The Killing of Marcus Smith

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In the past year, the Inglewood police department has been hit with a federal probe, a grueling investigation by the Office of Independent Review, probes by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, the implementation of intense and lengthy new training and retraining procedures for Inglewood officers, a vigilant and proactive police commission review, and an internal affairs investigation of officer involved shootings. Yet Marcus Smith, a thirty one year old African American, was still gunned down by an Inglewood police officer. Smith is the fifth to be killed by police gunfire in the past two years.

The Smith killing as in several of the others ignited shock, frustration and rage. The killing of Smith also evoked painful memories of the gunning down by NYPD officers of Sean Bell in 2007. Smith, as Bell was a would-be bride groom, and the shooting took place after a family party; a party that Smith and his bride attended. There is no indication that Smith, as Bell, was involved in any gang or criminal involvement.

Inglewood police officials say they recovered a gun at the scene. But that only raises more thorny and disturbing questions. Did the officers issue a warning or command to Smith before opening fire?

That in turn raises even more questions. Was the gun Smith’s? If so, did he point the gun at the officers, or make any threatening move or gesture that led officers to believe that their lives were in jeopardy? Did eyewitnesses corroborate the officers version of the shooting, namely that Smith had a gun and menaced the officers? The answers are murky and blurred on the first two questions. But there’s nothing vague in the answer to the third question regarding the eyewitness corroboration of the officer’s account of the killing. All the witnesses give a wildly different version of the shooting than that of the police. They say that Smith did not have a gun, that the officers gave no warning or command, and that Smith was not given immediate medical help after he was shot. They also claim that they were beaten, verbally abused, and subject to arrest for protesting the killing.

This is not simply another instance of he said, she said when it comes to the bleary details of controversial police killings. The single most important policy directive that a police department can, no must have, is the directive on the use of deadly force by officers. Vague, or poorly written directives, or worse directives that are not bolstered with officer training, retraining, and discipline for violation of the deadly force directive is the single biggest thing that gets police departments in hot water with outside investigating agencies, stirs community anger and unrest, and results in crushing mega dollar wrongful death lawsuits and settlements that city officials must shell out. This is even more problematic in the Smith killing when it was revealed that the officer who shot Smith has also been involved in another shooting.

Nearly two decades ago, the Christopher Commission investigated the Rodney King beating. It made sweeping and landmark recommendations on LAPD reform. The most disturbing and explosive part of its report was the fingering of “problem” officers. These were officers who were involved in multiple shootings, acts of violence, and had mountains of citizen complaints lodged against them. The Commission made it clear that these officers had created a toxic environment within the LAPD. The environment was made worse by higher ups. LAPD brass had a cavalier wink and nod attitude toward their dubious conduct.

The failure to reprimand, discipline, and where warranted fire them caused huge headaches for the department. This is an especially crucial and sensitive point for in nearly all officer involved shootings, even the most questionable ones, and even where officers are found to have used excessive force, the punishment has often been minimal or totally lacking. This reinforces the deep suspicion that police officials look for ways to exonerate officers rather than to hold them accountable for violating department policies and procedures. This in turn feeds the fear and distrust that many African-Americans and Latinos have toward the police.

There are more questions that Inglewood officials must ask and answer about the Smith killing. And it’s important that accurate answers be given especially since Inglewood police have been hammered in past years for incidents involving excessive force and charges of misconduct. The memories of the videotape beating of Donovan Jackson in 2002 that shocked the nation are still fresh in the minds.



Now there’s the Smith killing. This is another one that won’t go away and again will sorely test whether the Inglewood police department and indeed Inglewood city officials have truly come to grips with the chronic problem of deadly force by its officers.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Hutchinson will have the family of Marcus Smith and invited Inglewood police and city officials on “The Hutchinson Report” on Friday May 22 at 9:30 AM

Murder-Suicide Rise a Terrible Wake up Call for All

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


Ervin Antonio Lupoe, who Tuesday killed his family then himself, tried to contact my organization, the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, with complaints that he had experienced discrimination and harassment at his workplace, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles. The complaints now are even more alarming. Lupoe killed himself, his wife and his five children in their south Los Angeles home and left no doubt why he committed this horrific act. In a bitter letter to a Los Angeles TV station, the former Kaiser Hospital lab technician railed at the hospital for unjustly firing him and his wife.

