Judge Timothy J. Wilson has no illusions about the popularity of justice. “No one promises a rose garden, and this surely is not,” he wrote near the end of his 30-page explanation of why he acquitted former St. Louis Police Officer Jason Stockley of murder in the 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith. Wilson’s verdict Friday turned on his judgment that prosecutors failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Reasonable” is the key word here. Wilson’s verdict can be read as entirely reasonable. But reasonableness becomes harder to accept when, time after time, law enforcers are acquitted — or not even charged — in questionable killings of black citizens. Reasonableness gives way to understandable outrage, as it did on the streets of downtown St. Louis Friday.

Nationally, Stockley’s acquittal is the fourth since May of law enforcers charged in questionable shootings of black men. A woman officer was acquitted in Tulsa, Okla., a Hispanic male officer in St. Anthony, Minn., and a black male officer in Milwaukee.

America has a problem here. There are too many justifiably nervous but poorly trained cops making bad decisions in stressful situations. Citizens, black and white alike, have a right to expect better.

This is particularly true in the Stockley case, which was botched from the start. City police have improved the way they investigate officer-involved shootings since 2011, and the Stockley case is a prime example of why change was needed. It was batted around the police Internal Affairs Division, the FBI and the circuit attorney’s office for two years. Then Smith’s family won a $900,000 settlement from the state board that then ran the police department.

Stockley left the department in August 2013, but the case lay dormant until activists kept asking questions that could no longer be ignored. Then-Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce filed murder charges in May 2016.

Stockley, by then living in Houston, was freed on bond posted by his old colleagues at the St. Louis Police Officers Association. He and his lawyers opted for a bench trial, avoiding the vagaries of city jurors and leaving the decision up to Wilson, who has a reputation for scrupulous fairness. It proved to be a wise decision from Stockley’s perspective.

Wilson wrote that he reviewed the video of the incident “innumerable times” in minute detail during the five weeks since the trial ended Aug. 9. In the end, the ancient standard of “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” prevailed over the prosecution’s explosive charges.

What about the dashboard audio recording of Stockley saying “I’m going to kill this (expletive), don’t you know it,” as he and his partner, Brian Bianchi, chased Smith’s Buick through north St. Louis? Not conclusive of prior intent, Wilson ruled.

What about the .38-caliber Taurus revolver recovered from Smith’s car, the one prosecutors said Stockley planted? The one with Stockley’s DNA on it but not Smith’s?

Not conclusive, Wilson wrote. The prosecution’s own experts said the absence of DNA proves nothing, and Stockley admitted that he’d handled the gun to unload it.

What about the so-called “kill shot” that prosecutors had said was fired from just six inches away? The medical examiner said that wound was not the one that killed Smith.

In 30 pages, the only time Wilson strays from “just the facts” is when he expresses skepticism about the prosecution’s claim that Smith was unarmed: “The court observes, based on its nearly 30 years on the bench, that an urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly.” That’s a troubling assertion from a judge who went to pains in all other instances to filter out such presumptive and speculative bias.

In the end, Wilson wrote, “This court ... is simply not firmly convinced of defendant’s guilt (and) cannot say that the state has proven every element of murder beyond a reasonable doubt or that the defendant did not act in self-defense.”

Given his reading of the facts, that’s entirely reasonable. Given the racial animus that underlies the larger issue, so are the protests.

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch