Amnon, son of the Biblical King David, raped
and disgraced his half-sister and David’s daughter Tamar. In Levitical law, the punishment for this
crime was clear. Amnon was to be “cut
off” from his people – disowned, exiled, sent away.
However, David failed to punish Amnon because
he had a soft spot in his heart for his son.
Enraged by his father’s miscarriage of justice, Tamar’s brother, Absalom
took matters into his own hands and killed Amnon. Once again, David neglected his duty to
enforce the law; this time on Absalom for murder. In turn, Absalom grew contemptuous of his
father’s weakness and dereliction of duty.
Therefore, he rebelled against David, plunging the kingdom into civil
war and chaos.
This past month, America has seen grand juries
fail to hand down indictments in two high profile cases, plunging our cities
into chaos and violence. Was justice ill
served?
In a recent Coffee and Markets podcast, conservative attorney Leon Wolf explained the
grand jury process. Grand juries are not
trials. They are investigations led by
prosecutors. Their purpose is to obtain an
indictment with the blessing of the community as represented by the
jurors. A prosecutor typically would not
convene a grand jury unless he wanted to get an indictment. No defense is presented. All that the jury needs to decide is that
enough evidence exists to suspect
that a crime may have been committed
and that a full and open public trial is warranted. Normally the prosecution’s success is about
95%.
If the prosecutor’s purpose is to bring an indictment,
the standard of evidence is so low and the success rate is high, it begs the
question as to why no indictments were returned in the cases of either Michael
Brown or Eric Garner. After all, there
were dead men on the street and reasonable evidence to suspect at least police malfeasance.
Many Americans believe the reason to be race; that
a White cop can shoot an unarmed Black man with impunity. However, in
Seattle a white cop punched a white woman in the face while she was handcuffed in
the back of his squad card. Once again
the officer escaped indictment.
I will not deny that racism exists in America
and some people are racist. However, I
do not believe that White cops are on the hunt for Black men. Something else is at work here.
In a
New Republic article, Brian Beutler,
blames a too cozy relationship between prosecutors and police. Beutler hypothesizes that “prosecutors and
police departments are too tightly linked for due process to mean anything”. Prosecutors depend on friendly and cooperative
relationships with local police in order to get their jobs done. Because of this he asserts that it “isn’t the
quantity or quality evidence” that prosecutors have at their disposal that results
in botched indictment. Rather it is that
officials “so freely disregard it”.
Who is to say that in any of the aforementioned cases
that the prosecutors deliberately tanked the indictment the indictment process? However, the apparent consistency of
favorable outcomes for the police is enough to raise eyebrows.
The story of David and Absalom reveals no
change in the human condition in the past 3,000 years. When people sense that justice is denied then
anger, rage, violence and chaos are inevitable.
When those who are duty bound to uphold the law place themselves above
it, there is lawlessness.
Two plausible suggestions have been forward to recuse
local prosecutors from cases involving their police force partners. There may be others. The first to appoint special independent
prosecutors. The other is to defer to
state attorneys general. Neither are
beholden to local police departments.
In any event, something needs to be done. When people lose confidence in law
enforcement we all become less safe.
Related
Posts:
Who You Gonna
Call?
The
Wisdom Of The Ancients
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