There were other reports that Lupoe had been harassed by supervisors. The allegation was that some of it was racially motivated. One supervisor allegedly told Ervin Lupoe and his wife, according to the letter Lupoe left behind, “You should have blown your brains out.”

Kaiser denied the allegations and hinted that the reason for the couple’s firing involved unspecified detrimental actions.

This writer has received past complaints of harassment and discrimination from black employees and a Kaiser union representative. Lupoe was only one. The employee complaints of discrimination cannot be substantiated. However, they do set off loud warning bells that something went terribly wrong in the way Kaiser handled the Lupoes’ firings. And that the Kaiser management should take a long, hard look at how it handles its employee relations.

The Lupoe family tragedy is only the latest such incident. The murder-suicide last October of Karthik Rajaram and his family in Porter Ranch, a bedroom community north of Los Angeles, set off the first alarm that the mounting economic wreckage could push more people over the edge.

The edge in this case is not just a distressed individual committing suicide but taking out his or her family members, too. This horrific desperate act has been tragically played out three times in the last two weeks in L.A. County. Each time a family member, apparently despondent over job loss or financial worries, killed himself and other family members. Each time the family carnage has been more gruesome.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, more than 30,000 persons kill themselves each year. The CDC noted that in a significant number of these cases there was job loss or severe financial hardship. One mental health agency that tracks mental health referrals in California found that the number of such referrals leaped more than 200 percent in 2008.

Nearly all of those seeking help suffered some type of financial hardship. In a grotesque irony, San Francisco Medical Center, owned by Kaiser, the Lupoe’s employer, recently reported that psychiatric referrals had leaped more than 400 percent in 2008. The overwhelming majority of them were related to financial distress.

The CDC expects the number of those severely financially strapped to rise as the economy continues to tank. Minorities have borne the brunt of the wave of job losses and home foreclosures. And mental health professionals warn that as the economy slides they expect to see a continued jump in the number of those seeking treatment for depression.

While researchers say that unemployment alone does not cause suicide, losing a job combined with financial uncertainty, the loss of retirement savings, and the stress of overdue bills, and mortgage or rent payments can create the perfect storm for an individual to feel that suicide is the only way out, and that often includes taking the lives of his or her family.

The murder-suicide of an entire family is the ultimate desperate act. And it’s a dire warning to cities and counties, health professionals and employers that a financially stressed employee or former employee represents a potential powder keg, which can explode at any time.

This calls for drastically increasing funding and expansion of counseling jobs, and referral and crisis prevention hotline services. It also means insuring that the general public knows where it can go to get help.

This may not have been enough to stop Lupoe from committing his heinous act. However, it could save others who are in desperate need of help. With the economy in steady free fall, it’s almost certain that there will be thousands more Americans, facing unemployment, who will want and need that help.
When men such as Lupoe kill themselves innocents also pay the price. Invariably those innocents are children. That’s a terrible wake-up call for us all.

