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You learn as a barrister that it is usually very unwise to second-guess a jury. However unpalatable or surprising a verdict might be, you respect a jury's conclusions and you move on. But, in the days following the verdict of lawful killing in the Mark Duggan inquest, two people have explained to me in compelling terms why they find that so difficult in this case.
The first was a community activist who grew up in Tottenham in the 1970s and 80s: Stafford Scott. The second was a Jamaican woman who came to this country in the 1960s and, with her English husband, brought up two mixed-race sons in London: my mother. Their concerns were slightly different. Scott set out why he believed the jury got it wrong. In contrast, my mother helped me understand why, for people like her, it is equally worrying if the jury got it right.
The jury concluded that Duggan did not have a gun by the time he stood on the pavement before officers, but also decided that the killing was lawful. How could it have been lawful to shoot a man who was not in possession of a gun and therefore could not have posed a deadly threat? One view is that the jury must have decided that the officer who fired the fatal shots got it wrong. In other words, he had an "honest but mistaken belief" that Duggan was more dangerous than he actually was. And Duggan paid for that mistake with his life.
Less than a week after the verdict, I saw Stafford Scott speak at a packed meeting convened in the House of Commons by Hackney MP Diane Abbott. He set out with forensic detail that would have made most lawyers proud why it was so hard for him to make sense of the verdict based on an "honest but mistaken belief".
The officer who fired the fatal shots, known as V53, gave evidence that at the critical moment he had been staring directly at a gun in Duggan's hand. He even described the gun in detail. He remembered it so clearly that he talked of a "freeze-frame moment" as Duggan turned towards him holding the handgun with his forearm parallel to the ground. "I am 100% sure he was in possession of a gun," V53 told the jury. The problem was that, on the jury's findings, Duggan was not – could not – have been holding a gun at that time, let alone pointing it at anyone. The scene that V53 was "100% sure" he saw simply could not have taken place.
"I don't understand how there could have been an honest but mistaken belief about seeing the gun," Scott said. "And that is why the verdict is – in legal language – 'perverse'." He added wryly: "Perverse is not a word you hear a lot on the streets of Tottenham. If something is this badly wrong, we tend to use more colourful language to express our surprise. But it's a word you're going to start hearing in our community. This is a perverse verdict."
Even if, like me, you balk at any attempt to go behind a jury's conclusion, Scott's analysis is exceptionally powerful. You can understand why the family are considering judicial review. And, before dismissing what he says as merely the disappointment of those supporting the Duggan family, it is worth bearing in mind that on Scott's analysis the verdict should also cause the police very real concern.
If the police are to respect the jury's verdict, they must move forward on the basis that V53's description of events is not what happened. And the very precise detail with which he said he saw those impossible events makes his account even more disturbing.
V53 may have given an entirely honest description of what he now thinks he saw, but his perception appears to have been far removed from reality. The Metropolitan police will need to consider very carefully whether an officer who made such a serious mistake – and who still seems convinced that he saw something he could not have seen – should be placed back on frontline duty with a gun in his hand.
But it was my mother trying to make sense of the verdict, rather than criticise it, that brought home the wider impact of the case. When I explained to her that Mark Duggan's killing may have been lawful because of the officer's "honest but mistaken belief that he was more dangerous than he actually was", she was not satisfied or reassured. She was deeply troubled.
The stereotype of the "threatening", "frightening", "dangerous" black man is so well established in popular culture that it almost requires no introduction. It is something that every black boy is painfully aware of as soon as he leaves home each day. So it is all the more frightening to discover that a misconceived, inflated view of a black man's dangerousness could itself be part of a legal justification for the force used against him. That is why the Duggan case, even for those trying to accept the jury's verdict, strikes at the deepest and most powerful fears about how black men are misperceived.
In 2002, following police shootings of unarmed black men in New York, the US Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a seminal paper entitled "The Police Officer's Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals". It described a study that monitored people playing a special video game based on decisions to shoot suspects who appeared to hold guns or other objects. The study found that they were far quicker to decide to shoot an African-American suspect than a white one in similar circumstances, because the black suspects were perceived as more dangerous.
The disparity did not necessarily correspond with the person having racist or hostile view towards black people. It simply arose out of an association – at some level – of the two concepts of "African-American" and "violent".
This perception runs deep. If there is one thing that unites the young black guy facing armed police with the one looking to make a sale to a customer or about to address a business meeting, it is that each of them is acutely aware that he has to make an effort to be that little bit less intimidating or frightening. If he lets his emotions show, he runs a greater risk of an "honest but mistaken belief" that he is being threatening or aggressive. In an extreme situation, that error may cost him his life.
But, in other contexts, he may miss out on that promotion, or simply not get hired in the first place: no one wants the "angry" black guy around. It is perhaps for this reason that so many of us, with lifestyles very different from that of Mark Duggan, can nevertheless imagine ourselves in his shoes.
Of course, we do not know what was going through V53's head at that fatal moment. Neither do we know how or why he made the decision that he did, particularly if what he says he saw could not actually have taken place.
For all the concerns that my mother and many others may have, Duggan's ethnicity may have had nothing at all to do with V53's perception of his dangerousness. But, if you are attempting to understand the wider impact of the case and why "lawful killing" is so difficult for many people to accept, it is important to address the real fears over the stereotyping of black men and how dangerous they are.
Whether or not the verdict is successfully challenged by judicial review, there remains unfinished business in the Duggan case. First, if the shooting is justified only because of a terrible mistake by V53, the Duggan family needs sympathy, not scorn. They are tragic victims, and their loved one was killed when he should not have been. Respecting the jury's verdict means acknowledging that.
Second, we need a rigorous investigation to discover why this tragic mistake happened. Neither the inquest verdict nor V53's evidence explains it. Was it an understandable mistake or an irrational one? Was it based on an unreasonable, inflated, inaccurate fear of how dangerous Duggan was? If so, why? Did flawed information given to the officer contribute to that perception of dangerousness, or was it something else?
Third, and most importantly, the Metropolitan police need to explain what steps are being taken to ensure – so far as is possible – that such serious errors will not happen again.
Unless that work is done, even those with faith in the legal system will remain shaken by the verdict. And thousands of people, like my mother years ago, will watch their sons, fathers, brothers and husbands leave the house each day with the fear that the law will sanction the "honest but mistaken belief" that they are dangerous, when they are not.