(ThyBlackMan.com)
It has happened again. The justice system has failed Black America again. A mistrial was declared in the case against former Charlotte-Mecklenberg police officer Randall “Wes” Kerrick. Kerrick was accused in the deadly police shooting of former FAMU football player Jonathan Ferrell back in 2013. Ferrell got into a car accident and banged on a neighbor’s door for help. The neighbor called police. Kerrick responded to the scene. Ferrell ran toward the officer after being tazed and ended up dead from a dozen or so bullet wounds. But the jury deadlocked. They could not come to an agreement on Kerrick’s guilt or innocence. Perhaps the dashcam video released in the case was too ambiguous for the jurors to collectively make up their mind one way or another and render a verdict as to Kerrick’s innocence or guilt.
Maybe I should be happy that this case even got to the jury. Maybe I should be happy that there was at least one juror so convinced of Kerrick’s guilt that they couldn’t be budged from their position to go along with the majority who may have believed Kerrick was innocent because he feared for his life in the face of a strong, tall, unarmed Black man.
Or maybe I should be sickened like all the other times. Maybe I should be sickened that even with video showing the initial non-confrontation between Ferrell and Kerrick that one man ended up pumped with bullets while the other was left to stand trial and go home to his family without so much as a concern as to whether he will be tried again. Maybe I should be sickened that at least just one juror believed so devoutly and resolutely in Kerrick’s innocence that that juror refused to go along with the majority and convict the white former officer of voluntary manslaughter. 
We will never know to which side the jury weighed most heavily in this case, guilt or innocence, and maybe it is better that way. Maybe at this point in our justice system, at this point in our race relations, at this point in our relationship with police, at this point in our evolving humanity, we should simply be satisfied that there was a trial. In an age where grand jury’s reject video evidence, and the testimony of dozens of witnesses as evidence or at the very least probable cause to investigate an officer and potentially file charges against that officer, maybe we, or maybe I should just be happy that the officer was fired, was charged, arrested, booked and stood trial. Is that not evidence of the justice system at work even if I don’t like the outcome of the verdict. Is this not progress.
Is it absolutely necessary to protest every verdict in a case where racial tensions flame high because I don’t like the outcome reached by the jury of our peers. Is it necessary to take over state capitols a la The Dream Defenders and stage 24/7 sit-ins to get across the point that the justice system is sometimes unjust no matter who’s at the helm of upholding the law.
Loretta Lynch and Marilyn Mosby can’t prosecute every case, and black people can’t protest every city, and burn very suburb, and riot in every township when we’re so frustrated over not being heard that we lash out in anger because that’s the only way to make the world pay attention.
Black people we are not children. We can’t believe that all attention is good attention even when it’s deemed apparently bad. Charlotte can’t be Baltimore, or Ferguson, or L.A. or Watts.
So maybe, just maybe, I should be happy that even though tensions were high over the weekend the city of Charlotte, the new Atlanta, is still standing. Maybe, just maybe, I should be happy that even though Jonathan Ferrell was killed because he was trying to flag down help after a traffic accident, that his case was brought into a courthouse and heard by a jury, and broadcast by TV stations, and his name made known to people who could no longer look away. Maybe, just maybe, I should be happy there was a case to even be upset about instead of another nameless, faceless, victim written off as a statistic in a police shooting, where the officers are given paid administrative leave, and then after the hub-bub has died down, awarded commendations for their heroism.
Jonathan Ferrell, may you rest in peace. Maybe, just maybe, there will be justice for Walter Scott, or Eric Harris, or Samuel DuBose. Video evidence can’t always be ignored. Or am I just wishfully thinking.
Staff Writer; Nikesha Elise Williams
Twitter; http://twitter.com/Nikesha_Elise
