Parsing Darren Wilson And Robert McCullough

As indicated in my previous post, there are very legitimate reasons to believe that prosecutor Robert McCullough purposely failed to secure a grand jury indictment against Michael Brown's killer, Officer Darren Wilson.

In the following video, provided by Addicting Info, legal commentator and former prosecutor Nancy Grace eviscerates both McCullough's performance and Wilson's testimony:

The Failure To Indict: Things Become Clearer

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4



Like an unlanced boil with the potential to infect the entire bloodstream, the Ferguson grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown ensures that things will fester and infect not only that Missouri town, but also the entire United States.

Given that almost all grand juries hand down indictments, the failure of the Ferguson jury to do so is itself cause for scrutiny. That its failure is charged with heavy racial overtones and bias on the part of the prosecutor makes such scrutiny even more urgent.

While the normal procedure is for the prosecutor to present just the evidence needed to secure an indictment, things were done differently in Ferguson:

Over the course of three months, St. Louis County Prosecuting Atty. Robert McCulloch asked the jury of nine whites and three blacks to hear virtually every piece of evidence in the case: witnesses who both supported and contradicted police Officer Darren Wilson's account, three autopsy reports, bloodstains and shell casings.

While McCulloch claims that this was done in the interest of full transparency, others are dubious:

"This was a strategic and problematic use of a grand jury to get the result he wanted," said Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University. "As a strategic move, it was smart; he got what he wanted without being seen as directly responsible for the result."

The dumping of all documentation had the effect, likely intended, of creating reasonable doubt in the jury about whether there was probable cause for an indictment.

As well, McCullough presented no challenge to Officer Darren Wilson's testimony. Legal experts say this failure

prompted jurors to accept at face value Wilson's testimony that he feared for his life as Brown allegedly charged at him after he punched the officer and tried to grab his gun.

"A first-year law student would have done a better job of cross-examining" Wilson, said Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for Brown's family. "When was his credibility ever challenged?"

What explains McCullough's successful apparent effort to manipulate the grand jury? Answers are suggested by the prosecutor's past.

“I couldn’t become a policeman, so being county prosecutor is the next best thing,” Mr. McCulloch, who lost a leg to cancer as a teenager, once told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He’s unabashedly proud of coming from a police family. His father, his mother, a brother, an uncle, a nephew and at least one cousin all have worked for the St. Louis police department.

When he was 12 years old, family tragedy struck:

Fifty years ago – in July, 1964 – a fleeing black criminal snatched a police officer’s gun away during a struggle and then shot and killed Paul McCulloch, a St. Louis police officer and the future prosecutor’s father.

Such a trauma would have a long-term impact on anyone. Unfortunately, it appears to have left a bias rendering McCullough unfit for his role as St. Louis County prosecutor:

At least twice since becoming county prosecutor in 1991, Mr. McCulloch has been involved in controversies over what he did – and didn’t – present to grand juries in cases involving police officers.

Both of those cases involved black men and their interactions with police.

Despite his checkered past, McCullough ignored a petition signed by 70,000 people requesting him to step aside for the Wilson grand jury investigation:

“I have absolutely no intention of walking away,” from the case, Mr. McCulloch said, adding he had been the county’s prosecutor for “24 years, and I’ve done, if I do say so myself, a very good job.”

In light of the fiasco under his watch in Ferguson, many, I suspect, would disagree with his glowing self-assessment.

Respect, Fear, and Loathing

If we are completely honest, many of us will admit to a deeply ambivalent relationship with the police. On the one hand we look to them for protection against the less ordered elements of society, but on the other hand, in the deeper recesses of our psyches, we also fear and, at times, loathe them. And on some level we probably recognize that they can be very dangerous if we insist too vehemently on our rights against their sometimes arrogant intrusions into our 'space.'

Think of the rampant abuse of police authority during the G20 Toronto Summit. Think of the murder of Sammy Yatim.

And I say all this from the cossetted position of a middle-class and educated white man.

I can only imagine how much more difficult that relationship must be if one is black.

Dr. Dawg has written a fine analysis/post-mortem of the the shooting of Michael Brown and the failure of the grand jury to indict his killer, Officer Darren Wilson. If you haven't already done so, make sure to check it out.

Similarly, the CBC's senior Washington correspondent, Neil Macdonald, has penned an arresting piece that deserves wide readership. His thesis: questioning police authority is a risky, even potentially deadly, business:

Most police despise any challenge to their authority. Some will abuse it, if necessary, to protect that authority, and the system can allow them to do that.

Some police are bright, professional and educated. Some are louts. Some are racists. You never know which variety you're facing.

But what they all have in common (outside Great Britain) is the weapon at their hip, and the implicit threat of its ultimate use to settle matters.

Macdonald suggests there is but one way to behave when confronted by the police:

But I've had my share of dealings with police, in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere in the world, and there is a universal truth: when police demand submission, it's best to submit.

Michael Brown's fatal mistake, he implies, was his refusal to submit:

Officer Darren Wilson told grand jurors that when he told Michael Brown and his friend to walk on the sidewalk that Saturday afternoon instead of down the middle of the road, Brown replied "fuck what you have to say."

Eventually, they tussled at the window of Wilson's cruiser. Finally, with both of them outside on the street and facing one another, Wilson shot the unarmed teenager to death.

Clearly, the yawning racial divide of the United States was a contributing, perhaps overriding, factor in Brown's death, and that chasm will likely never be bridged. But Macdonald suggests a practical measure that might go a long way to curbing the police violence that so painfully and periodically erupts:

Ensure that every police officer working the streets of America wears a body camera. That would certainly help.

Many police cruisers are already equipped with dash cameras. And the Ferguson case demonstrated the fallibility of eyewitness accounts.

So why not pin digital cams on uniforms? They would act as impassive, accurate monitors, both in cases of police abuse and when someone falsely claims police abuse.

I suspect police here will probably resist the idea, though. Nothing questions authority like hard video evidence.

And as experience has shown us, such a measure is sorely needed in our own country as well.