‘Abolish the grand jury’

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2015 Lynne Stewart is a crusading civil liberties attorney and former politi­ cal prisoner. She was released from prison a year ago.

One of my most prophetic state­ ments is that the “law” is what “they” want it to be at any given time. Witness the Dred Scott deci­ sion, the Japanese internment cases of World War II, and the Scottsboro and other legal lynching cases.

In 2014, stemming from the series (ongoing since 1619) of unpros­ ecuted crimes against the African American population, we confront the lawlessness, now inherent, of an ancient legal institution, the grand jury. My history here may be fuzzy (due to my jail time of four-plus years and subsequently battling the big C)—but hey, there’s always Wikipedia! Nonetheless, my own experiences as a practicing crimi­ nal defense lawyer for over 30 years will help in this short essay.

In New York State, people accused of serious crimes (felonies) can be brought before the court by a num­ ber of avenues. Most common is the presentation of the case, by the District Attorney, in a rudimentary way, to a grand jury, who will then vote on an indictment. (The famous or infamous statement that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich be­ ing entirely true.)

As I recall, the grand jury was an outgrowth of the Magna Carta, a me­ dieval document that was fought for by the nobles (male and white and born to privilege) in which they won the right to not be thrown in and left forever in a dank and dark prison by the king. They now had the right (habeas corpus) to demand to be heard and judged by their “peers” (equals). Of course, we are not talk­ ing “fair” here, just the way it oper­ ated.

The functioning of the grand jury has not changed a great deal since those days. It is still possible for a defense attorney to present her cli­ ent and allow him to tell his story (usually in a self-defense case), and there are even those rare instances where the grand jury will vote no indictment.

However, the abuse by the grand jury in cases such as Michael Brown and Eric Garner, where there is only prosecution testimony, and that is in total control of the District Attorney or prosecuting authorities, is obvi­ ous when there can be no presenta­ tion of an opposition scenario—they have killed the obvious witnesses. And so, the grand jury does what it is best at, following the instructions and demands of the District Attor­ ney, Missouri or Staten Island, N.Y. It is the ham sandwich approach, and there is no blame, no account­ ability. The police and prosecutors are a single entity, and they have an agenda.

The grand jury, in my not so hum­ ble view, should be abolished. It is an anachronism, and the miniscule number that benefit from it are not worth the rubber stamp it has be­ come, particularly in the murder of people of color by the police.

A far better solution (short of the revolution we all hope and dream of) is to make those suspected of those heinous crimes stand TRIAL. Let the 12 jurors decide their fate in an open and fully presented eviden­ tiary case. It’s not a perfect solution but far, far better that the endless parade of murderers going free be­ cause their victims don’t matter. n suit to remove a lifetime gag order that prevents grand jury members from speaking publicly about the case. In the suit, the juror contends that “the inves­ tigation of Wilson had a stronger focus on the victim [Brown] than in other cases presented to the grand jury.” Also, explanation of the law was made “in a muddled and untimely manner” compared to other cases.

“In Plaintiff’s view,” states the suit brief, “the current information avail­ able about the grand jurors’ views is not entirely accurate—especially the implication that all grand jurors be­ lieved that there was no support for any charges. … Moreover, the public characterization of the grand jurors’ view of witnesses and evidence does not accord with Plaintiff’s own.”

The suit names St. Louis County Pros­ ecutor Robert McCulloch as the de­ fendant, since he would be the person to bring charges against a grand jury member who violated the gag order. The plaintiff, who is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, is identified in the lawsuit as “Grand Juror Doe.”

An example of McCulloch’s conduct in the Brown case is that he knowingly presented “Witness 40” to the grand jury as Sandra McElroy, a deranged 45-year-old St. Louis woman with a (continued on page 11)

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SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2015 11 ... Killer cops (continued from page 10)

criminal record and a history of using the “N” word online. After being outed by the “Smoking Gun” website, McCol­ loch admitted that although he had known McElroy’s testimony was false, he referred to it in order to favor Officer Wilson. (Smoking Gun also claims that the video provided by police showing Brown’s theft of cigars is false and was edited.)

Most countries have abandoned the grand jury system. Although it was be­ gun in Britain during medieval times, Britain discontinued it 80 years ago.

Only 19 U.S. states require a grand jury in felonies.

Democrats no answer to racist cops Within the protest movement are forc­ es like TV personality Al Sharpton and the National Action Network (NAN), with close ties to Barack Obama and the Democrats. With Sharpton’s unique platform and resources, he has man­ aged a close alliance with the families of Brown, Garner, and several other police brutality victims.

Although Sharpton called an Eric Gar­ ner demonstration on Staten Island, which received significant labor sup­ port, the rally of several thousand was nevertheless organized as a tame, top-down affair loaded with speeches prais­ ing the Democratic Party. So too was the Washington, D.C., demonstration on Dec. 13 called by NAN, which was chal­ lenged by youth from Ferguson who briefly mounted the stage. Before being chased off, one called from the mike, “This movement was started by the young people. We started this. It should be young people all over this stage. It should be young people all up here.”