No Free Pass for the Twenty-Sixth District Senate Contenders Pt 1

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Here’s a political trivia quiz for the voters who will decide who’ll fill the vacated twenty sixth district state senate seat formerly held by Mark Ridley Thomas. What does the district encompass? What committees does the senator sit on? Did you receive a newsletter, eletter, bulletin, or attend a townhall or meeting from the senator telling you what legislative bills, motions, hearings, initatives he introduced or passed? Did he invite you to a community event, activity, or meeting to give you an update on his legislative actions?
If you answered no to these questions you’re not a political flunk out. Politicians have infinite dodges not to inform, engage, and involve their constituents. The political fog they envelop themselves and their Sacramento tenure in is a self-preserving, defense mechanism to insure election and re-election. This has effectively turned holding a political office and the race to get it into endless deal making, and self-promoting political careerism. This mocks the notion of accountability and enshrines regal entitlement on black elected officials.
Take the two purported front runners for the twenty-sixth senate district seat, Mike Davis and Curren Price. Both are state assemblypersons. One has barely warmed the seat for his first term. The other is barely into his second term. The obvious question is how does abandoning their barely warmed seat to seat hop at their first chance serve the constituents who backed them for the assembly? And if another seat, say a congressional seat, opens up say next month will they seat hop again? Then there’s the campaign. This tells even more about what’s wrong with careerism politics in L.A.. The frontrunners jockey to grab all the cash they can, and nab the usual suspect endorsements from politicians, special interest businees groups and labor unions. One front runner boasts that he’s a shoo-in because he got the incumbent and the L.A. County Labor Federation’s endorsement. The idea is to scare anyone without either, which is everybody else, away. Entitlement Again.
The self-designated frontrunners then blitz district voters with showy, photo-op brochures touting their accomplishments, make the rounds of the black churches, people a last day phone bank, and send blaring car caravans around on election day. This will likely be the first and last time that any other than the union and business special interest donors who bankrolled them see their recycled elected official until re-election time.
This take their constituents for granted mind set is hardly unique to black politicians in L.A. . It’s endemic in American politics. And that’s all the more reason to put a word that’s been sorely missing back into the race for the twenty sixth senate district seat and that’s accountability.

A Mother’s Plea for Justice

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The silence in the courtroom was deafening. Everyone in the court and that included this writer was riveted by the impassioned, tear filled plea from the mother of Eron Michael Mull. Jocelyn Mull had asked this writer to accompany her to court to see for myself how the juvenile system had gone badly awry in handling the killer of her son.
Mull was an eighteen year old African-American gunned down in a cross fire between two suspected gang rivals last January outside an after hours party near Hollywood. Mull had no gang involvement, was a highly talented musician, and had scholarship offers to several universities. The outpouring of grief for Mull was just as heartfelt. His funeral drew more than 2000 students, teachers and friends. He was Mull’s only son. Mull made the plea for remembrance within arms length of the young man who confessed to the murder.
Mull could easily have been another of the legions of nameless, faceless young black victims of chronic murder violence that has plagued L.A. and other big cities. His mother’s teary eyed court plea for her son likely would have drawn a momentary touch of public attention, sympathy and then just as quickly been forgotten. But this was different.
Mull’s plea was not solely a plea from an aggrieved mother for the remembrance of her dead son. It was a plea for justice. Mull’s killer did not come to court from a jail cell but from his home. He was not in court to be sentenced but for the court to determine if or when he would be tried as an adult. At the close of the hearing, he walked out of court and went back home where he has been detained since June. The home detention triggered Mull’s rage and plea for justice. Mull’s killer did not commit a petty, non-violent crime but potentially a first degree murder. He has suspected gang ties and is accused of prior handgun brandishing. In many states, including California, teens much younger than Mull’s killer who have been charged with murder and accused of prior gun use are routinely jailed for long stretches in juvenile or adult jails, tried as adults, convicted, and receive lengthy sentences. In the past, some have received death sentences and in a few cases been executed. The Supreme Court narrowly outlawed juvenile executions in March 2005.
Mull’s killer would not suffer that fate and that’s a good thing. But that still doesn’t ease the personal pain of Mull’s mother and the deep sense that a grievous legal wrong has been committed by the court’s allowing her son’s confessed killer to remain out of jail. And then adding to her anguish by handling the case with kid glove, snail paced lethargy.
This is hardly unique. According to reports from multiple state agencies, and a ten year Longitudinal Analysis of Juvenile Detention programs by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, since the late 1980s home detention for juveniles while awaiting trial or a court disposition of their case and who were accused of even serious felony offenses has sharply increased. This is in part a cost saving measure, and in part a way to reduce overcrowding in America’s bulging jails and juvenile detention centers. Juveniles sentenced or confined to home detention wear ankle bracelets that emit an electronic signal sent to a remote command center whenever an offender ventures outside the home or other confined area set by the courts. In theory if the signal goes off that’s a potential violation, if it’s verified than police are notified and the offender can be arrested.
But there’s a giant loophole. Police are often not notified if a juvenile is under home detention and are only aware of it when a detainee violates home detention rules and they make an arrest. Home detention violations are not uncommon. There have been frequent reports of juveniles committing or accused of crimes while supposedly confined to their homes.
Still, home detention is a sensible and humane penal method for dealing with non-violent, low risk juveniles and adults. But Mull’s killer hardly fits that bill.
Jocelyn Mull is no lock em up and throw away the key crusader. She is a dedicated educator and community activist. She’s well aware of the well-documented gaping racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. Young black males are more likely than young whites who commit violent crimes to be jailed, too languish in preventive detention, be tried as adults, convicted and then warehoused in adult prisons for long sentences.
Mull’s sole concern is that the tiny cracks that permit young men who kill either through legal sloppiness, a technicality, laxity, or expediency to at least for a time evade justice be filled. She is campaigning to prevent the use of house detention for violent felony cases. Until that change happens, the tacit message is that when young blacks kill other young blacks, black life is deemed cheap and devalued. In her emotional plea Mull repeatedly noted that her son’s killer would spend the holidays at his home. Her son won’t. And that’s not justice.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009). http://www.learnhowobamawon.blogspot.com

