It is axiomatic that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. That is clearly overstating the case. But it accurately reflects the outcome of grand jury star-chamber proceedings, which invariably lead to indictments. This is why news of a grand jury failing to indict is as newsworthy (or suspicious) as news of a dog biting a man.
That in a nutshell explains why even lay people were so incensed on Wednesday. That’s when Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron called a press conference to announce the grand jury’s decision in the Breonna Taylor case.
For the record, the facts are simple and uncontested. Three white cops went to her home in the dead of night on a “no-knock warrant” to arrest her ex-boyfriend on drug charges. Pursuant to that warrant, they barged through her front door and all hell broke loose:
- The ex-boyfriend was not there; the police already had him in custody.
- Breonna’s new boyfriend opened fire because he thought they were burglars, naturally.
- The three cops returned fire.
- When the dust settled, Breonna was dead, and one of the cops was (allegedly) wounded in the leg.
Folks, this wasn’t a Keystone Cops-style bungling. It was like the Three Stooges in a “Gun fight at the O.K. Corral.” The only wonder is that her new boyfriend survived the hail of bullets, some of which landed in a neighboring home, recklessly endangering its occupants.
But the police then compounded their botched raid by attempting to get Breonna’s new boyfriend to implicate her in her ex-boyfriend’s drug dealings. This, in exchange for not filing charges against him for wounding one of them, and to cover-up for going to Breonna’s home to look for a suspect they already had in custody.
Incidentally, I intentionally wrote that he allegedly shot one of them. Because reliable reports implicate the police in a cover up. This, because evidence reportedly shows that the wound this one cop sustained resulted from the circular firing squad they all formed that night
In any event, given that lawless mess, is it any wonder people were, and still are, incensed? And, given that such tragedies and cover-ups happen every day everywhere in America, is it any wonder BLM protesters are still taking to the streets? Granted, BLM leaders would do well to weed out the useful idiots and infiltrators who often hijack their protests. Because these nincompoops just provide fodder for President Trump to dismiss all BLM protests as mobs of vandals, looters, and anarchists.
Meanwhile, that all happened way back in March. And here was Special Prosecutor Cameron announcing that, after a six-month investigation, the only thing the police did wrong was endanger Breonna’s neighbors.
Not to mention that Cameron added insult to this miscarriage of justice by spending an inordinate amount of time parroting Trumpian talking points about law and order. But nothing he said justified his refusal to lead this grand jury to indict one or more of the three white officers involved on at least one charge of homicide.
Frankly, only partisan politics and self-abnegation explain this outcome – as a front-page report in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal attests. The headline alone was damning enough:
Breonna Taylor Case Prosecutor Is Known as a Republican to Watch: Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s first Black attorney general, gave speech at GOP national convention
But it included this unwitting indictment against Cameron:
A protégé of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who drew an endorsement from President Trump, Mr. Cameron, 34 years old, took office in December as the state’s first Black attorney general and the first Republican to hold the position since 1948. …
The grand jury indicted a former police detective for … allegedly endangering Ms. Taylor’s neighbors with recklessly discharged bullets, not from causing her death.
The grand jury didn’t indict two other officers involved [who together with that detective] fired 32 bullets, striking Ms. Taylor six times.
Truth be told, I suspect his “Uncle Thomas” – who sits on the Supreme Court – is the only Black in America who felt proud watching Cameron announce this grand jury decision.
Recall that, when he began his career on the court 29 years ago, Clarence Thomas made clear his intent to strike down every law aimed at redressing the legacies of systemic racism. Because not since then has a Black man seemed so hell-bent on using his power to curry favor with whites – at the expense of fellow Blacks – as Cameron seems today.
No doubt some will cite the fact that both men married white women as evidence of their racial self-hatred. But this ignores the fact that some of the fiercest champions of Black civil rights were married to white women, most notably Frederick Douglass, Jack Johnson, and Quincy Jones.
Hell, even Michael Jordan, who married a white woman after divorcing his Black wife, is spending hundreds of millions to show the world that he’s no Thomas. This includes donating $100 million to help various organizations combat systemic racism and sponsoring a team to help Black Bubba Wallace continue his efforts to integrate the redneck sport of NASCAR.
No, Clarence Thomas and Daniel Cameron are infected with a perverse strain of self-hatred. This causes them to behave as public officials in ways no self-respecting Black man would even countenance. As far as they’re concerned, whites have never done anything to Blacks that warrants any redress. This explains their indignant opposition to affirmative-action and anti-discrimination laws, to say nothing of their antipathy to reparations.
In any case, far from its cops smearing her as an accomplice to a petty drug dealer, the city of Louisville ended up making substantial amends:
After months of protests that turned Breonna Taylor’s name into a national slogan against police violence, city officials agreed to pay her family $12 million and institute changes aimed at preventing future deaths by officers.
(The New York Times, September 15, 2020)
But what price a life, eh…
Related commentaries:
Clarence Thomas… reparations… BLM protests…