The Justice League NYC has also got­ ten attention organizing entertainment at protests and arranging a meeting with New York City Mayor Bill de Bla­ sio to discuss the grand jury decisions and racist police practices. The group is supported by Russell Simmons, a hiphop music and clothing entrepreneur said to be worth $340 million in 2011.

The meeting was without conclusion, although a Dec. 19 New York Daily News article reported comments by the may­ or indicating a willingness by the group to help police identify violent protes­ tors—a claim, says one key activist not in the group, that the Justice League NYC has denied.

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report ex­ ecutive editor, wrote on Dec. 17, “The Al Sharptons of the community are at­ tempting to isolate the core Ferguson activists and prevent the coalescing of a youth-led national Black movement— especially one that might act in concert with non-Blacks in the remnants of the anti-war and Occupy movements.

“Sharpton’s crude lunge to capture and corral the anti-police protest has put youth activists on notice that a battle for national Black leadership has begun. From this point forward, Sharpton and his colleagues in the old line civil rights groups and Democratic ... Torture (continued from page 4: “‘Advantages’ of CIA torture over mass murder”) files in an effort to alter some of the more heinous findings.

Feinstein temporarily suffered under the illusion that the nation’s historic separation of powers—the executive and legislative in this case—guaranteed that her committee’s work could proceed without interference. She was soon dis­ abused of this legal fiction and dropped the matter, only to insist months later, for appearances’ sake perhaps, that the re­ dacted version was insufficient to expose the CIA’s activities.

CIA director John Brennan, commenting Party Black caucuses will deploy every scheme imaginable to hijack, subvert and otherwise thwart the growth of a radical, youth-domi­ nated, Black grassroots movement.

Mayor de Blasio & cops Mayor Bill de Blasio first took of­ fice in January 2014 as New York’s first Democratic mayor in 20 years.

Framing himself as a “progres­ sive,” de Blasio ran on a platform of “A Tale of Two Cities” to high­ light inequality. A top spot in his campaign promises was changing racist police tactics known as “stop and frisk,” which led to wildly dis­ proportionate stops and arrests of Blacks. What many didn’t notice is that de Blasio set out to reform, not eliminate, the policy in a politi­ cal slight of hand to get votes, par­ ticularly Black votes.

While “stop and frisk” is offi­ cially gone, the heart of the policy known as “broken windows” re­ mains—with the mayor’s blessing.

As recently as December, de Bla­ sio told reporters, “I’ve said very clearly that I believe in the broken windows theory of policing.”

“Broken windows” means bust­ ing poor people (of color) for small in­ fractions like littering, drinking beer or smoking pot, etc., in the belief that small infractions are also practiced by serious criminals. This is challenged by several studies, and serious urban observers think the claims are bogus. They have been proven to be racist in practice.

Eighty percent of Blacks arrested were found innocent of charges.

The first to fully implement broken windows was Mayor Rudolph Guiliani and his police commissioner Bill Brat­ ton in the mid-1990s. Bratton was the LAPD’s chief of police after he left New York in the late 1990s, earning low marks for human rights by Amnesty In­ ternational.

Josmar Trujillo wrote last March in Black Agenda Report, “In 2001, Bratton was a special consultant to the capital of Venezuela when a failed coup d’etat briefly removed Hugo Chavez from the presidency. Bratton and the local police chief were at the helm when 17 proChavez protesters were shot by police before Chavez returned, jailed the chief and sent Bratton packing.” Bratton said he would have “cleared” protests by Oc­ cupy on Wall Street “right away,” some­ thing too reactionary even for thenMayor Michael Bloomberg.

Yet before de Blasio even took office, in December 2014, the mayor-elect reappointed Bill Bratton as his top cop!

Despite de Blasio’s credentials as procop—he called Bratton one of the finest cops of “this century”—he has made known his advice to his bi-racial son Dante: “Very early on with my son, we said, ‘Look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don’t move suddenly, don’t reach for your cell phone.’”

In response to the mayor’s cautionary advice to his son and the shooting death of two officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, on Dec. 20 by a deranged Afri­ on “The Agency’s” internal investigation of itself, in turn admitted to “shortcom­ ings” and “mistakes,” attributing them to the CIA’s “unpreparedness for massive in­ terrogation and detention programs.” But Brennan, contrary to the report’s findings and all other such data, insisted the EIT did produce intelligence that “thwarted attack plans and saved lives.” He declined to provide examples.

Stressing the need for the nation to “look forward, not backward” and pledg­ ing U.S. fealty to democracy and human rights, President Obama’s final mid-De­ cember press conference on the matter aimed at closing the debate.

Obama granted similar, if not more bla­ tant absolution to the NSA’s surveillance operations employed against the cell Tony Savino / Socialist Action can American man, Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, the right-wing Police Benevo­ lent Association (PBA) went on a reac­ tionary campaign to blame the officers’ deaths on—of all things—protesters and de Blasio. At the funerals of the two officers, hundreds of PBA cops turned their backs on the mayor.

