While St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough’s (sic) *objectivity is in question by many Black Democrats, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon quietly threw his support behind him.The punch line goes like this: McCullouch has said he’ll recuse himself only at the request of Nixon.
In a statement Tuesday evening, Nixon announced his support, saying McCullough should not recuse himself from the investigation into the police shooting of Michael Brown unless he wants to.
“From the outset, I have been clear about the need to have a vigorous prosecution of this case, and that includes minimizing any potential legal uncertainty. I am not asking St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough to recuse himself from this case,” he said.
As of February of this year, there was chatter that he wasn't ruling out a 2016 run. I think Mrs. Clinton might like to take him off her VP short-list.
(Nota bene: the name of the prosecutor here, Robert McCulloch, was in fact misspelled in this article. However, I still think he might not be the best guy to try whether a police slaying is ever wrong.)
2 comments:
Hi Vixen, I think this situation is yet another example of pop culture media asserting itself as the determining factor in a legal case. The tail wagging the dog.
My view is that Gov Jay Nixon should be disbarred. As the former Attorney General of Missouri he knows better than this. It's a violation of his office. He essentially is disregarding the police investigation, the grand jury investigation, and the possibility that charges might not be filed, much less the need for unbiased jurors in case of a trial.
He is jumping on board the media train which asserts that justice and sentencing are the province of whatever mob rule can be ginned up to affect the opinions of useful idiots.
Frankly, the only thing any group has the right to scream in protest for is a scrupulously competent and honest investigation that allows the chips to fall where they may.
A lot of people today enjoy the excitement that comes with guerrilla theater, and a lot of politicians want to get ahead of that parade.
The participants want to act like they have the justification of protest in Selma. Well, my friends, I was around in those days, and this ain't Selma. This is lynch mob justice created by provocateurs. My old friendly acquaintance Bob Wilson would have known what to call it.
There is something intemperate about laying out a desire for something to "prosecuted to the fulest" when, in the course of the police investigation and the grand jury inquiry, it is a real possibility that it could be ruled a "justifiable homicide" (especially if a case can be made re: a possible assault by Mike Brown on the officer). It's dangerous in a couple of ways--possibly influencing the direction of inquiry or prejudicing a jury pool; also, it can create false expectations that can result in equally bad results should an investigation not lead to a prosecution or a bad verdict for the officer. After all, the LA riots occurred after the acquittal of the Simi Valley officers who ostensibly did beat Rodney King well in excess of any need once he was apprehended. Nixon, I think, wants to perform for both crowds--on one hand, smack down a curew (that no one has any intention of obeying) and on the other, say there will be a prosecution--when he can't not know better. He could hurt himself, trying to be so limber.
As for why the people of Ferguson are protesting, I'm not entirely certain this resembles a lynching of the officer, so much a reaction to the entire police department having behaved with a kind of nonchalance in leaving a boy, shot multiple times, in the street, in view of anyone who happened by, over handful of hours, and then not giving any overt sign that they were arsed to do anything about it. But that was just the trigger over what looks like a long history of an adversarial relationship between this PD and the people they were supposed to serve. It wasn't just this killing that set it off--it was the match on a pile of flammables accelerated by poverty, aggravation, media attention, and probably more.
Sometimes, whenever I'm confronted by a situation of many levels of fuckery, I wonder what the guerilla ontologist Himself might say about this. I think getting at why Ferguson is going crazy involves a lot of understanding why these people are set off--and also realizing that multiple forces are out there--people on the ground in Ferguson are talking about outside people from anarchist groups stirring shit up. There are people out there I believe do not give a damn who gets hurt.
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