No good answers in the Castile verdict

No good answers in the Castile verdict June 22, 2017

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APhilando_Castile_-_Falcon_Heights_Police_Shooting_(27589594944).jpg; By Tony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota (Philando Castile - Falcon Heights Police Shooting) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) investigators process the scene of where a St. Anthony Police officer shot and killed 32-year-old Philando Castile in a car near Larpenteur Avenue and Fry Street in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, on July 6, 2016. Photo: Tony Webster / tony@tonywebster.com

In the news last week:

A jury found St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty Friday in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, whose livestreamed death during a traffic stop stunned a nation.

And yesterday the dashboard camera video was released.  I haven’t watched it, and don’t plan to — it suffices that writers with varying politics report that it horrifies them.

But then why didn’t the jury convict Yanez?

We have to look further than “white supremacism” or “racism” — it was not a matter of government officials refusing to bring charges, but a jury that refused to convict, a jury that split 10 – 2 (with the two black jurors in favor of the not guilty finding).

Was the jury racist?  Given that the police officer was not white, either, it seems unlikely that they gave him a pass on account of his color.  Did the prosecution throw the case, out of indifference?  I haven’t heard any suggestion to this effect.

So far as I can tell, there are three possible reasons:

Either the jury (as representative citizens) gave Yanez, as a police officer, more benefit of the doubt than they would an ordinary citizen, or

The prosecutors overcharged him, so that his actions, however heinous, did not meet the definition of the crimes he was charged with, or

In yet another instance of “you weren’t there”, the jury, hearing all the testimony and evidence, and not just what makes it onto the news, simply believed Yanez’s defense that he believed his life was at risk.

Or, rather, I think all three of these factors were in play.

To be sure, from everything I understand, however worried he might have been that he’d pulled over a thief (and I haven’t seen any reporting on whether he had grounds for that suspicion), he should have managed the situation better.  Either the protocol on what to do, as a police officer, when engaged in a traffic stop with someone who discloses they have a weapon, is deficient, or he did not follow that protocol properly; it seems to be the latter but it’s not certain to me.  (How do you ensure that the driver doesn’t reach for a weapon?  Apparently, according to comments, by telling the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel and not giving him any contradictory commands.)  To be sure, the defense says that Castile contributed to his death by not following instructions correctly, and his being high might have meant that he was compromised in his ability to do so, and the feeling of threat was heightened for Yanez.  But from what I’ve read, Castile was acting with the intent of cooperating, and Yanez did a poor job of providing the instructions, telling him both “don’t reach for the gun” and “please get your driver’s license out.”

What does the law say about a case where you believed your life was at risk, but you really shouldn’t have, because you were being overly panicky?  And what does the law say about shootings where, through mismanagement of the situation, one creates a situation in which one believes one’s life is at risk?  I don’t know.  One presumes that the prosecutor ensured that the jury was instructed properly about the law, whatever it has to say in that situation.  Did the jury reach beyond their instruction due to sympathy with Yanez?  Again, don’t know.

So what next?

Is the objective, at this point, still to punish Yanez?  That goes against the double jeopardy principle of our criminal justice system, and is itself, then, unjust.  (Yes, in the Rodney King case, the police officers were tried by the feds on “civil rights” charges after they were acquitted by a jury, but I don’t think there are grounds for that here; no one is suggesting that Yanez had any anti-black animus, just that he was inappropriately panicky and/or failed to manage the situation properly.)

After all, a jury assessed whether Yanez’s actions merited the punishment called for by the charges at hand.  They were not asked to identify what was “fair” or what would make everything right, or to in some way, make up for every other victim by their decision here.  They were asked, does this man belong in prison for what he did, and for the length of time that a “guilty” determination would produce?

Remember back when I wrote about Korea?  One of the examples that the author provides about the differences between American and Korean culture is that there was a great deal of uproar over the unintentional death of Korean civilians due to an accident in which a U.S. military vehicle was on a public road.  The people recognized that the driver was not at fault and did not personally bear guilt, but still wanted the soldier(s) to be tried (even if ultimately freed from prison) to assuage the anger and grief that the people felt over these deaths.  Their sense of justice meant that the soldier’s imprisonment would serve to make things right.  Our belief in justice says that people should only be imprisoned as appropriate punishment for criminal acts that they have been found guilty of by a jury assessing the facts of the case.

And, while Yanez shouldn’t be given a “pass” because he’s a police officer, neither should he be held to a higher standard, in a criminal court at least.

Is the objective, then, to punish future Yanezes?  That would be a start, I suppose, by having some sort of review process to ensure that (a) the prosecutor does not overreach for political reasons (which it seems to me has happened in other recent cases — perhaps readers can remind me of them), and that (b) the jury properly understands all applicable law and is well-instructed to ensure that they hold police officers to the proper legal standards.

But if the objective is to prevent future deaths, then that’s a different story.  It involves better training, and more time spent on training (which means more money, because you’re hiring more police to make up for less time spent on the beat), and it involves better screening, to ensure that police officers are able, in terms of their psychological make-up, to make it through an encounter such as this  without shooting.  This is a much more challenging task.

And — final thought:  what we don’t know, or at any rate what I don’t know, is how rare or common a Philando Castile incident is — by which I mean, relative to this one case, how many other traffic stops proceed smoothly, with the driver disclosing “I have a gun,” and the officer managing the situation in such a way as to (a) not shoot and (b) not create the circumstances in which he felt he needed to shoot.  Having some successful counter-examples would help us understand how to ensure these traffic stops work as they’re supposed to.

 

Image:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APhilando_Castile_-_Falcon_Heights_Police_Shooting_(27589594944).jpg; By Tony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota (Philando Castile – Falcon Heights Police Shooting) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) investigators process the scene of where a St. Anthony Police officer shot and killed 32-year-old Philando Castile in a car near Larpenteur Avenue and Fry Street in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, on July 6, 2016.
Photo: Tony Webster / tony@tonywebster.com


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