Capitol Report
Leon D. Young
After nearly three months of investigation and deliberation, a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
However, was the outcome ever really in doubt?
And, who in their right mind thought that a grand jury would actually indict a police officer? Let’s face it.
Once the defendant, officer Wilson, asserted a claim of self-defense, the prosecution had an extremely difficult, if not impossible, burden to overcome.
Under Missouri law, once evidence of self-defense is introduced, the question grand jury must determine is whether the prosecution can prove the defendant did not act in self-defense. Before it could indict, the jury had to find there was probable cause to reject all evidence supporting the self-defense claim.
In retrospect, there are many aspects of the “no indictment” decision that I find troubling.
In most instances, the ability of prosecution to obtain an indictment is almost a given.
Former New York state Chief Judge Sol Wachler famously remarked that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to “indict ham sandwich.”
The data suggests he was barely exaggerating: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data.
Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.
Granted, Wilson’s case was heard in state court, not federal, so the numbers aren’t directly comparable.
Unlike in federal court, most states, including Missouri, allow prosecutors to bring charges via a preliminary hearing in front of a judge instead through grand jury indictment.
That means many routine cases never go before a grand jury.
Still, legal experts agree that, at any level, it is extremely rare for prosecutors to fail win an indictment.
With that being said, there appears to be one blaring exception: Cases involving police shootings.
Unfortunately, we don’t have good data on officer—involved killings. But newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law enforcement officials.
Equally disturbing, was the questionable manner in which the investigation was conducted.
And, if that wasn’t evidence enough of the Scales of Justice being tilted in one direction, everyone should be critical of a city that is two-thirds Black, but ends up with a police force on which 50 of 53 officers are white.
Not to mention that the make-up of the Ferguson grand jury was 9 whites and 3 minorities.
And, more important, 9 of the 12 jurors convened had vote in favor indictment, order for the matter to proceed trial.
Make no mistake about it. There’s something terribly wrong in Ferguson (MO), and something systematically wrong with this no-indictment decision.