was a black guy in an older car in some cities, I would have been terrified. And I'd be more scared today than I was yesterday.