PBA President Patrick Lynch launched a campaign against the mayor and pro­ testers, calling the situation “wartime” for the NYPD; the police, he said, “will act accordingly.” Lynch added, “There’s blood on many hands tonight. That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor.” New York police officers held a small pro-cop rally at City Hall, some wearing T-shirts that included the racist taunt, “I Can Breathe.” Anti-racist counter-pro­ testers drew hundreds, while the cops had a mere five.

As is typical of liberal capitalist poli­ ticians, the mayor immediately backpeddled to please the PBA, calling for a “moratorium” on protests and “respect” on the day of Ramos’ funeral. But defi­ ant protesters marched anyway in Mid­ town Manhattan, without incident. The mayor even went on a rant blaming the media for stirring up “divisions.”

Obama sent Vice President Joseph Biden, a pro-cop Democrat, to the Ra­ mos funeral. In 1994, Biden wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforce­ ment Act, considered the most far-reaching crime legislation ever. It put more cops on the street and was signed by President Clinton. Yet, none of the dignitaries present had ever bothered to attend a funeral for a murdered Black man, executed by racist cops!

The mayor has promised that in Janu­ ary, “We’re going to take a very differ­ ent view going forward about how we respect people’s rights to express them­ selves.” Those changes are not known at press time, but, recalling the highly co­ phone, computer, and virtually all other means of communications of nearly ev­ eryone on earth. In the name of “national security” the green light was handed to the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue its massive surveillance with impunity.

No serious social or political activist can believe for a moment that CIA torture, even in its new genteel EIT expression, has been limited. Not a single perpetrator has been punished.

“The horror, the horror,” in the final words of Joseph Conrad’s deranged colo­ nial-era mass murderer, Kurtz, in the epic 1899 novel “Heart of Darkness,” contin­ ues. Little did the world know then that Conrad’s reference was to Belgian King Leopold II’s genocide of 12 million Con­ ordinated repression of Occupy Wall Street by Obama’s Homeland Secu­ rity and police and even banks, as revealed in secret documents made available to Naomi Wolf of the Brit­ ish Guardian, we must be on guard for possible nationwide repression of the anti-racist movements.

Both de Blasio and Obama are promising thousands of body cam­ eras as a concession to civil-rights forces in order to rope them in more closely to the Democratic Party.

But then again, Garner’s death was caught on video, and the killer cop walked free! The outgoing U.S. At­ torney General, Eric Holder, has pledged to investigate violations of civil-rights in these cases, but, so far, these promises have netted nothing.

Obama is also promising a special commission to study police conduct, but it is to be headed by two former police officials.

Stay in the streets!

The emergence of a young and radicalizing Black leadership in the struggles against police violence represents a major step forward in the struggle for Black liberation.

In significant part, these youth see through the Democratic Party’s Black reformist establishment, who were pressed into service to try to head off a deeper radicalization.

The life experience of these radical­ izing youth has taught them that racist murder and racism in general are inher­ ent in “the system.” They justifiably and necessarily see the need for a new Black leadership, and are currently exploring how to bring it into being.

It is also noteworthy that the post-Fer­ guson demonstrations were in signifi­ cant part multi-racial, including radical­ izing white youth, Latinos, Asians, Arab Americans, and others—also victims of capitalist oppression and exploitation. The cross-fertilization of several social struggles was in evidence, with every sort of protest movement finding ways to join the struggle in the streets, and to express solidarity while finding ways to add vital issues to the demands.

So far, the mass organizations of the working class have generally been miss­ ing from this movement. Multi-ethnic labor unions have the muscle to fill the streets and ultimately shut the system down. African American, Hispanic and immigrant workers would be the first to respond to appeals from union lead­ ers to act, but the timid leadership is re­ luctant to confront racism in the unions and to allow the possibility of loosening their ties to the Democratic Party wing of the ruling 1%.

Nonetheless, today’s emerging antiracist movement has stirred the con­ science of millions and galvanized new layers into action. It will bode well for Black activists to establish their own mass organizations rooted in the com­ munities of the oppressed, while re­ maining in constant search for allies among all those who seek to challenge capitalism’s inherent racism and the exploitative policies of the white ruling class. n golese in the course of that nation’s colo­ nization and the extraction of incredible quantities of ivory.

In the past 20 years only six million Con­ golese have been murdered in the course of that nation’s re-colonization, today for the purpose of stealing the Congo’s vast mineral resources. This time around it is the U.S. imperial power at work, assisted by the kept corporate media for whom coverage, not to mention exposure, of the modern rape of the Congo is off limits.

U.S. imperialism’s unceasing citation of its “national security interests” is noth­ ing less than the putrid justification of plunder and murder by any means neces­ sary. Until this behemoth is defeated by the world’s working masses, we can only expect “the horror” to worsen. n

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