The jury in the Walter Scott case has ended its deliberations without being able to reach a verdict. They were unable to convict a police officer who shot a black man in the back as he is seen on a video tape, running away.
This bitter outcome begs revisitation of the Dred Scott Decision, rendered by the US Supreme Court in March of 1857. Then Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote:
"African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it."
One seriously doubts that the nation's mindset has moved very far from that of Justice Taney when a jury is left unable to decide about an action committed in full public view.
The accused officer's defense was that he feared for his life. Who then is safe if a representative of the law can make such a spurious claim against a man whom he shot in the back multiple times?
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