Why We Aren’t Surprised: Ferguson and the American Legal System

Last week, a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, announced that it had chosen not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the August killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. The thousands of reactions in periodicals, social media statuses, and photos across the country echoed the sentiment we are horrified, but not surprised.

Our lack of shock stems from the racial tensions inherent in the case and from the patterns of police brutality in the justice system. But what should disillusion us most is what we overlook: the incestuous relationships in law enforcement — in particular, the codependence of police departments and district attorneys’ offices.

Convening a grand jury before going to trial is a rare procedure and is instigated by a lead prosecutor for particularly difficult cases involving serious felonies. A prosecutor will work with a grand jury to determine whether there is probable cause that a crime has been committed before bringing formal charges against a defendant. Because states are not required to employ a grand jury before indicting a suspect, the verdict of a grand jury is in no way decisive; a prosecutor can choose to press charges regardless of the decision made.

In the 1992 case United States v. Williams, the Supreme Court specified that prosecutors have no obligation to present exculpatory evidence to a grand jury, and that suspects have no right to testify during such hearings. However, in a highly unusual move, St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCullough not only refused to recommend possible charges, he also allowed Officer Wilson to testify for hours in front of the grand jury.

Law enforcement offices in the United States are necessarily intertwined; district attorneys are reliant upon police departments for the cases that they pursue, and police departments equally upon district attorneys to put away the criminals that they have arrested. Their system is symbiotic in more ways than one, as district attorneys are largely dependent upon police testimony for convictions.

Police credibility is often unquestioningly accepted over the words of a defendant. District attorneys become complacent in assuming that an officer’s testimony is enough to secure a conviction. In that way, our justice system is turned on its head, as it is up to the defense to poke holes in the argument of the prosecutors, to prove a lack of guilt, when the testimony of an officer contradicts the words of the defendant.

In his initial report and his testimony to the jury, Wilson described the shooting by using keywords that trigger justification of the use of force in the police code. Robert McCullough, as a county prosecutor, had no reason to disbelieve the statement given by Officer Darren Wilson. McCullough had also to consider his office’s relationship with the police department and suggesting that one of their officers is a liar could prove to have serious ramifications for ongoing cases in the district.

The grand jury, convened almost two months ago, was faced with thousands of pages of documents and sat before hours of testimony. They had no clear pathway to an indictment as they sifted through the mountains of evidence. As famously stated by former Chief Judge of New York state Sol Wachtler, a prosecutor could “indict a ham sandwich” using the right words; however McCullough, the prosecutor, provided the grand jury with no specific charges.

The convening of a grand jury in this case was little more than theatricality; smoke and mirrors designed by McCullough to convince the media that his job had been done thoroughly. A trial would have been the best way to bring evidence to light; however, McCullough chose to symbolically utilize the grand jury. He furthered an illusion that the evidence had been reviewed in a similar fashion while avoiding a trial and the potential backlash for his office’s relationship with the police department.

The very purpose of a trial in the legal system is to determine a presence or lack of guilt, drawing out as much evidence as possible from every side of the case. Perhaps this evidence may not have been enough to render a guilty verdict, but the point of a trial is to review the evidence in more detail and with more scrutiny.

A trial would have allowed questions brought about by additional evidence to be answered more conclusively, questions such as: Why did Officer Wilson forgo his mace after exiting his vehicle? Why did he chase after Brown on foot instead of following him in his vehicle and waiting for backup? Why did Officer Wilson state that he had approached Brown as a suspect in a robbery, when the Ferguson Police Chief said the opposite? And what does this say about Officer Wilson’s credibility?

Relevant documents that have not been released include Officer Wilson’s past record regarding his use of force on duty, all of the previous cases on which he has worked and transcripts of trials that he has been a part of. These are all important in order to determine his level of credibility.

Issues of police credibility are abundant in the American legal system. In the 1963 case Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court decided that the defense should have access to all evidence from the prosecution, including the contents of the police officer’s personal files and any evidence that could impeach those officers, and the responsibility of disclosure rests solely with the prosecution. However, the prosecution has little incentive to release these documents, and often do not.

But because this Brady-disclosure exists, district attorneys are all the more unwilling to attack the credibility of the police officers in their district. McCullough’s actions in Ferguson are then clear; McCullough was determined not to have charges brought in this case, and allowed hours of exculpatory evidence to come before the grand jury, an unorthodox decision that allowed Officer Wilson to escape unscathed.

For Ferguson, a federal investigation could prove to be transformative, as former Attorney General Eric Holder has extended the review to include the entirety of law enforcement in the area. Such federal interventions can lead to court-enforceable agreements to change district policies regarding police testimony. District courts must then be more friendly to defense attorneys seeking Brady-disclosure or other federally mandated rights.

Unless and until there are major changes in the way district attorneys’ offices interact with police forces, officers will rarely be charged for on-duty shootings. Trigger-happy officers will continue to be shielded by formulaic statements that they have learned to write in sophisticated exploitation of existing police code, officers will continue to justify and use excessive force, and cases involving police wrongdoing will be pushed out of the fringes of the legal system.

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Sonali Singh is a freshman studying biomechanical engineering.