Why I don't take the Ferguson Grand Jury decision at face value

[A response to a question received on a facebook post]

To trust the grand jury's decision, I would have to believe that the justice system operates fairly, without bias, in the objective pursuit of equal justice for all. There is an abundance of evidence that it unfortunately does not. Both in this specific case, and in general, our justice system consistently returns results that disproportionately disadvantage people of color and privilege whites. Because of both historical and current research, and the transcripts of the witness examination and presentation of evidence in this Darren Wilson grand jury, I have to conclude that justice was once again hijacked, rather than served, in this case.

Let me state that I do not believe that Darren Wilson is guilty. I simply believe he should stand trial, and let the judge and jury decide. The grand jury was not to determine whether Wilson was guilty. It was simply to decide whether he should face a trial to determine his guilt. In a case where an unarmed person is shot by another, I  believe this deserves a full investigation and trial, and to conclude (based predominantly on the shooter’s testimony) that a trial is unnecessary, is highly suspicious to me. In addition:

- There is statistical evidence that the Ferguson grand jury decision not to indict hardly ever happens. In a study of grand juries at the federal level, the grand jury failed to grant an indictment in only 0.007% of cases. (http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/). 

- Across America there is well-documented evidence that young black males are singled out and prejudicially treated at every single step of the criminal justice process, from the initial encounter to police, to the decision to arrest, to the decision to bring charges or not, through to sentencing, etc. King County’s Director of Adult & Juvenile Detention Claudia Balducci recently went on record that this is true in King County, WA in front of the Seattle City Council (her testimony starts at about 93:00 of this video: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2391472, and go to 97:15 for the specific information on how  discrimination was measured at every step of the process.) This same racial disparity occurs all across America, and it would be naive for us to think similar bias was not at play in favor of Darren Wilson at his grand jury.

- I know that prosecutors have to work closely with the police department, and would not take eagerly the task of prosecuting a cop. It’s a touchy area. The prosecutor also has a high level of control in structuring what and how evidence is presented to the grand jury. In the case of Darren Wilson’s grand jury, some questionable things were done. People who had heard about the event 2nd- and 3rd-hand were called as “witnesses,” many of whom contradicted each other. Michael Brown’s character was called into question, while Darren Wilson’s was not. It seems reasonable to me to conclude that the prosecutorial team's interests were not simply a pursuit of justice, but perhaps avoiding something uncomfortable for them (at least). http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/26/7295595/eyewitnesses-ferguson-grand-jury/in/7041840

- I have witnessed institutional racism firsthand. This is racism that embeds itself in seemingly harmless ways into systems, and yet adds up to ongoing oppression of people of color, while helping white people avoid guilt because specific examples are hard to pinpoint. I have written about institutional racism here (http://crosscut.com/2014/10/10/rights-ethics/122239/seattle-juvenile-justice-center-central-district/), and the Ferguson justice process, including the grand jury, seems to me to have cut a wide berth for institutional racism in the form of prejudicial decision making around its police officers.

- It is difficult for white people - including myself - to take in the full scope of what racism means and entails, and given the history of our country, I approach questions of potential racism with an intentional bias that it is probably happening, even if I can’t immediately see it. A good book for helping me see familiar systems differently is The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander (http://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Jim_Crow.html?id=reDzBZ3pXqsC)

Again, I don’t know that Wilson acted inappropriately, or whether there was racial motivation in his shooting of Brown. Because of many things - the habitual blinders we keep on about this stuff, and the grand jury decision - we may never know. All I’m saying is it was both extremely RARE for the grand jury not to return an indictment, and extremely PREDICTABLE in this case given the races of all involved, and I find that both sad and wrong.