"There Was Video.There Should Have Been A Verdict."

Writes Charles Pierce. Citing the NYT—

"Our whole criminal justice system rides on the back of law enforcement," the chief prosecutor for Charleston County, Scarlett A. Wilson, said during her closing argument. "They have to be held accountable when they mess up. It is very, very rare, but it does happen." Ms. Wilson acknowledged from the beginning of the trial that she thought Mr. Scott had contributed to his own death by running away. "If Walter Scott had stayed in that car, he wouldn't have been shot," Ms. Wilson said. "He paid the extreme consequence for his conduct. He lost his life for his foolishness."

Pierce—

Ask Philando Castile how safe you are from gun-happy cops if you stay in your car. Oh, sorry, you can't. He's dead, too.

Wilson's statement, however tactical it may have been, is simply appalling. Unless Slager was certain that Scott was running to get an RPG launcher that he'd secreted across the park, Slager simply was in no imminent danger and Scott should not be dead. If the video weren't evidence enough of that, then the lengths to which Slager and his superiors went to bullshit the public about how this was a righteous shoot should have been.

But if the prosecutor is hanging the victim with the original responsibility for his own death, even for purely tactical reasons, then that's opening the contest with a pretty serious own goal. If we're going to be serious about criminal justice reform—on which I've never been optimistic, but never mind—then there has to be a serious conversation at the state level about removing local DAs from the process of prosecuting cops that they also need to use as witnesses in their day-to-day lives. The current system is a mockery of justice. And there is the one thing about which nobody wants to talk in this national conversation that we're never likely to have now. It is that black lives matter less in the law, time and time again.

Which Pierce follows with this story, from Louisiana. Black motorist shot to death by white motorist—who police first released, for cooperating with the investigation. Sheriff now enraged over criticism of his department's actions. As Pierce says—

Sooner or later, Sheriff Normand is going to testify for the prosecution in the trial of the guy who is charged with shooting Joe McKnight. Good luck with that, folks.