Failure to make case
If we believed for one moment that the color of 12-year-old Michael Ellerbe’s skin caused Trooper Samuel Nassan to fire a fatal bullet we would lead the scheduled protest march down Main Street. Ellerbe’s family, through attorney Joel Sansone, had every opportunity during a coroner’s inquest to make his case. He remained silent, declining coroner Dr. Phillip Reilly’s repeated solicitation to ask questions and bring forth witnesses. Yet, at the end of 10 hours testimony, Sansone charged the inquest was a farce. “I believe you have deliberately kept facts from this jury and have aided and abetted state police in a cover-up,” he said.
If Sansone knew of witnesses or facts that needed placed before the coroner’s jury he should have done so. Reilly’s invitation couldn’t have been any clearer or any more sincere. Sansone needed to put up or shut up.
We warned last week that Reilly was making a colossal mistake in closing the proceeding to cameras. Without a recording placed before the public, Sansone’s incendiary comments carry far too much weight. The only Sansone request that Reilly turned down was that three of the six jurors be black. Reilly stuck to his standard procedure of randomly calling 15 names on the jury poll list. Only nine appeared as summoned, and all were white. The race of the six no-shows is unknown.
Regardless of the jury’s complexion, Sansone had an obligation to advance his theory of the Christmas Eve shooting if it differed so dramatically. Without that, he forfeited the right to call the testimony skewed. This wasn’t a court of law, where rules of evidence are strictly followed. Reilly encourages hearsay testimony and speculation and allows for liberal questioning, even from families, attorneys and jurors. Sansone would have you believe this was rigged in the police favor. It was not.
The jurors came to the only conclusion they could based on the evidence they did hear. This was a horrible, tragic accident. As with any accident those involved share in the negligence. Ellerbe, even though he was just 12, surely knew that he was doing wrong. He was four years shy of a driver’s license behind the wheel of a stolen SUV. When caught, he ran. Even a child knows that running from police, who have already drawn their weapons, is foolish. Troopers Nassan and Curry attempted to explain why their guns were drawn, why they chased him, how Curry fell, causing his gun to fire and his partner to think he was wounded. Nassan made a split judgment call and fired. This scenario is plausible, although details remain troubling.
District Attorney Nancy Vernon, in announcing charges would not be filed, concurred with the jury. But this is far from over; there is still a federal investigation and a promised civil suit that will explore in depth whether the troopers were negligent. These are questions that need raised regardless of the victims’ race.
The same questions surfaced last fall when a coroner’s jury reviewed a similar case. A security guard had spotted a car in a housing project that was alleged to have been involved in an armed robbery. The officer approached, with gun drawn. The driver took off, dragging the officer. The gun went off, the driver died. Both the driver and the officer were white. A coroner’s jury found the officer wasn’t to blame.
Said Reilly at the time, “Bad things wouldn’t have happened if he’d done precisely what he’d been told to do.” Unfortunately, and sadly, the same could be said of Michael Ellerbe.
Sansone failed to make the case for anything different.