One “catch” with the mechanism of grand juries, and a reason why incensed protestors in Ferguson and across the nation have taken to the streets, is that grand juries do not hear the full extent of evidence that trial jurors would, and neither is there an established precedent for cross-examination. While it may be true that in the Darren Wilson case the 12 members of the grand jury heard 70 hours of testimony, the hearings were held in secret and even the public release of reams of evidence presented to the grand jury was not tantamount to a public trial. The second, disturbing aspect of the grand jury was its racial composition — of the 12 jurors “selected at random from a fair cross-section of the citizens,” according to Missouri law, 75 per cent were white. Although St. Louis County’s overall population is 70 per cent white, nearly two-thirds of Ferguson’s residents are African-American. Whatever the intentions of Mr. McCulloch in taking the case before a grand jury in this manner, even if it was to create a sense of public legitimacy or deflect blame away from himself for the outcome, his decision to not exercise prosecutorial discretion and allow a fuller examination of evidence and testimony is one more nail in the coffin of fair trials for a much-trampled community. If the country’s juridical proceedings can thus be manipulated to undercut minority communities seeking justice, then a quiet undercurrent of racist stereotyping in the wider society perpetuates the notion that these communities are legitimate, even deserving, targets of malign official power. Some of the stereotypes that haunt African-Americans can be gleaned from Mr. Wilson’s testimony, in which he said that Brown’s face looked “like a demon,” and that while the two scuffled in the officer’s car Mr. Wilson felt “like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” Finally the Ferguson episode highlights a devastating, constitutionally protected, disease of the U.S. — gun proliferation, and the use of deadly force by law enforcement, particularly in incidents involving minorities. In this regard, it carries echoes of the racially charged 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin (17) by an abuse-hurling George Zimmerman, the gun-toting “neighbourhood watch” officer who, similar to Mr. Wilson, went on to get acquitted by a jury on the charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter. That episode appeared to test the practised neutrality of Mr. Obama who said at the time, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” You may not have a son, Mr. President, but the nation is your ward, and you have failed to speak up for core values that you’d want all Americans to have.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 04:35:24 +0000
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