If my extensive legal training watching Law and Order is still any good, I too thought that “we know he did it, but can we convict” is a common question on the prosecutor’s side, if only for double jeopardy concerns. They only have one shot.
Sorry if I missed on that, I read that as “prosecutor in the US” and not “prosecutor for the US”.
The thing is that it’s hard to search for these things. It’s very possible that this kind of situation has happened before but it’s not easy to find them (at least not for me). I tried different search terms that just came up with general articles about jury nullification and prosecutorial discretion, and I finally just searched for “prosecutor declines to charge” and went through page after page of news articles before finding one that was close.
Someone who is much better than me might find a much closer match. But for me, the problem is more an issue of the fact that Garland took such a hard stance about not wanting to look like he’s influencing an election, and then after all that allows for something that clearly does that.
Oh, I don’t doubt it. I honor you for making the time-consuming attempt.
As for the ‘US Prosecutor’ question, we’ll have to wait for Ann’s return to find out, I guess.
Right, no one’s saying it’s an uncommon topic of discussion.
But an official written release that says ‘we have evidence that he’s guilty but we’re pretty sure the jury will look at [physical or other traits unrelated to the crime] and fail to convict’ is something else again. That’s what we’re looking for.
I think the difference in this case was that it was so high profile and there was a substantial population that was certain that any failure to prosecute was due to an attempt to cover up his crimes. So if Garland, released a statement saying the special prosecutor has decided not to carry the case further but not released the report in its entirity, Congress would have figured he must be hiding something and subpoenaed it two days later. Then when it did eventually come out, it would look worse than it actually was, since obviously Garland wouldn’t be trying to cover up unless Biden was deeply senile. Its probably better to just let it out in the open as if it was no big deal. Of course better yet would be for the special prosecutor not to include such an obvious partisan smear in the report in the first place, but that was out of Garland’s hands.
An example would be, okay we have evidence that Tom Hanks committed bank fraud, but he is a beloved icon and it will be impossible to find 12 people willing to convict him because too many people love him. That seems like BS.
On the other side, that opinion has been made about Trump too. Maybe not by the DOJ but by folks in the media, political wonks, legal talking heads, and so on. The DOJ has gone forward regardless, as have states, and we already watched Trump get found liable by a jury in NYC when there was a known Trump supporter on the jury. Not a criminal conviction and the bar is set a lot lower in a civil trial, but still.
By the way, let’s not forget in all this that the truth is that the DOJ did not decide to not prosecute Biden because of fears that the jury will be too sympathetic. Not even this Republican special prosecutor said that. They declined to charge Biden because conclusive evidence wasn’t there, there were too many plausible explanations that may have caused him to have the documents and treat them that way without it being willful or criminal. There wasn’t enough to show beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the crime. The bit about the mental lapses and age and sympathetic appearance were an aside. The only ones playing that up are right wing spin doctors and a media eager for a juicy headline to get views. That’s not realty. So even in this case we don’t have a prosecutor choosing to decline charges because of some superficial thing about the accused not material to the case.
I just wanted to make sure that wasn’t lost in this discussion.
Nor was Comey’s investigation into Clinton anything new, rhetorically, and logically shouldn’t have swayed anyone, given that no evidence was produced at that time, or subsequently. But it was likely sufficient to swing the election…to undecided voters it seemed like the scurrilous accusations of “crooked clinton” had been validated.
This time around, Republicans have been desperately looking for any shred of anything that they can pin to Biden. And, once again, what they’ve found is just one person’s (strongly partisan) judgement. It shouldn’t matter. But with how much of the MSM has run with this, with debate after debate on whether Biden is fit to serve, and not mentioning anything about the context or inappropriateness of this report…it’s worked.
This has been more damaging than a dozen impeachment inquiries.
It’s not going to decide the election. But yeah: impactful.
I was specifically pushing back against the suggestion that it is going to decide the election, that is the actual claim I was objecting to. There’s no question that this is damaging, I’ve tried to make that clear whenever I criticize it.
I think it would also be worse if this happened 8 months from now. The timing of Comey’s investigation was probably the worst part of it. Remember, it’s called “October Surprise” for a reason.
I meant any prosecutor in the US, not just a federal prosecutor.
And just to reiterate the short version of my position - while I don’t think anyone’s disputing that sometimes prosecutors decline to indict a person they are convinced is guilty because they don’t think they can make case they can sell to a jury. I’ve watched lots of Law and Order myself.
I’m saying anything that says or implies “we’ve concluded he’s guilty” as part of an official statement declining to prosecute is improper.
Bumping this thread in honor of Trump winning himself another delay courtesy of the Supreme Court, who for some reason are out working the street corner for Trump.
Congratulations, Merrick Garland. Courtesy of you having your thumb up your ass for so long, the best bet for keeping Trump out of office is now dementia. If you’re really lucky, Trump will keel over before the election and all of these cases will be dismissed so that the next wannabe dictator can try the exact same shit in 2028 and drag it out until 2032 under your tender auspices. But hey, at least you didn’t hurt MAGA’s feelings and they all know you didn’t do any of this to be political… right?
Don’t you think you may have bumped the thread prematurely? Without waiting for all the facts it might come off as political.
I don’t blame anyone for being pissed off at the DOJ for their inept delay in the investigation of Trump himself. It’s easy to be pissed of at the Supreme Court for the latest delay, but seriously, it’s a fact that Jack Smith was appointed almost two years after Jan. 6.
And only after Congress had their hearings.
Why did Garland wait so long? Fuck him. SCOTUS sucks, but we knew that and so did Garland. Shit, no one should know this better than him. He’s ultimately to blame. Can we stop defending him now? Fuck him.
Wrong thread
So, can we NOW say he won’t be going after Trump?
He finally ran out the clock.
(For many good, obvious reasons AND because he’s chickenshit)
In accepting the job, he should have been a lot more accepting that he was going to end his legal career on the hill of convicting Trump for his actions on J6. Do or Die. He accepted the job and sat on his ass. Scared of his own shadow, “investigating”.
I agree. We all saw it. We all heard it. We all know what Trump did. There was nothing to investigate, except possibly the other people involved. Sweep them up later.
The insurrection would not have happened if Trump had not organized it and sent his mob to the Capital.
The wheels of justice did not grind slowly. They just stopped grinding and completely failed this country.
And now Trump might put Cannon in a AG. What a mess. She should be removed from his espionage case immediately.
What espionage case? There are no cases against Trump being pursued. Even at the state level it’s pointless.
Stealing top secret government documents and then lying that you don’t have them to the point of having and attorney sign an affidavit that he did not have them.
And then moving them around to keep them hidden.
Besides feeling important, and being best buddies with with the ‘president’ of a hostile country and storing at least some of them in a bathroom that had a freaking copy machine, well, that to me spells espionage. Not that Trump would know what the fuck that means.
Did he sell them? Give them away? We will never know. I’m sure there are plenty of people that are scared for their lives though.
“What espionage case?”
Indeed.
The one case his Department brought (only because the archives forced their hand) has been preemptively dropped.