Why I Called for a Christopher Model Commission on Inglewood Cop Killings

Earl Ofari Hutchinson



Beleaguered Inglewood police chief Jacqueline Seabrooks dropped a faint hint in her July 25 press conference that she would welcome an independent agency to take a hard look at the policies and procedures of her department. Seabrooks dropped the hint that the department welcomes outside intervention mostly in response to the call this writer made for a Christopher style Commission in Inglewood.

She had little choice but to welcome an outside look at her department. Three very questionable fatal shootings in three months, piles of complaints from citizens of police abuse, harassment, and misconduct, and a department under intense public and media fire. This screamed for some kind of action to dispel the fervent feeling that the Inglewood police are wildly out of control.

The shooting of postal worker Kevin Wicks by the same cop who gunned down a black teen weeks earlier was the last draw. Almost no one believes the chief’s vehement contention that the department is capable of conducting a fair and impartial investigation of itself.



This has nothing to do with the heat, passion and fury over the Wicks shooting, or even distrust of Seabrooks. It has everything to do with the history of cops investigating other cops who are alleged to have committed or actually are guilty of misconduct, and especially misconduct that involves the overuse of deadly force. These investigations rely heavily on often tightly orchestrated statements, or carefully scripted reports from the officer or officers about the incident, cursory review of citizen complaints, forensic evidence and a crime scene reenactment that’s heavily weighted to support the under fire officer’s version of the incident. Meanwhile, the statements and testimony from witnesses that contradict the officer’s version of the incident are often treated with skepticism, disbelief or are outright dismissed.

Often police officials tip their hand and publicly declare even before the first scarp of evidence is gathered that the shooting or physical confrontation was probably justified. The result of police investigating themselves is virtually preordained. The accused officer is almost always exonerated. If the officer kills or maims the shooting is almost always ruled in policy.

But the stain of these investigations is not totally scrubbed away when an officer skips off scot free. There are the grieving families, the inevitable and costly lawsuits, and increase in public ill-will toward the police.

There are even more deadly consequences. Questionable cop shootings and their subsequent pro forma stamp investigations stir turmoil and unrest, and deepen the distrust and cynicism of blacks and minorities toward the police. They reinforce the deep seated belief that cops are only out to cover up their dirt and that the lives of minorities are cheap.

The Wicks shooting doesn’t have to follow that predictable and infuriating script. Inglewood officials have a made-in-heaven chance to rewrite that script. The call for a Christopher Model Commission was a good call in the wake of the Wicks shooting. The Christopher Commission was established by L.A. officials after the beating of black motorist Rodney King in 1991. It tore apart all LAPD policies and procedures, but it took the hardest look at the department’s lax use of deadly force, and the almost total absence of any checks and balances and punishment for such use.

Inglewood officials, led by Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, took a big step in the direction of bringing in independent scrutiny when it agreed to push for an Independent Counsel to take a hard look at the Inglewood police shootings. Here are the crucial questions that an Independent Counsel must ask and Inglewood police officials must answer:

What is appropriate use of force?

