UPPER MARLBORO, MD, December 4, 2023-For 10 days, members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), Prince George’s County Police Accountability Team, Coalition of Concerned Mothers, and West Wednesday Coalition joined family members in filling the courtroom for the trial of Michael Owen, Jr., the cop who had killed William ‘Boo Boo’ Green. William was no threat to the cop, who shot him six times at point-blank range while he was handcuffed behind his back in the front of a police cruiser. William had been detained after passing out in his car and hitting some parked cars.

Racist kkkourt exonerates killer kkkop
The Prince George’s County State Attorney had charged cop Owen with 2nd-degree murder and he had been kept in jail since 2020. The family received a $20 million settlement from the County through a civil suit and had continued to push for justice by demanding that the state not offer a plea deal but take the case to trial. During the trial, there was no evidence that William had been a threat, but the officer’s dishonest testimony about the events in the car claimed that the handcuffed man had hit him with a shoulder, that the cop’s gun came out of his holster, and that in a supposed fight for the gun, he had no choice but to shoot because he was “afraid I could die.” The jury returned a NOT GUILTY verdict in 90 minutes.

Enraged by the verdict, the family and friends immediately set up a press conference to express their anger that a killer cop is now free. PLP members from Baltimore and Prince George’s County mobilized and made up about half of the crowd of 50 people. Palpable anger about a long history of police murderers surged through the group. The names are familiar even as details vary. Tawanda Jones from West Wednesday in Baltimore called out the system that murdered her brother and said, “Capitalism has to go.”

No justice under racist capitalism
How did the criminal injustice system work its magic to exonerate yet another killer? Several technical issues of unfairness were raised. The jury selection was not done in public, and even though the jury was predominately Black it was also true that  Owen is Black. Second-degree murder requires intent, which was never suggested by the prosecution. Owen’s history of killing another county resident along with multiple complaints of excessive force was never introduced. The prosecution’s cross-examination of  Owen (who took the stand, an unusual, usually desperate defense tactic) did not question his story despite the absence of William’s DNA on the gun and the state’s evaluation of the police car showed no evidence of any struggle. Unnecessarily repetitive instructions to the jury about self-defense were part of the judge’s charges to the jury just before they filed out to deliberate. Despite organizers’ pressure on the prosecution to seriously prosecute over several years, it looks like the State’s Attorney’s prosecutors deliberately threw the case. There is no legal way to appeal the failure of prosecutors to prosecute competently  –  we saw institutional state power in action here!  
The family is now looking to the U.S. Department of Justice to consider civil rights violations by  Owen at the Federal Level.

Members of PLP have been actively engaged at each step of the way and during the trial, several of us had good lunchtime conversations with family and friends about the role of prosecutors, the criminal legal system, and capitalism. CHALLENGE was widely distributed at the press conference and welcomed by many with whom we have joined over the years in Prince George’s County.

The real story here is that, like the Freddy Gray trials in Baltimore in which multiple police were charged but freed by the court, justice is absent from the capitalist system. The court system of the capitalist class is functioning just as intended – pretending to care about justice but actively working to strengthen the hand of the police in carrying out racist and fascist actions on behalf of the ruling class. These cases also show that Black cops are the same as white cops and all do the ruler’s bidding. We must build PLP to destroy this racist capitalist system, even as we fight each case, from Archie Elliott III in 1993 to William in 2020.