I read a lot of stories about “officer involved shootings” and the like that result in death or serious injury, and which by the details recounted in the story seem like a slam dunk for conviction, but for which the jury returns a not-guilty verdict.
But of course, from reading a news story one doesn’t know everything the jury knew. And moreover, its these more dramatic stories that are more likely to get news coverage.
So what are the facts? Once a case actually goes to trial, are juries in fact less likely to find him or her guilty? Speaking specifically of cases in which an officer, while ostensibly carrying out his or her duties, does something which results in a death or serious injury that shouldn’t have happened.
It depends on what the LEO is being prosecuted for and the circumstances of the alleged crime. LEOs will often waive trial by jury if they think the public will turn against them. I’d find it likely in most circumstances a jury will not want to throw the book at a police officer though.
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It depends on what the LEO is being prosecuted for and the circumstances of the alleged crime. LEOs will often waive trial by jury if they think the public will turn against them. I’d find it likely in most circumstances a jury will not want to throw the book at a police officer though.
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What’s this based on?
Frylock: note that an apples-to-apples comparison is impossible, because by definition only police officers can commit the kinds of misconduct offenses that you’re asking about conviction rates for. When an off-duty cop beats somebody up in a bar, that offense can be easily compared to the same thing committed by a non-cop. The study RNATB linked to – and any hypothetical study – has to compare misconduct prosecutions either to the overall rate of prosecution of criminal offenses or to specific types of crimes.
Any of those comparisons are going to be a little bit sketchy because, well, think about it. Even if you only compare shootings by police officers to shootings by civilians, or more specifically shootings by civilians in which the alleged perpetrator asserted some theory of self-defense (already very narrow), the cases with the police officers are still going to be qualitatively different from your average civilian case. It’s extraordinarily uncommon for a civilian to be in a confrontation that occurs during a high-alert state based on some information about criminal wrongdoing afoot, whereas it’s just, like, Thursday for a cop. A civilian defendant needs to justify all kinds of behaviors - what were you doing there, why did you have your gun out, why didn’t you call the police or run away - specifically because he is not a police officer. In a typical misconduct case, I’d expect the police officer to have presumptive justification - certainly enough for reasonable doubt - for nearly all of that.
What this means, I think, is that it’s hard to make any claims about “more likely” or “less likely” because there’s virtually never a trial of a civilian that is factually comparable to a trial of a police officer. I don’t mean to say that I don’t believe that police officers are prosecuted at far less frequency than they ought to be, because I do believe that, but I think it’s really hard to demonstrate that based on a comparison to other conviction rates.
Since a felony conviction gets one kicked off most police forces, another factor that would skew the comparison of sentence lengths for police vs. the general public is that the general public is going to consist of a higher proportion of second- and third-offenders, who tend to receive longer sentences.
I think this goes into one of the problems, who are the ones who will investigate this ‘crime’? Other officers will, who may very well think they could also make such a mistake, so may be less enthusiastic to go about their job without possibly giving the on cop a reasonable doubt ‘out’ in the way they gather or present evidence.
That article is about grand juries, which determine whether to indict rather than whether to convict. Bias in grand juries is frankly kind of unimportant because the grand jury system is already massively weighted to the prosecution side.
You also have to get a DA to prosecute a police officer, something that is extremely rare. If a cop shoots somebody, and has a good enough story/evidencebase/whatever, the DA will give it a pass.
The two offices work hand in glove, and there is no way to say that bias doesn’t enter in. The DA prosecutes what the cops give him. The cops give the fruits of their work to the DA. One cannot exist without the other, and, on top of that, Joe/Jane Public want law and order. A nice impressive uniform in court give the air of authority and ‘public servant’ so, the jury will be more lenient to the officer.
Some really amazing shootings by police have been given a pass by some DAs, and it looks like the trend is growing.
A big part of the reason for that is that elected district attorneys are heavily reliant on police endorsements. A DA who goes after wrongdoers in the law enforcement community tends to be a “self-correcting problem”.
Another factor that may influence juries/grand juries is the reputation/history of the parties.
In many (most?) cases, the ‘civilian’ is likely to be someone with past criminal convictions, or even actually in the process of committing another crime, or running away after one. That is not going to make their testimony very believable to jury members. Especially compared to the testimony of police officers, whom the jury may be pre-disposed to see as ‘protecting the public’.
Au contraire. The news-reading public is likely to know much more than the jury gets to hear (although it may be of more questionably reliability). In court, the parties (mainly the lawyers) squabble endlessly about what may be presented to the jury, and what should be suppressed.
Example: At the end of the OJ Simpson trial (about the time of the brief jury deliberations), I saw a full-page article IIRC in the LA Times, detailing a lot of the “facts” that had been in the news about the case that the jury was not allowed to hear.