Shadow Trial: Prosecutors in Ferguson violated our right to an open criminal justice system. [View all]

[justiceischeap]

This move to morph a grand jury inquiry, which is typically a short rundown of the case for the prosecution, into a trial-like parade of mountains of evidence raises serious issues about the rights of Michael Brown’s family to have a fair process for their dead son, as well as highlighting concerns about unequal treatment of different kinds of criminal defendants. But seemingly lost in this jumble of legal concerns is the fact that McCulloch’s decision to shift the truth-seeking function of a criminal trial into the secret realm of the grand jury room violated another set of constitutional rights—ours. It violated our collective public right to an open criminal justice system. And if ever there was a trial to which Americans deserved a meaningful right of access, Wilson’s trial was it. Instead, we have a post-hoc document dump.

In the 1980 case of Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared that the press and public have a First Amendment right of access to criminal trials. In the words of Justice William Brennan, “Open trials are bulwarks of our free and democratic government: Public access to court proceedings is one of the numerous ‘checks and balances’ of our system, because ‘contemporaneous review in the forum of public opinion is an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power.’ ”

This right of open trials belongs not just to the accused but to all of us. It is, the Supreme Court said in the 1986 case Press Enterprise v. Superior Court, “a shared right of the accused and the public, the common concern being the assurance of fairness.” And while those accused of crimes have a constitutional right to a “speedy and open trial,” they do not, the court has said, have a right to a private trial.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/11/ferguson_grand_jury_investigation_a_shadow_trial_violates_the_public_s_right.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_tw_top

When did so many of us (that's the Royal us, by the by) accept that what happened to the Brown family, and us by extension, was okay with these proceedings? I get why the racists are loving it, it gives them, in their minds, carte blanche--they get to watch black people get killed with no consequences. But does our judicial system mean so little to us that even DU'ers are proclaiming that this was fair when it so obviously wasn't? Can the one's that believe that this should have gone to trial sue? Can Brown's parent's sue because they had their Constitutional rights violated by this scam of a grand jury?

It's disheartening to see so many long-time DU'ers consider what McCulloch did as fair (and in another breath proclaim Snowden a hero). Let alone that legally, constitutionally, this family, and us, have a right to a public trial.