The split was 8-4 when the mistrial was declared in the trial of 29-year-old, three year veteran Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Randall “Wes” Kerrick for shooting 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell to death.  The night went from bad to deadly bad for Ferrell.

The shooting unfolded on Sept. 14, 2013, after Ferrell, who’d once played defensive back for Florida A&M University, crawled from a wrecked car and staggered to a nearby house for help. A woman inside called 911 to report a possible break-in. Kerrick and two other officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department responded to the scene.

And yes, Ferrell was black. Kerrick was white. Ferrell mistakenly thought that being the victim in an auto accident would somehow relieve him of the burden of being black in the gunsight of a cop for at least that moment. He was deathly wrong.

Police dashcam footage showed officers pointing Tasers at Ferrell, who then ran. Kerrick, who’d been an officer for three years, stood in his path. He shouted for Ferrell to get on the ground, then shot Ferrell 10 times. Kerrick said he feared Ferrell was going to hurt him when he opened fire.

As dashcam video goes, it’s not the most illuminating. If one looks at it from Ferrell’s perspective, one we can only guess about since he’s dead, it appears that we can see the moment when he realizes that he, having just been through a car crash and thinking the police were there to help him, just fell off the good guy curve.

From Ferrell’s perspective, he’s unaware of why the police would approach him with Tasers, screaming commands to get on the ground.  There is nothing about being in a crash that would, to him, give rise to such an approach.  And then he sees that this isn’t going at all the way he thinks it should.  And reacts defensively, because it’s not like a guy who believes the cops are there to help him has ever wound up on the wrong end of their attitude and a Taser prong.

The video doesn’t show what Kerrick saw.  The call to 911 was what one would expect from a person who saw a scary black man, late at night, inexplicably where he shouldn’t be.  After all, it’s not like she could ask, as he could be a rapist, a burglar, a killer. Black means scary. Assume the worst rather than give him the benefit of the doubt.

So Kerrick’s response was framed by the call, the flagrantly biased assumption that a knock on a door at night by a black man had a criminal purpose rather than a man who crashed and needed help.

Kerrick testified that he left the home to back up Officer Thornell Little, who went to check on “grunting and screaming” noises that they had heard coming from the road.

Guys who are hurt sometimes make noises that, if one is inclined to characterize them in the most uncharitable light, sound like grunting or screaming.  Had Kerrick been testifying about sounds coming from someone he hadn’t killed, they would likely have been described using less scary words.

Kerrick testified that he feared Ferrell might harm him and Little. As Ferrell began approaching, Kerrick backed up and yelled commands for him to stop and to get on the ground.

But “he wouldn’t stop,” Kerrick said. “He kept trying to get my gun.”

That last sentence, “trying to get my gun,” is a vague, yet damaging line.  It’s also in conflict with other testimony.

Ferrell then charged at Kerrick at “full speed, like a bull rush, like a bum-rush type of run,” Little said.

If someone is “rushing” at you, what he is not doing is “trying to get [your] gun,” except maybe in a flight of fantasy by a cop with a vivid imagination and a surfeit of fear.  Then again, once testimony crosses the line from reality to whatever fear-driven craziness pops into a cop’s head, there is no end to the possibilities of danger.

So Kerrick shot 12 times, ten bullets striking Ferrell, killing Ferrell.  The jury hung.

[Juror Moses Wilson] said the prosecution presented a case that should have stood, but the defense put Jonathan Ferrell on trial for not knowing what to do to avoid being beaten or shot to death.

“It became, not what he did, or what they did to him, but more, what he didn’t do, what he should have known what to do, so that the police would not have had to beat him silly or shoot him,” Wilson said.

That the defense managed to twist the trial to make it about Ferrell’s conduct, Ferrell’s failure to behave in such a way as to make the cops comfortable, secure, free of any doubt that he needed killin’, is quite a feat.

He said the entire incident amounted to “a night of mistakes” on both sides, but he said the most egregious was that Kerrick didn’t do what he was supposed to do as a police officer.

“You are not the judge. You are not the jury,” he said. “You’re the person who comes to investigate and decide whether a person should be arrested and sent elsewhere.”

Even a juror who clearly saw Kerrick’s use of deadly force unjustified and unjustifiable succumbed to the lure of false equivalencies.  Ferrell was an accident victim, not a criminal. Ferrell needed help, not to be presumed to be a criminal.  It was never Ferrell’s duty to make the cops feel at ease, but Kerrick’s duty as cop not to kill out of ignorance and cowardly, sniveling fear.

Ferrell’s big mistake was being black, which set in motion a series of events that presumed he was a criminal, and everything after that was the product of treating him as such. Because it’s not like anyone might ask him if he’s okay before pulling out weapons.  It’s not like Ferrell could change his skin color to match the benign expectations of a white guy. Was this unclear?

Even so, the jury hung 8-4 because Wes Kerrick said he felt threatened.  That’s all it takes.