Under what circumstances should an officer use deadly force?

What type of force is necessary in specific situations?

What type of training do officers receive on when to use or not use deadly force?

What is excessive force?

What are the current department policies on the use of force?

What are the alternatives to deadly force, and when should they be used?

What are the investigation procedures into the use of deadly force?

What punishment is imposed when deadly force is found to be out of policy?



Inglewood police officials did the right thing when they expressed deep regret over Wick’s killing. They can do the right thing again by putting iron clad guidelines and rules in place on the use of deadly force. This will do much to insure that they will not be back again in a few months or even weeks to express regrets to yet another family for a police killing that should never have happened.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

The Southeast Symphony Orchestra’s Message Is Simple: The Classical Music Experience is Our Experience Too
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Despite what some mistakenly think, classical music is our experience too. That’s the black experience. For six decades, the Southeast Symphony Orchestra in Los Angeles has had this ambitious goal: to nourish the classical music experience among African-Americans, provide a venue for artists and musicians to play and for audience’s to learn and enjoy classical music, as well as to train the next generation of young African-American classical musicians. The orchestra under the direction of nationally renowned musicologist, conductor and concert artist maestro Charles Dickerson will hold its 60th anniversary season closing concert on Sunday, July 20 at 3:00 PM at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with a powerhouse afternoon of American classical music gems. They include Gershwin’s American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and Bess. The program will feature some of Los Angeles’s renowned black virtuoso performers.
In spite of the symphony’s phenomenal work over the years to deepen the experience of classical music among blacks, there’s one comment that has always stuck with me when the subject is classical music and African-Americans. A couple of years ago when I mentioned that I would attend a classical music performance at a local concert hall, a good friend snapped who, you and three other blacks. She did not mean to offend with her quip. In fact, we both laughed at it. But underneath the pithy and dismissive retort, lay a world of misunderstanding, ignorance, and flat out rejection of the towering, but largely ignored role and importance of blacks in the world of classical music. Put bluntly, far too many blacks still regard classical music as exclusively a white European music form. Or put even more bluntly, many sneer at it as white man’s music that has no relation to the black experience. Nothing could be further from the truth.
African-American Heritage in Classical Music (AfriClassical.com) lists 52 composers, conductors and instrumental performers - Africans, African Americans and Afro-Europeans spanning five centuries. These artists are unknown to most of us, yet are so numerous the web site can present only a fraction of them. They have made enduring contributions to classical music. Several have composed, conducted and performed classical music. Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799) of Guadeloupe is one of those multi-talented musicians. Cuban classical guitarist Leo Brouwer (born 1939) is another. Over 100 sound samples can be heard at the Audio page and at the biographical pages on the web site and others.
Classical musical world giants Ludwig Van Beethoven, Antonin Dvorak, Camille Saint Saens, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and others have either befriended black classical music artists or incorporated jazz, spirituals, and/or African rhythms in their compositions. Living legend Wynton Marsalis has virtually made a second career in music recording Haydn, Teleman, and other classical music composers trumpet concertos.
The numbers of black singers, dancers, symphony conductors, and virtuoso performers that now regularly grace the symphonic, and Opera hall and ballet stage today is legion. The number of black symphonic groups has increased nationally.
Dickerson, and the dedicated board members and core of loyal patrons of the Southeast Symphony, have labored in the shadows for years to fund and sustain the orchestra and its community outreach programs. It’s strictly been a labor of love, in this case driven by their profound love of classical music and the belief that classical music can enrich the black community and the lives of those that hear, enjoy and play it.
Fulfilling the mission hasn’t been easy. Southeast Symphony does not get the mega foundation or corporate dollars that the big, prestigious, and deeply endowed philharmonic orchestras receive. It must rely on small donations to maintain and grow their efforts.
The July 20th gala concert is the way to help them.
But this is more than a concert. It’s a statement that African-Americans have been and will continue to be in the pantheon of the classical music world. It’s a bold declaration that the black experience has been and continues to be a vital, dynamic, and profoundly enriching part of classical music. The orchestra fully intends to make sure the world knows that.
The Southeast Symphony Orchestra’s message then is simple: The classical music experience is our experience too.


