The benefit of doubt: Acquittal in the death of Philando Castile.

Last year I wrote several posts about the fatal shooting of St. Paul Schools employee Philando Castile a few miles from my home. Castile was a concealed carry permit holder who was shot in the car, next to his girlfriend and with a four-year-old girl in the back seat, by a panicked police officer during a traffic stop.

(First post: Not so much about Mr. Castile as about bumper stickers and jumping to conclusions.)

(Second post: About Mr. Castile -- appropriately -- being laid to rest from the Catholic Cathedral of St. Paul at the request of his mother.)

(Third post: On the charges that were brought, in particular on the legal distinctions between manslaughter and murder.)

By now you all know -- it made the national and international news, I saw it in a French news site yesterday -- that the police officer who shot and killed Castile and endangered the woman and child in the car was acquitted by a jury of all charges.

The prosecutor's burden in the manslaughter charge was to demonstrate to the jury that the police officer caused Mr. Castile's death by "culpable negligence" whereby he created an "unreasonable risk" and "consciously" took "chances of causing great bodily harm or death". And, since the defense claimed that the officer acted in self-defense, to overcome the finding that the shooter "reasonably believed deadly force was necessary" to prevent loss of life.

I don't think very many people dispute that the police officer -- at least momentarily -- believed that he needed to defend himself. I suppose it all turns on whether the police officer's belief was "reasonable."

It is true that white concealed-carry permit holders have on occasion been unreasonably shot by alarmed police, but it isn't a common occurance. Nevertheless, I believe it's very likely that if Philando Castile had done everything the same, but had not been a black man, he'd be alive today.

I also believe it's not reasonable for that to be the fact that made the difference.

+ + +

Civil liberties cut both ways. Mr. Castile had a legal right to be armed, and while people are disputing whether he did all the things exactly right during the traffic stop -- mentioning the gun and his permit to the officer (neither were legally required of him), moving his hands after the officer requested his license -- nothing he did was unusual behavior for a permit holder in Minnesota, except for being black.

It is questionable whether our Second Amendment rights are meaningful if their lawful exercise can "reasonably" frighten a police officer enough to kill someone.

And that is before you get to the Equal Protection clause and use it to test the notion that a police officer can legally be more easily frightened by people of one color than by people of another color, and that distinction called "reasonable."

+ + +

Nevertheless, thanks to other civil liberties which are perhaps even more important, we have theoretically got "innocent until proven guilty" in this country, and the state law is written with certain words and not with others, and there is no special part of the law about manslaughter and murder and self-defense that lays out clearly what "reasonably believed deadly force was necessary" means in the context of a police officer making a traffic stop or any other circumstance where the officer has seen fit to interact with a person who has not committed any crime.

Whether Mr. Castile's killer's belief was "reasonable" is apparently something that is not so obvious that it was proved to those twelve jurors beyond a "reasonable" doubt. Some doubt remained. And if doubt remained, then their duty was to acquit.

+ + +

It still stinks to high heaven for Mr. Castile's family and friends, and it stinks for all of us too -- maybe not so much because a jury found room for doubt in the police officer's reasonableness, but more because we know that juries often do not seem to find room for doubt in other people's reasonableness, people who do not enjoy the great deference that a police uniform affords. And we know that many people in our justice system never see a jury, because of the high proportion of people who are frightened into pleading guilty to one charge in exchange for dropping a more serious charge, and whose experience has been of not getting the benefit of the doubt. And we know that Mr. Castile did not get the benefit of the doubt, and he is dead.

It is not wrong that an unsure jury acquitted. That is what unsure juries are supposed to do. They owe every defendant the benefit of the doubt.

The wrong is that Mr. Castile's killer was allowed, by the law which does not define "reasonable," to be very unsure himself --- so very far, far from being sure --- and that another human being who had not hurt anyone paid with his own life. That Mr. Castile could not have the benefit of the doubt.

And years and years and years of other people, especially but not exclusively black men, who had the same right to the benefit of the doubt, and yet could not have it. Exhaustion, dismay, and fury is justified.

+ + +

I don't know what the answer is. I think re-examining the wording of our state law about self-defense and homicide might be a start.

Perhaps we should consider laying out more clearly what "reasonably believed" means; perhaps we should enshrine it in the law that fear of blackness itself is not reasonable (because people are definitely arguing around here that it is totally reasonable for a police officer to be more frightened of One of Those People than of your average white CCW permit holder).

Perhaps the legal definitions of manslaughter, murder, and self-defense need to be examined in the specific circumstance of police interactions with non-police citizens. Maybe we should be honest and lay out what we can agree on regarding the responsibility of police officers to make rapid judgments in quickly changing situations while protecting life and safeguarding civil liberties. It is clear that juries are willing to defer greatly to police officers' narratives of their own judgment process. Perhaps this is what we want; perhaps not; perhaps we want it up to a point. Maybe we should write down where that point is. Maybe we should lay out clearly and specifically what it means for a police officer to be reasonable and unreasonable in the exercise of deadly force. Then we, and they, would know better what to expect from a jury. Maybe training would change to reflect the clearer rules, and maybe snap judgments would be better judgments.

This is what the rule of law means.

+ + +

I have nothing more to say. Look around and listen to what other citizens have to say who are closer to the pain and struggle and fear than I am, even in the middle of it. I'm not likely to be shot during a traffic stop, nor to have to decide whether to use deadly force on someone. I am a citizen, and that's as far or as important as my say goes; so for now I'll write my state legislators, and ... and something, I don't know.

I am sorry for your loss.

Posted with Blogsy

Comments

[Joseph]

Happy Father's Day Mark.

[Chris Tyler]

Your post made me interested in finding statistics on police fatalities from firearms, including officer deaths and citizen deaths. The statistics seem relevant to the reasonableness standard to me. According to NLEOMF, 21 officers died in firearms-related events in 2016. I've found this number in other sources, and it seems reliable. If anything, I'm concerned that firearms-related events could include more shootings, making the number an over-reported for my interests. For greater context, there are at least 700,000 local police officers in the US< according to BCC news. So, the chance of firearms-related death for police officers is about 3 per 100,000.

For comparison, The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence reports 31,075 US fatalities in 2010, including homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings. That's a rate of 10 per 100,000. Sixty-percent of these deaths are suicides. Excluding suicides, the rate of gun-related fatalities is roughly the same between the average US citizen and police officers.

Statistics on the number of victims of police shootings is trickier. The FBI maintains a database, but participation is voluntary. These numbers indicate about 400 fatalities a year, as reported by USA TODAY . Since participation is voluntary, the numbers are considered to be an underestimate. So, starting in 2015, the Washington Post started their own database, based of of news reports, public records and so on. They report 991 shootings in 2015, 963 in 2016, and 484 YTD so far in 2017. (Given that the FBI statistics have only 750 of 17,000 agencies, I would have expected a much larger number. Simple scaling by the fraction of agencies in the FBI survey would give 9000 fatalities.) That's 140 police shootings per 100,000 police officers. Police officers shoot more than 46 people for every police officer that is shot.

I don't pretend that the statistics address the question of what reasonableness is.