No I don’t, and its annoying you imply so much from one vague sentence and try to grill me on it.
This was not a federal case.
**Trial by Cop ** is not a good way to go.
It leads to excess:
And that’s Utah, which is so white it can blind people on the ISS.
There are many people (myself included) who believe that George Zimmerman should be in jail, yet Darren Wilson should not.
Indictment statistics are broadly similar at the state level, though Missouri apparently doesn’t publish the same figures.
It was a joke.
Of course it was. Cage matches don’t have referees.
At least those around here.
Again, if you want to compare apples to apples, compare the Grand Jury investigations in police shootings and how many of them indict.
That’s not really comparing apples, since prosecutors have a strong disincentive to put officer-involved shootings in front of grand juries.
You really are a damaged and demented individual.
In fact, the article quoted said the opposite. As in:
Ordinarily, prosecutors only bring a case if they think they can get an indictment. But in high-profile cases such as police shootings, they may feel public pressure to bring charges even if they think they have a weak case.
“The prosecutor in this case didn’t really have a choice about whether he would bring this to a grand jury,” Ben Trachtenberg, a University of Missouri law professor, said of the Brown case. “It’s almost impossible to imagine a prosecutor saying the evidence is so scanty that I’m not even going to bring this before a grand jury.”
You’re making some rather broad assumptions about the people who get selected for a grand jury. You know nothing about the people on this grand jury. I guess you assume since nine of them were white (and three black), they must be automatically racist and will choose NOT to indict regardless of the facts.
Arguing with Der Trihs on any issue is akin to pissing in the wind.
Prior to indictment the rights that the accused have are much more limited. What this means is if you’re a prosecutor you can narrowly select only the evidence that makes your case look strong. That’s why a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, because generally speaking the defendant has no right to do any of the things he can do at trial to raise a defense, and the evidential burden is simple probable cause.
In fact, unless called by the grand jury, the defendant cannot even appear before the jury or even watch the proceedings.
The prosecutor has been extremely open about what he’s doing here, he doesn’t want to make a decision so he’s letting a grand jury do it. His position is this is an act of community empowerment, you can read that however you want. Due to that strategy, his goal was not to get an indictment, but to present all the evidence his office had and then let a grand jury make a decision. Typically a prosecutor only puts forth evidence before a grand jury that makes his case look strong, because unlike at trial the prosecution isn’t under any obligation to provide exculpatory evidence and the rights of the accused are minimal.
There was no reason to expect this GJ to be anything like a typical grand jury.
I am troubled by how much time the prosecutor spent belaboring a point about unreliable witnesses. It seemed to be a point he kept circling back to, lingering over the details of uncorroborated testimony, as if each separate un-fact had some special value. Not that it means anything specific, but it troubles me.
The article is misleading. Prosecutors tend not to bring charges against police officers because they need the support of police unions to win reelection. It’s certainly true that there was strong political pressure to bring this indictment, of course, and I haven’t taken a position on the Brown shooting and I don’t have a problem with this outcome.
This is true. I’m sorry a young man died, but you have to wonder if Brown had played his hand a little differently that afternoon, he might have walked home when it was over.
Why? It’s good he’s dead, he was garbage.
Michael Brown was a 6’4", 292 lb bully that was probably used to being able to use his size to get what he wanted. That’s why he just felt he could steal $48 in cigars and why he decided he could slap a cop around. In an act of perfect justice, he was shot and killed, showing why guns are a great equalizer–they put savage brutes like Brown on a level playing field where they are ill equipped.
He’ll never get a chance to grow up, changes his ways and become a productive member of society. Then again, he may have become just another recidivist, we’ll never know.
I believe the grand jury listened to all the evidence, reviewed all the facts and statements, and made an honest decision. I have no problem with their decision.
Most of the evidence is supposed to be released now to public, I hope it will be made available to everyone by news organizations tomorrow.
Once piece of evidence that I saw mentioned (will be interesting to see it actually in the documents) is that Brown’s blood was found something like 30 feet further down the road from where the body was, indicating pretty definitively that he did backtrack towards Wilson.