For Oscar Grant, Justice Demands More Than a Verdict

Like so many other Oakland residents, I've waited anxiously all week to hear whether justice would be served for Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old black youth who was shot by a BART officer last year. And now our answer's arrived. The verdict for Johannes Mehserle — the officer who shot him — is in: involuntary manslaughter. Crowds are gathering downtown to protest the outcome, and Bob Marley is getting wafted over speakers to try and keep folks calm.

Personally, I find myself feeling mixed in response to this verdict — and still trying to make sense of this feeling of ambiguity. We may never know whether BART officer Mehserle shot Grant by accident, as he claimed — whether he'd truly intended to reach for his taser, not his gun. At this point, we're left to try and figure out how best to respond.

Prior to the verdict this evening, I expected one of two possible outcomes: 1) A not guilty verdict, in which case I would have been deeply angered. Or 2). A guilty verdict — any of the three options would do — in which case I would feel that some level of justice was being served. I knew that this majority-white jury might think it perfectly conceivable that Mehserle indeed thought he was reaching for his taser — and that he also thought Grant had been reaching for a weapon himself (in fact, Grant was unarmed, and lying prostrate on a train platform). I knew that conviction for 2nd degree murder was a long shot. Then again, I also knew that a guilty verdict in any form would be a serious victory in our country's long history of racially charged police brutality.

So, why am I not happier with this verdict?

I think Jakada Imani — of Oakland's own Ella Baker Center for Human Rights — gets at part of the answer in an essay that muses on the tension between the desire for vengeance, and the desire for healing.

To begin with, I do think it's myopic to call this verdict a total miscarriage of justice. The district attorney pursued a case of a white police officer's (admittedly blatant, caught-on-tape) killing of a young, black man, and then saw the case through to a guilty verdict. That's more progress than we've seen in cases past (for e.g., in the case of Rodney King).

From that perspective, I'm heartened by this evening's verdict. I've long believed that the answers to racial injustice in America are far more complex than our an eye-for-an-eye moral code could ever offer anyway. Mehserle is just one man — an individual who's part of a much larger justice system — and what matters is demanding accountability from law enforcement beyond this case alone.

On the other hand, I believe that Mehserle needs to be held accountable for his individual actions. And deep down, probably some of me also believes that Mehserle needs to pay. Maybe that's why knowing that Mehserle now faces just 2-4 years in prison for taking Oscar Grant's life still feels a little empty — it contradicts my basic desire for retribution. The tugging cry of "Justice for Oscar!" that I — like so many — have carried in my thoughts for more than a year does not feel resolved.

My guess, though, is that Jakada Imani's advice to me would go something like this: Do you want to fill that emptiness with revenge? Or do you want to fill it with movement for restoration and growth? I'm curious to hear what folks following the case, both inside and out of Oakland, think about the verdict and how we should respond. Now that we know the Mehserle verdict, are there ways we can channel outrage over Grant's death toward a fuller, more healing idea of justice?

Update: With an additional weapons charge, Mehserle could actually now face 14 years in prison. For more, see here.

Photo Credit: spotreporting