My comments get so involved they become blogs.  This one actually is two comments I made to Susan Mernit's blog (link below).  I was the first to respond at Susan's  Mernit's posting--it's not a response to another comment until the identified second part.  Now everyone has a whole new opportunity to disagree with me!  I'm SO pleased!  Here's the link to the blog that started me on this at 1 a.m. this morning:

http://oaklandlocal.com/blogs/2010/07/mehserle-letter-apology-what-do-you-think-about-it

Boadicaea

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I just can't read this letter--and I've done that several times--without getting a feeling that it is self-serving.  There's only one way to figure out why, and that's to go through it as if it were an essay--what does it say, and how is it said?

His first sentence is addressed to the public, not to Grant's family or his friends.  He's concerned that people he doesn't know think badly of him--while he's seen those people he hurt the worst, every day in the courtroom.  His letter was his only communication, and he didn't address it to them.  He mentioned wanting to talk to them--but he didn't. 

What is clear to me is that if the shooting had been a pure accident, as it's portrayed by his attorney and others who have decided to believe it,  his initiating a conversation with Grant's family would have been marginally appropriate.  What he wrote doesn't convince me that he really wanted to talk to them.  Put that together with so many facts of the case, and it's likely he couldn't have faced them knowing he had purposely pulled his gun.  The reason he cites--threats to his family--don't fall into place  The connection is so unclear that it stands there, awkwardly, as a gratuitous bid for sympathy. 

Then, I find it strange that he removes himself from his action when he says "Mr. Grant should not have been shot," instead of "I shouldn't have shot Mr. Grant."  "It saddens me," is similarly more objective than I would expect, as is ". . . a daughter has lost a father . . . a mother has lost a son."  That's such distant, abstract wording.  Why not " . . . his daughter has lost her father . . .?"     

I believe that he truly does remember the details of the moments after he shot and killed Mr. Grant, and that they haunt him.  That could be as true if his version of the shooting was true as it would be if he had completely intended to pull his gun out and point it at Oscar Grant's back.  But not one word of that account exonerates him, although it seems he thinks it shows how awful he feels (and therefore couldn't have intended to shoot).  Soldiers and police who shoot because they have to feel terrible too.

Somehow he's terribly removed from everything--the blank look I see on his face in photos is reflected in his writing.  There could be a lot of reasons for this--maybe he's one of those people who don't feel much.  Maybe he's trying so hard not to be convicted that he's put aside the thoughts of what he did.  It just seems that from the beginning he's not fully present, removing himself from fault. 

Pulling a gun (even a Taser) on a man lying face down, with another cop's knee on his neck, was an irresponsible, at the very least, thing to do.  Then, when the consequences of his decision (yes, there is still no other way to describe it other than a decision to pull that gun) followed, he--a police officer--left the state, took off for Nevada, right after he'd killed a man.  What else but denial and self-excusing can explain that bonehead move?

Nothing in the letter convinces me that he accidentally pulled his gun, or accidentally shot Oscar Grant; after he had that gun out of its holster, nothing that followed was accidental anyway.  His letter doesn't convey that he comprehends there is no going back and no making this better.  His letter conveys to me that he does hope to do that, but for himself.  In the process, he's denying his deadly responsibility.  And asking for exoneration at the same time.

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(In response to the above, a responder wrote a problematic comment; the last paragraph follows:)

"One would think Grant's parents and relatives would want to lead a 'peaceful' solution so this tragedy never happens again; instead, like the Tea Baggers and every other hysterical group in country today - they're clamoring for their 15 minutes of fame and 'damn' the issues when you can fuel hysteria, fear and chaos just by the words 'My son was murdered.' "

To which I responded at length, as follows, and with a roiling stomach--I was ready to reach through the monitor and take her by the ear and drag her to a neighborhood where the folks would explain, emphatically, what's wrong with her thinking.

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