The Statue of Liberty is leaning away from the Justice statue. Liberty is "yearning to breathe free." Justice has police cases wrapped around her neck. Justice: I can't breathe!
In 1770 on King Street in Boston several soldiers were attacked by an angry mob. They opened fire, and five died. The soldiers and their officer were all quickly indicted for murder by a Boston grand jury. John Adams, in spite of death threats made against him for defending the perpetrators of the “Boston Massacre” as it was later called, agreed to represent them at trial. In his summation, Adams said "I will enlarge no more on the evidence, but submit it to you. – Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact; if an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had a right to kill in their own defense; if it was not so severe as to endanger their lives, yet if they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of any sort, by snow-balls, oyster-shells, cinders, clubs, or sticks of any kind; this was a provocation, for which the law reduces the offense of killing, down to manslaughter, in consideration of those passions in our nature, which cannot be eradicated. To your candor and justice I submit the prisoners and their cause.” In the end, the jury found two of the nine defendants defendants guilty of manslaughter. John Adams wrote that “the verdict of the jury was exactly right.” In the case of the “Massacre” the soldiers were assailed by night and outnumbered. In Ferguson a trained and armed policeman confronted a single already-wounded man in the middle of the day. True, Brown was 292 pounds and stood 6’4", but Wilson is 210 pounds and also 6’4", and presumably in decent physical shape and trained to handle himself. When the fatal shot was fired, hitting Brown in the head, he had already been hit five times, and was falling forward. Even if you believe that everything happened exactly the way Wilson said it did, the conclusion is that, if one less shot was fired, Brown would neither have died nor escaped nor harmed Wilson any further. I don’t think any jury would have convicted Wilson of murder, but manslaughter is a different thing, and that he will not even face trial for that, given the conflicting and inconsistent evidence, is astonishing. In the Staten Island case, it is even worse. Manslaughter does not require that one intends to kill another person, and while in neither of these cases do I think the officers intended to kill, they did kill. Can anyone imagine that, if Wilson had been another black resident of the neighborhood, who had pulled up beside Brown and told him to get out the street, and everything else happened exactly the same, that Wilson would not have been charged with anything?
In 1770 on King Street in Boston several soldiers were attacked by an angry mob. They opened fire, and five died. The soldiers and their officer were all quickly indicted for murder by a Boston grand jury. John Adams, in spite of death threats made against him for defending the perpetrators of the “Boston Massacre” as it was later called, agreed to represent them at trial. In his summation, Adams said "I will enlarge no more on the evidence, but submit it to you. – Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact; if an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had a right to kill in their own defense; if it was not so severe as to endanger their lives, yet if they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of any sort, by snow-balls, oyster-shells, cinders, clubs, or sticks of any kind; this was a provocation, for which the law reduces the offense of killing, down to manslaughter, in consideration of those passions in our nature, which cannot be eradicated. To your candor and justice I submit the prisoners and their cause.” In the end, the jury found two of the nine defendants defendants guilty of manslaughter. John Adams wrote that “the verdict of the jury was exactly right.” In the case of the “Massacre” the soldiers were assailed by night and outnumbered. In Ferguson a trained and armed policeman confronted a single already-wounded man in the middle of the day. True, Brown was 292 pounds and stood 6’4", but Wilson is 210 pounds and also 6’4", and presumably in decent physical shape and trained to handle himself. When the fatal shot was fired, hitting Brown in the head, he had already been hit five times, and was falling forward. Even if you believe that everything happened exactly the way Wilson said it did, the conclusion is that, if one less shot was fired, Brown would neither have died nor escaped nor harmed Wilson any further. I don’t think any jury would have convicted Wilson of murder, but manslaughter is a different thing, and that he will not even face trial for that, given the conflicting and inconsistent evidence, is astonishing. In the Staten Island case, it is even worse. Manslaughter does not require that one intends to kill another person, and while in neither of these cases do I think the officers intended to kill, they did kill. Can anyone imagine that, if Wilson had been another black resident of the neighborhood, who had pulled up beside Brown and told him to get out the street, and everything else happened exactly the same, that Wilson would not have been charged with anything?