Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Media

Should Michael Brown’s Stepfather Be Criminally Charged For Inciting A Riot?

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Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson indicated this week that they are “pursuing” an investigation into whether comments made by Michael Brown’s stepfather Louis Head (shown here in the white cap) should be charged for his inciting a riot for his response to the news that there would be no indictment of Officer Darren White. While I certainly do not condone the language, I have long been a critic of such “violent speech” prosecutions and I believe that such charges would violate his free speech rights and ignore the mitigating factor of a family member in a highly emotional position that night. Warning: profane words are contained in the story below and the videotape.

After the news of the grand jury decision, Head started to scream “Burn this motherfucker down! Burn this bitch down!” Looting and arson broke out soon after the decision of the grand jury.

In addition to police chief, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder told Fox News that it sounds like Head was trying to incite a riot.

After the grand jury’s decision was announced, 12 commercial buildings in Ferguson were destroyed by fire and there were well over 100 arrests at St. Louis-area.

I do not believe that Head’s comments would satisfy the standard established by the Supreme Court in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio as advocating imminent violence. Violent speech is protected under the Constitution absent such a threat of imminent violence. I have previously written about the dangerous line of criminalizing speech. I currently have a case going before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on this issue in United States v. Al-Timimi.

Adding to the constitutional concerns raised by the threatened prosecution of Head is that fact that he was a grieving family member expressing widely shared anger at the news of the decision. He had just jumped up to hold his wife who was sobbing after the news. I doubt anyone seriously believes that it was Head who triggered the rioting, looting, and arson. Those crimes occurred at the time of the incident and were widely anticipated by law enforcement personnel. Head has apologized for his outburst and said that he was wrong to call for violence.

Source: CBS

132 thoughts on “Should Michael Brown’s Stepfather Be Criminally Charged For Inciting A Riot?”

  1. BTW Jettexas, I read about your father the Navy Corpsman, attached to the Marines on the other thread, I’m sure you’re proud of him. My brother was also a Corpsman and served a tour in Vietnam in 1968. My daughter is an FMF Corpsman attached to the 1st MLG at Pendleton. She spent a year in Afghanistan In 2012 with the 1st MLG. She’s been in the Navy since 2002. I’m quite proud of her.

  3. jettexas,
    Well the problem is that your version of the truth (facts) and mine may not be the coincide. Truth is elusive and the arbiter must be above reproach. I haven’t met such a human yet. If one were to sue a politician over something someone else considered untrue, well can you imagine? Speech can never be reined in to exclude someone’s idea of what is false.

  11. @Paul C. Schulte . . . I would include Head, Nixon, Holder, Obama and Sharpton in a civil suit as they all contributed to the unrest and violence and therefore the death of many business’ in Ferguson.

    I also believe that we need to change the laws on politicians speech. Let them speak all they want, let them spew hatred or anger but whatever they do, they better tell the truth. I think every politician should be held legally liable for what they claim to be truth. Can you imagine how a law such as this would shut them down and they would think twice before they speak! bahahahahaha

  12. @ Rafflaw. . . sorry but I just don’t consider the Daily-Kos a relevant source of truth on statistics, no more than Fox on these issues. According to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and the CDC;

    Police killings of blacks went down 70% in the last 50 years, which means a decrease, not a increase as suggested by the left media and pundits.

    In 2012, 123 blacks were killed and 326 whites at the hands of police with a gun.
    1 out of every 349,000 blacks were killed by police.
    1 out of every 638,000 whites are killed by police.

    So there’s a 3 to 1 chance that a black person will get killed by a police officer with a gun versus a white person. According to the FBI and Census Bureau;

    In 2013, blacks committed 5,375 murders versus 4,396 whites, who committed murder.

    Whites make up 63% and blacks 13% of the U.S. population, which means that blacks commit 1 murder per 8,000 people, and whites commit 1 murder per 48,000 people .

    Considering the percentages of population differences, a black person commits 5x more murders than a white person does, but are 3x more likely to be killed by police with a gun.

  13. rafflaw:

    The officer was not next to the car when he shot Michael Brown. He was in pursuit.

    So, yes, it was some distance from the vehicle.

  14. rafflaw:

    He was left in the street because they had to investigate his death, and did not want to ruin any evidence.

    It was not because he was black.

    I witnessed a white woman hit and killed by a car, and she lay there for a really long time until they were finally finished with the scene.

  16. I agree with former mayor Giuliani. He said that he would have made an announcement that protestors were free to say whatever they wanted, and protest peacefully, but the instant they threw a brick, or a bottle, lit anything on fire, looted, or in any way acted unlawfully, they would be yanked off the street and thrown into jail. If he needed to call in 50,000 more cops to do it, he would.

    He said it was a mistake for the police to allow a “cooling off period,” during which they stepped back while the riot got underway. He said it’s been proven that such cooling off periods are actually heating up periods, where a riot gets a head of steam that’s much harder to stop. And it’s against their mandate to just stand there and let stores get robbed.

  17. I do not blame Michael Brown’s family. From what I have read so far of the GJ evidence, as soon as Brown’s family arrived on the scene, witnesses began embellishing the story. Eventually, people were saying that a white cop stood over their prostrate son and shot him in the head just for fun. It’s pretty hard to erase the damage of the liars.

    This stepfather was unhelpful, and irresponsible in his grief, but his rage was based on the proven lies of witnesses.

    I would absolutely prosecute any witness who was proven to have lied. This goes beyond being vague on the details. But people who claimed he was shot in the back, or show while lying on the ground, and who admitted that they made it up, should be prosecuted. Once they were presented with the evidence some of them confessed to making the whole thing up. They lied to try to get a cop thrown in jail.

    I have seen video of the ruined buildings, seen shop owners standing, ruined, in the wreckage of their stores. Riots only hurt the community.

  18. Jim22…for the record, if you read my posts, I was not arguing with rafflaw. Far from it…he makes very good points on many issues.

    I was trying to expand the concern issue…that of people killing people…a raise all boats line of thinking. We differed. I am not keeping some kind of score. There are many here and elsewhere who do not think that expansion is germane…and my guess is that they have spent little time living in a ghetto city, or they have an agenda that requires insularity (think the Rev Al), so its just simpler to make it cops versus black folks or whatever. If those with real urban experience also think that way, then they are part of the problem, not the solution. I’d note, again, that Detroit, the arguably blackest city in the USA, has NOT had riots over Ferguson, nor likely over NYC. What do they know that others do not?

    1. Pogo – Head should be elected Mayor of Ferguson and forced to pay his salary to the city to cover the costs of policing during the riots.

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