See you at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Sunday July 20th.

Ticket Information: 323-293-7372 310-973-2488 310-519-1806

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

A Triple Burden for Jamiel Shaw Sr.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson


Jamiel Shaw Sr. carries a crushing triple burden. He was in ear shot of the spot several doors down from his house where his son Jamiel Shaw Jr. was gunned down some weeks ago. The young Shaw was a highly sought after high school football and track prospect. His murder was Shaw Sr.’s first crushing burden. His son’s alleged killer is a reported gang member who earlier had been released from the Culver City jail, and he is an illegal immigrant. The pain and fury Shaw Sr. felt over the killing and the fact that the alleged killer is an illegal immigrant propelled him to crusade for the passage of Jamiel’s Law. The law would severely modify Special Order 40 which forbids LAPD officers from stopping and detaining suspects solely on suspicion that they are illegal immigrants. The fact that the alleged killer was an illegal immigrant and the uphill fight to get Jamiel’s Law passed is Shaw’s second burden.
The law and his fight to get it enacted is controversial, conflicting, and has inflamed and divided many blacks and Latinos. There‘s no question, though, that Shaw Sr. battles for the law out of the sincere desire to see that no other family suffer the pain and loss of a son or daughter to gang violence due to a screw up by authorities in the mishandling of known violence prone gang members of dubious legal status in the country.
The Shaw Jr. killing ignited an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy, support, and goodwill from city officials, church and community leaders, civil rights groups, and anti-gang violence activists. It also ignited a non-stop barrage of local and news stories on the pain and plight of the Shaw family. The media was properly gentile and deferential in its coverage of the killing. The danger is that could change. This is the third crushing burden dumped on Shaw Sr.
All it took to change that and add this burden were some unflattering shots, and pictures, and scrawl on Shaw Jr.’s My Space blog that purportedly shows him mugging and flipping gang signs, markings, and speaking gang code lingo. The inference is that Shaw Jr. was not the clean cut, upstanding highly praised, scholar-athlete that the media and the thousands that empathized with Shaw Sr. were led to belief. The even more painful inference is that Shaw Jr. was not an innocent who was gunned down by a hateful, vengeful gang member but that his alleged gang involvement, even affiliation, made him an inviting target for a hit.
There is absolutely no proof that any of this is true. There are thousands of young persons that talk the talk, swagger, posture, know the gang code lingo, dress the dress. Yet they are no more likely than Barack Obama to join a gang let alone be involved with gang violence. A near textbook example of this rush to judgment when any young black displays what is allegedly gang trappings is the case of Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce. He was slapped with a ludicrous $25,000 fine by the NBA for supposedly flashing a gang sign on the court. (Pierce is universally lauded for his community and charitable work) This certainly applies to Shaw Jr. But that means little once the rumor mill shifts into high gear. The innuendos, hints, and finger points fly with abandon.
It’s easy of course for many to think and believe the worst about young African-American males such as Shaw Jr. given the top heavy, relentless spew by much of the media of stereotypes and negative typecasting of young black males as gang bangers, drive by shooters, and inherent underachievers. When that happens no matter how false the assertions of gang involvement and how blurred the circumstances of a young man’s killing may be, the damage to the young person’s family and his reputation is done. In the case of Shaw Sr., he’s had to watch with piercing outrage as the memory of his slain son is tarred, tainted, and dragged through the mud. And when the alleged killer is eventually tried he will have to sit in court and listen as defense attorneys for the alleged killer sully his son’s name even more by dredging up his MySpace scrawls as alleged proof of Shaw Jr’s gang membership.
Shaw Sr. has had to suffer the devastation of the loss of a son that he had invested so much of his life into turning into a proud and productive adult. Then he’ll have to fight a controversial fight to get a law passed that many say is futile, wasteful and unnecessary. Now there’s the character assassination of his murdered son. This is a crushing triple burden that no parent should have to bear. Yet, sadly it’s one that Shaw Sr. has been forced to bear.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).