The St. Louis County grand jury has now found no probable cause to indict Darren Wilson with a crime as a result of his killing of Michael Brown. County Prosecutor McCulloch has laid out the evidence in such a way as to exonerate Wilson and has suggested that anyone who disagrees must have made up her mind in advance of the facts, likely influenced by irresponsible media. Of sourse, what Prosecutor McCulloch presented was an argument based on a carefully selected account of the facts, despite McCulloch’s constant protest that the Grand Jury was presented with all pertinent evidence.

I have never believed that officer Wilson would be indicted for killing Michael Brown. I pointed this out first here. The law gives police the benefit of the doubt in cases such as this one. But it should be said that this is not justice. It is rather a legal shield for the power elite. Prosecutor McCulloch urged the expression of dissent ‘so that such a thing might never happen again,’ but I found his pleading unpersuasive. There are numerous possible interpretations other than the now official one of the “facts” that Prosecutor McCulloch presented. Unfortunately, we shall now never hear them aired in open court. This was what the St. Louis County Grand Jury process was about.

Aside from the fact that McCulloch had a huge conflict of interest in this case and should have recused himself in the beginning, his polemic defending the impartiality of the grand jury process and claiming that anyone who dissents is insulting or attacking the integrity of the good folk who served on the grand jury, who gave up their lives, etc., is a pretty naked appeal beyond the merits of the case. It seeks to set those good citizens who support the grand jury and do not support Michael Brown, a young black man with an attitude, and those who do support Brown, against one another. But these adversaries should have met in open court, and they will not.

For a grand jury proceeding does not allow cross examination of witnesses. When asked why he did not seek a jury trial in this case McCulloch responded that had he done so a pre-trial hearing would still have occurred and the case would still have gone to a grand jury to determine probable cause. The difference is, of course, that a prosecutorial trajectory would have been set in a normal pre-trial proceeding, and that would have strongly influenced the outcome. The best chance McCulloch had of influencing the outcome of this particular case (and of avoiding any potential negative consequences with the electorate) was to present it to the grand jury with no recommendation.

I think the Michael Brown murder trial, travesty though it was, was not about Michael Brown or even about Darren Wilson. I think it was about creating a local outcome that could not easily be appealed to fhe federal court system and create the possibility of overturning Graham v Connor. Of course there will be gunshots, never mind who shoots; and of course there will be looting and vandalism. Civil strife invites opportunistic exploitation, and the terrible irony of such things is that often the innocent are harmed. When a society sets out an intentional policy of harming the innocent, where will such a policy come to rest?

So in the final analysis the verdict was, and is, a whitewash, or worse: the fix was in. The grand jury was used, and the predictable outcome confirms the establishment narrative with all necessary violence and chicanery.