They clearly caught, on video, the police officer shooting the fleeing suspect in the back, then planting a taser on him in order to intentionally frame it as something other than the cold-blooded murder it was. The videotape clearly shows Walter Scott running away, and being shot in the back while running away.
This was murder. It’s not even a hard question. This is the kind of case where, realistically, the jury should take about fifteen seconds to deliberate. Like, leave the room, look from person to person, “Guilty?” “Guilty.”, head back in to deliver the verdict. When’s the last time a murder case this clear-cut even went to trial? And yet the jury can’t even manage that. You have a clear-cut video of a police officer murdering someone, and you still can’t fucking convict.
Apparently there’s at least one juror in Charleston with a white hood. Fuck that guy. And fuck Schlager, for wasting everyone’s time in an attempt to get away with what he knows was murder. And people wonder why there are riots, when even in a case like this, you cannot get justice. And people wonder why there’s so much crime among African-Americans - maybe if they had any reason to believe that the justice system would protect them, they wouldn’t need to take justice into their own hands.
After this case, I see no reason why any African-American should believe, even for a moment, that the US justice system sees their lives as worth protecting.
With the victory of Trump and the Republicans you can expect it to get much worse. “Black lives don’t matter” would be a step *up *from their attitude of outright racist malice.
Well, why even bother with jury trials when we know who’s guilty, eh? Let’s just drag them out into the street and lynch them. You know, like they did in the South a hundred years ago when everybody knew the black guy was guilty of mistreating some innocent white woman. No need to let things like “due process” and “presumption of innocence” when we can just mete out vengeance based on what we’re pretty sure is true.
This was a mistrial, not an acquittal. He can be tried again. Let’s not go about demanding mob justice just because the system that works 99.9% of the time glitched on this one occasion.
Well, I heard that was earlier in the process and that one jurist managed to convince a few others, which is what led to the deadlock.
Either way, it is pretty stunning to me, but I take solace in knowing they will retry the case. Hopefully they will do better with a second try and he is also facing Federal charges.
The OP is suggesting that the entire system of American jurisprudence is broken because of a single instance of a hung jury - a situation which the law anticipates and provides a remedy for, in that double jeopardy does not attach and the accused can be tried again.
If the case is as airtight as it appears to be, then it’s likely that the next go-around will result in a conviction. I’m not sure what remedy you expect that would have produced a better result.
I’d be more inclined to agree with you if this were the first or only time something like this happened. But how many times have a cop not gone to jail after a black person ended up dead?
I’m calling it right now: even if he’s convicted his sentence will be egregiously light.
Regardless of how well the machinery of justice is designed to work, it is often confounded by such things as human biases. Rand isn’t commenting on the system but on the biases that corrupt it.
Right now is not “after this case.” This was a mistrial, not a “not guilty” verdict. They’re going to retry it; maybe you should wait until the wheels of justice stop turning before you get all worked up.
My first thing would be to bring in an outside prosecutor whenever a cop is on trial. No more of this “people who regularly work together policing themselves” nonsense.
Jury nullification has bot a good side and a bad. This was one juror that could not bring themselves to find this officer guilty. I have the feeling that the juror was not as unbiased as we would hope, but there is no way to be sure. This bias can be a problem with our system, but I would still rather have our system than most (if not all) alternatives.
[QUOTE=RandMcnally]
My first thing would be to bring in an outside prosecutor whenever a cop is on trial. No more of this “people who regularly work together policing themselves” nonsense
[/QUOTE]
That’s clearly a solution to a different problem. In this case the prosecutor brought charges right away and went after the cop with everything he had. How would an outside prosecutor make a difference?
The problem here was that the defense managed to get a racist on the jury who was willing to believe that shooting a black person is okay as long as the white shooter said it was. They only had to get one.
So the problem, simply put, is that it’s hard to find twelve people for a jury without finding one who thinks “the nigger had it coming.” How do you fix that? Not with a different prosecutor.
The prosecutor wasn’t the cause of the mistrial. The mistrial occurred because of a single juror who was unwilling to convict. An outside prosecutor, with the same jury, would have netted the same result.
How do you propose to prevent hung juries from happening?
I’m talking systemically, although I’m sure the prosecutor’s victim blaming in the opening statements didn’t help much.
For this one in particular, which could be extended to the numerous times nothing happen to cops after they murder black people: idk, maybe have a jury that actually reflects the makeup of the city? I’m just going to go out on a hunch and say it was one of the white jurors who refused “in good conscience” couldn’t ever bring back a guilty verdict.
If the jury reflects the make-up of the city, won’t it automatically include racists? You want a jury that doesn’t reflect the make-up of the city. It’s hard to imagine that ~8% of the white population in Charleston DOESN’T holds racists views.
I’m curious to hear what the juror’s objection was. Maybe this was something along the lines of “he obviously did it, but I don’t think murder in the 1st is appropriate.”
[QUOTE=The New York Times]
The jury’s foreman, the panel’s only black member, said in a separate note that the group was mostly in agreement that Mr. Slager should be convicted: “It’s just one juror that has the issues.” The foreman also said: “That juror needs to leave. He is having issues.”
[/QUOTE]
Motherfucking ass goblin cork sucking sub-human motherfuck!
Not only was it caught on video, the cop didn’t care and stuck to his story about Scott coming at him at the time he shot him. There are many cases where a defendant might try to spin the facts a bit, but I’ve never seen one just out and out lie and have a juror not care.