Commentary: Leave Michael Brown’s Juvenile Records Alone

Black Entertainment Televison News ^ | September 5, 2014 | Jonathan P. Hicks

[2ndDivisionVet]

Moves to uncover the youth records of the 18-year-old Black youth are misplaced and akin to efforts to blame the victim.

In the days after Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, there was a behind-the-scenes tug of war between the local police officials and the Justice Department over the integrity of releasing a video of the 18-year-old Black man shoplifting some cigars from a neighborhood convenience store.

Justice Department officials contended that releasing the unflattering video of Brown served no practical purpose and that it was motivated by a desire to portray the young man in a negative light. That, they wisely concluded, might further stir passions on the streets of Ferguson in an already tense period.

The Ferguson police, however, dismissed the concerns and requests of the Justice Department and went ahead with the release of the video. The video, shot in a convenience store, have no bearing on the shooting of Brown. In fact, the police officer who shot the young man made clear that he knew nothing of the event when he confronted Brown on that fateful afternoon on a Ferguson street.

In cases like that of Michael Brown, just as in the case of Trayvon Martin, there is always an undercurrent of character assassination. There are forces that always seem to make effort to portray the unarmed, dead teenager as someone whose life was so checkered that the average person paying attention to the story might feel some degree of sympathy for Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Brown.

The issue of digging into Michael Brown’s past did not end with the video taken in the convenience store. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and an online journalist in California filed separate actions in the Family Court of St. Louis to expose whether Brown had legal troubles as a youth. In making their case, the organizations said the public had a right to know about any past indiscretions on the part of young Brown.

Such history is completely irrelevant to the decision to kill him (in the interest of full disclosure, I worked for the St. Louis newspaper during a summer while in college and my father had been the first Black reporter there in the 1940s through the early 1960s). Juvenile records are confidential in the state of Missouri. However, police have maintained that Brown had no criminal record as an adult. More than anything, Michael Brown deserves the same level of privacy that everyone else is entitled to in the state of Missouri.

People should abandon their witch hunts. If there is significant baggage to the life of Michael Brown, let it come out in the course of a swift trial against Darren Wilson, which would be the best outcome of this tragic event.

[SampleMan]

Hmmm, looks like BET removed my comment. I mentioned:
-rush to judgment and subsequent investment in outcome
-the autopsy report
-disproportionate policing might be linked to diproportionate crime rates
-militarization of the police should concern everyone
Just wondering, which statement/fact was found to be unacceptable to BET?

[MinuteGal]

On June 30, a Florida judge threw out George Zimmerman's libel suit against NBC.

No word yet on an appeal. Looks unlikely.

Leni

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Thanks for the update.

I recall that a prominent conservative and former U.S. Army major general

• sued and won against the AP;
• the AP appealed all the way to the SCOTUS;
• SCOTUS reversed the lower courts saying that
  • AP did not mean to lie about the general
  • they just made errors.

NBC of course lied about Zimmerman and they did it with malice. I hope Zimmerman keeps going.

Richard Jewell was hyped by the media as the Atlanta Olympic bomber (1996). He sued and won.

BTW I remember the case with the general. It was the University of Mississippi riots in the '60s. Maybe AP did make "errors" but it was because they willingly believed the many lies about anyone associated with the John Birch Society. We see exactly same kind of stuff happening today.

[OldSmaj]

Agree that the officer made no statement about his prior knowledge of St. Brown's activities, at least not my knowledge, either.

However, few have stopped to think that maybe St. Brown reacted as he did (I'm convinced he was charging the officer when shot) because he assumed that the officer knew of his actions at the convenience store, i.e., the strong arm robbery, and decided that he was not going to allow the officer to arrest him.

It is an assumption on my part, and the thoughts of St. Brown cannot be assumed or speculated and certainly are not admissible in a court of law, but it does go to state of mind, which can be presented in a court of law, under the right circumstances.

And, any reasonable person, when presented with the possibilities, would assume the same thing, I think.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the officer was just a racist bastard that woke up that morning and decided to kill a black gentle giant.

(I was never too good at sardonic sarcasm.)

But hey...it could happen!