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.

Charities And Political Activities

I am not a lawyer, but I post the following information for those who are, and for those deeply offended by the Harper government's ongoing attacks on non-profits that dare question the regime's wisdom while giving a free ride to right-wing entities whose ideology matches that of our overlords.

Here is the CRA policy statement on the difference between political purposes and charitable purposes (Reference number CPS-022):

All registered charities are required by law to have exclusively charitable purposes. As the Act does not define what is charitable, we look to the common law for both a definition of charity in its legal sense as well as the principles to guide us in applying that definition.[Footnote 2] The formal objectives or goals of a charity must be set out in its governing documents.

Under the Act and common law, an organization established for a political purpose cannot be a charity. The courts have determined political purposes to be those that seek to:

-further the interests of a particular political party; or support a political party or candidate for public office; or
-retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country.

The main reason why the courts rule out political purposes for charities is a result of the requirement that a purpose is only charitable if it generates a public benefit. A political purpose, such as seeking a ban on deer hunting, requires a charity to enter into a debate about whether such a ban is good, rather than providing or working towards an accepted public benefit.

It also means that in order to assess the public benefit of a political purpose, a court would have to take sides in a political debate. In Canada, political issues are for Parliament to decide, and the courts are reluctant to encroach on this sovereign authority (other than when a constitutional issue arises).[Footnote 3]

It is important to remember that although the stated purposes of an organization are the obvious source of reference of whether or not an organization is constituted exclusively for charitable purposes, it is not the sole indicator. The Canada Revenue Agency also takes into account the activities that the organization is currently engaged in as a potential indicator of whether it has since adopted other purposes

To a mere layman such as I am, something smells very, very rotten in the state of Harperland.

Anyone up for taking this on?

They Said What?

Funny how right-wing non-profits with charitable status can be political whenever they want with no fear of tax audits, whereas those with progressive credentials are singled out repeatedly by the Harper regime for special attention from the CRA.

Take as an example The Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a right-wing entity that is calling on governments to rethink Canada's child labour rules in an effort to get more young Canadians into the workforce.

Specifically, the Centre's brain trust, apparently of a decidedly Dickensian disposition, has deemed certain labour rules as "rather unnecessary."

Which rules exactly? The Frontier Centre lists a few to reconsider:

-"Children under 12 are almost never allowed to work."

-"In Alberta, 12- to 14-year olds are forbidden from working more than two hours on a school day."

-"Minimum wage laws also make it more difficult for young people with no experience to find their first job."

-As FCPP policy analyst Brianna Heinrichs explained in an accompanying Regina Leader-Post opinion piece, "age rules and a minimum wage can stifle young potential workers seeking either independence or some pocket change."

-"Hampering young Canadians from having a job is robbing them of opportunity," Heinrichs added. "People should not coddle children until they are of age and then act disgusted when young adults express a sense of entitlement or cannot find a job due to lack of experience."

As touching as their concern for young people might be, there are many who feel that dismantling child labour laws would be, shall we say, counterproductive. Says the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour's Kent Peterson:

"Labour laws are a good thing. They protect us, they protect our children, and they ensure corporations – and their cheerleaders such as the Frontier Centre – cannot exploit and abuse workers just to make a few more pennies of cheap profit."

Should you feel so moved, you can listen to the Frontier Centre's podcast on this subject here.

Rick Repudiates Economic Action Plan Ads

Dishonest and manipulative, such taxpayer-funded government propaganda deservedly earns the scorn of Rick Mercer:

And Speaking Of Police Brutality

The following video is difficult to watch, but the sad truth is that these kinds of outrages occur regularly, as a simple Internet search will show.

A witness says that Denver police officers abused a pregnant woman and her boyfriend, and then tried to cover it up by deleting the video from his tablet.

Levi Frasier told KDVR that he was recording as two uniformed officers tried to arrest David Flores, who had been identified by narcotics officers for possessing heroin. An arrest report said that a scuffle had started because Flores had stuffed a white sock in his mouth, which the officers believed was filled with drugs.

KDVR investigative reporter Chris Halsne noted that a close examination of the video showed Flores’ head repeatedly “bouncing off the pavement as a result of the force” of being punched by the officers. In photos that were later taken of Flores in an ambulance, his head could be seen soaked with blood from his injuries.

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.

What If?

Last evening, I was watching the 6o'c lock news, distracted and perturbed by the howling winds (up to 100 kms. per hour) buffeting our windows. Here in Southern Ontario, about 100 kilometres from the snowstorm that has devasted Buffalo, I can perhaps be forgiven for feeling especially sensitive to increasingly frequent bouts of extreme weather linked to climate change.

Then I was overcome with a real anger whose origin I couldn't immediately identify. But as I thought about it, I realized that it was in part related to the prospect of a power outage, something we seem to experience here at least three or four times a year. There is nothing like a power outage to reduce us to an almost primal state, a state in which our facade of mastery of the universe is brutally stripped away. It is always a sobering and humbling opportunity to realize that, vis-à-vis nature, we are nothing.

Then I realized the real basis for my anger: all of the corporate and federal poltical hostility to taking meaningful action to try to keep the global rise in temperatures within 2 degrees Celsius, the uppermost limit that science tells us might prevent runaway and irreversible climate change.

While our overlords may safely (but temporarily) ensconce themselves as the worst comes to pass, the rest of us will be left to contemd with an increasingly harsh environment, all so that corporate entities can continue to amass record profits, taking all they can before the world as we know it disappears.

Then a thought occurred to me. The Salamander has frequently commented on how we need some powerful symbols, metaphors, and imagery around which opposition to the Harper agenda can coalesce. What if, for all the increasingly volatile weather, for all of the power outages, for all of the floods, for all of the "100-year storms," and for all of the other frequent natural disasters we are facing, Canadians place the blame where it belongs: let us affix pictures in our public consciousness (and in our advertising) that expose the corporate giants and their chief Canadian aider and abettor, Stephen Harper, for what they are: Protectors of a monied status quo that is dooming the rest of us to a life soon to become nasty, brutish, and perhaps short.

What if, when the next wallop of nature visits us, we think of it this way:

This storm is brought to you by Stephen Harper, who refuses to lift a finger to mitigate climate change.

Just a thought.