Tuesday 19th May 2009 – An Elephant in the Courthouse

Today was the day of the inquest, and I had been told that the courthouse was not all that big, so I was up for an early breakfast and got there a good 40 minutes early.  In fact, it wasn't filled up, which surprised me.  There were plenty of spare seats.  There was even room for a large elephant, as we shall see.

Just to remind you: last January there was a terrible shooting here in Glasgow.  A sniper, later described as a recluse, shot and killed an ambulance volunteer, a woman in her thirties with four children, and wounded two people who went to her aid.  He was subsequently hunted down and killed by the local constabulary.  Well, I say the local constabulary, but, in fact, it emerged that, at the end, when he was shot, he had been tracked by a Federal Border Patrol Agent, a Fort Peck Tribes Police Officer with a dog, a Federal Fish and Wildlife Ranger, and A Wolf Point Police Lieutenant.  He had already been wounded, badly, as it turned out, probably by a Valley County Deputy Sheriff, but possibly by a Glasgow Police Officer.  As you can see, they take mutual assistance quite seriously out here.

The Coroner was from Fergus County, a hundred or more miles away.  The coroner here is also the local sheriff, an arrangement which is probably very convenient, most of the time.  But not in this case: Montana law requires there to be an inquest whenever a 'peace officer' kills someone.

Which was the strange unreality of the day's proceedings: this was not an enquiry into the frightening unexplained death of a well-known and well-liked local mother, whose job had been the Clerk in this very court room; it was an enquiry in to the death of the person who had killed her.  The inquest took the whole day, and every time the proceedings looked as though they might be heading in the direction of the killer's motives, you could feel that tension when an already-quiet room goes significantly quieter.   In these situations, people often use the expression 'an elephant in the room': I've never seen a better example.

The matter was not actually addressed at all until the very last words of the very last witness.  The Agent from the Montana Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation, who had been in charge of the case, and was in charge of all the tests and all the evidence, declared that, in his considered opinion, this was a case of  "suicide by Cop".

But it will never come to trial.  We will never really know.  We are all much happier when there is a motive, a connection between perpetrator and victim.  It allows us to judge whether it could ever happen to us, and what we might do to avoid it.  Someone just popping up and killing is quite frightenening.

 

Aside from the case itself, it was quite an enlightening day.  The various law enforcement agencies seemed only averagely competent.  I had to keep reminding myself that that's what averages are about.  And the jury seemed quite knowledgeable about guns, and quite comfortable asking police witnesses directly about them.  But the most enlightening discovery of all was from one of the victims.  He had been on his way to a basketball match, but when he had been shot, and his wife had been shot, he went back to his car and got his gun and used it.  And when he failed to hit the sniper, he decided it was an inappropriate weapon, and went back to the car again to get his rifle.  He had obviously been in the boy scouts.