Injustice, Again: Another Police Shooting in the St. Louis Area Ends in Predictable Fashion

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

16 September 17

nce you apply one of the shebeen’s oldest axioms—that it’s not About Race because nothing ever is About Race—the events in a St. Louis courtroom on Friday make perfect sense, as do the events of December 20, 2011, which prompted those events. From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Stockley, 36, whose home is now Houston, was charged last year with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Dec. 20, 2011, shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith, 24, at the end of a police chase at West Florissant and Acme avenues. The chase began when Stockley and his partner Brian Bianchi tried to arrest Smith for a suspected drug deal at a Church's Chicken at Thekla Avenue and Riverview Boulevard.

At the beginning of the chase, dash cam and surveillance footage from a restaurant shows Smith backing into Stockley and his partner's patrol car before speeding off. Wilson wrote, "Mr. Smith's Buick did not 'gently strike' the police vehicle." "The police pursuit was in response to Smith's perilous conduct ... This pursuit was a stressful event for the occupants," Wilson wrote. Prosecutors asserted that Stockley's partner, Bianchi, did not unholster his weapon during the fatal confrontation. Wilson wrote, "At the time of the shooting, Bianchi was an inexperienced police officer. To draw compelling inferences from Bianchi's actions or inactions is not a reliable endeavor, and would amount to mere speculation."

Prosecutors said Stockley carried out the premeditated murder of Smith by shooting him five times at close range and then planting a .38-caliber revolver in Smith's Buick after police pulled Smith's body from the car. They asserted a "kill shot" was fired at close range after the first four shots were fired in close succession and struck Smith in the shoulder.

A high-speed police chase preceded the shooting. During the pursuit, Stockley shouted commands to Bianchi, who drove their police SUV while chasing Smith through the Walnut Park neighborhood at speeds approaching 90 mph. Amid sirens, engine noise and squawking radio traffic, Stockley can be heard on an in-car camera video telling Bianchi "Gonna kill this motherfucker, don't you know it."

Officer Stockley waived his right to a jury trial and opted instead to have his case heard by Judge Timothy Wilson, a veteran circuit-court judge with, by all accounts, a reputation for fairness. (This, in fact, may be the last case on which Wilson sits.) However, this decision will not redound to his credit. This is how Wilson dealt with the damaging quote about how Stockley and his partner were going to kill the motherfucker.

People say all kinds of things in the heat of the moment or while in stressful situations, and whether Stockley’s saying, “We’re killing this motherfucker,” which can be ambiguous depending on the context, constituted a real threat of action or was a means of releasing tension has to be judged by his subsequent conduct.

Which, according to the prosecutors, involved planting a .38-caliber drop piece in Smith’s car, which certainly would drain some of the ambiguity out of what Stockley said. However, Wilson hand-waved away the charge that Stockley planted the gun, despite the fact that only Stockley’s DNA was found on the weapon.

The gun was a full size revolver, not a small gun, like a derringer, that can fit in the palm of one’s hand or into the side pocket on a pair of pants without being obvious. Stockley was not wearing a jacket; if he had such a gun, it would have been visible on the cellphone video.

There are videos. To me, Stockley could’ve been carrying a bazooka and, from that vantage point, you couldn’t see it. But what you do see is Stockley putting his completely unauthorized personal AK-47 into the back seat of his prowler. Which is interesting. Wilson also waved away the DNA argument, saying, essentially, that the evidence of absence is not the absence of evidence. And then Judge Wilson dropped the sentence that’s going to follow him into retirement.

Finally, the court observes, based on its nearly thirty years on the bench, that an urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly.

Wow.

Just wow.

At the time Stockley killed him, Anthony Smith was only a suspected drug dealer. But, because he was, a conspicuously, ahem, “urban,” according to Judge Wilson, he must also be presumed to be armed and to have murderous intent. Is it necessary to ask whether or not these presumptions would be in play if Stockley had gone out to bust some white H-dealer in the St. Louis suburbs? Or a white meth dealer in the Ozarks? But this is not About Race, because it never is About Race.

Interestingly, Missouri Governor Eric Geitjens had the National Guard on standby, and the federal courthouse announced it would be closed, downtown schools were closed, and large companies in downtown St. Louis sent their employees home early, all in anticipation of a verdict in the case, and probably not in the anticipation of a guilty one, either. The protests began almost immediately after Judge Wilson issued his ruling. The pageant begins again.