But not only that justice be done, but that it be seen to be done.
McCulloch should have stepped aside in favor of a special appointee who would have more credibility within the community. His conduct of the “Jack in the Box” case was little short of appalling, I can’t fault them for their dismay at his refusal, I can’t fault them for feeling “Well, here we go again!”
And the special appointee should have approached the matter in the manner typical of such grand jury proceedings, as the advocate for indictment. I very much doubt that the result would have been different, as nine of the jurors would have to have been convinced, and, given the long standing tendency of jurors of every stripe and race to sympathize with the police, the result would have been the same. Most likely.
In the unlikely event that the grand jury did indict, a first year law student could have shredded the prosecution without raising a sweat, a verdict beyond reasonable doubt would not have happened. Were I sworn to such a jury, I have little doubt I would be compelled to that verdict, the boundaries of “reasonable” permit nothing else, absent an affidavit from God Almighty countersigned by the Archangel Gabriel.
In my own personal opinion, the officer was not equal to his sworn duty to protect and to serve. Blazing away at a suspect in a residential neighborhood is not the action of a deliberate and cautious man. I think both men panicked but Mr Brown was not sworn to protect and serve, Officer Wilson was. But this failing does not make him guilty of a crime.
Mr McCulloch had a duty to remove himself, he did not. How much misery might have been avoided by such an action, we will never know. But this is not a simple matter of legal technicality, it is a matter of the larger context. The black community has legitimate grievances, and those grievances should have been acknowledged and respected. Mr McCulloch had that opportunity, he chose otherwise.
McCulloch didn’t present the case to the Grand Jury. Sadly, he failed in his actual duty by even allowing it to go to the GJ rather than throwing it out the instant it got to him.
Drivel. The governor who signs the warrant for an execution is responsible, the warden who carries out his instructions, much less so. McCulloch turned the matter over to his subordinates, who answer to him.
Are you offering us the possibility that they acted contrary to his wishes? Please. Pull the other one, it has bells, pull the middle one, and I’ll give you a nickel.
Hm, I guess I’ll clarify why it comes across as half-assed to me. Certainly the case presented consists in a very large amount of material. Multiple volumes, when printed out–something like nine IIRC. (How big the volumes are I don’t recall.) But that is itself part of the very “half-assedness” I’m talking about. As an analogy: When a student writes for me a fifty page paper for an assignment I was expecting five pages out of, and moreover, doesn’t give me much of a clue as to where in the 50 pages to look for the bits that actually get the assignment’s job done, I consider that a half-assed effort.
The case presented to the grand jury is not designed to get get an indictment. Everything I know about how to present things to people, and more importantly, what I’ve read from other prosecutors who have cared to comment, tells me that this presentation was designed to get people to have no confidence that the requisite point had been made. Even the one prosecutor who has commented in this thread basically agrees with that final point. Perhaps “half-assed” is the wrong term to use, but yes, to me the overall impression was one of a lazy attempt to make it look like a lot of work had been done, when in fact the actual work that was supposed to be done was wholly avoided.
What about presenting to a grand jury in a case you know won’t issue forth in an indictment?
The justice system has a truth-finding function, and a signaling function. (Maybe others but those seem to be the two biggies, the latter being predicated on the former.) I’m very slightly inclined to think Wilson didn’t commit a crime. But in this particular case, I think that the case absolutely needed to be made, and a trial needed to take place, in order for our justice system to fulfill its signaling function.
Since John_Stamos’_Left_Ear punted on the question, maybe you would care to answer it then - what is the purpose of a Grand Jury? Or, in the terms you put it - what work is it supposed to do?
If you, even slightly, think that he didn’t commit a crime, then you presumably must think there isn’t probable cause that he did, else you’re being incoherent. The signalling function has been fulfilled by the Grand Jury coming to the conclusion that there wasn’t probable cause, and would have equally been fulfilled by the prosecutor simply announcing that.
“Justice must be seen to be done” means not punishing people at secret trials, not putting on trial people we know cannot legally be found guilty.
The signaling function wasn’t fulfilled by the grand jury because the prosecutor presented a case that was manifestly weaker than it could have been.
Your point about probable cause I don’t follow. What I am very slightly inclined to think about the case has little bearing on what a court should find concerning the case.
but that doesn’t follow. I don’t assume that how the probabilities seem to me from my vantage point sitting here in my office with only news media as my access to the evidence is the same as how probabilities would seem to jurors in a trial with focused cases being made by trained adversaries.
It appears that your definition of “half-assed” means that the prosecutor did not try to get an indictment on a case where she was quite sure she couldn’t get a conviction.
What would be the point?
I guess that depends on what you think is the requisite point. If it is “we need to indict this guy at all costs, and then spend millions on a trial we can’t win”, then Yes. If it is “look at ALL the evidence, and I think you will agree that this case is a loser from the get-go. We can’t even reach the minimal level of probable cause, and we are wasting a lot of time and money trying to reassure looters who aren’t listening anyway.” then No.
Maybe, if “indict the white guy at any cost” is what was supposed to be done. If it’s “mollify the rioters” then that isn’t going to happen for a Not Guilty verdict anymore than a no-bill from a grand jury. If it’s “there’s no way in hell we can get a conviction, and here’s why”, then I don’t agree that the work wasn’t done.
Btw the signaling function I mentioned above doesn’t only extend to people seeing that justice is done. The justice system also signals which kinds of act will be examined more closely. In some jurisdiction, it’s being signaled that posession of illegal amounts of marijuana won’t be examined too closely. That’s fine, nothing wrong with that at all–it’s one of the functions of the system and it works well enough. And, along with that, you get the fact that in some jurisdictions at some times, you get a signal from the justice system that police officers shooting black people won’t be examined as closely as other shooters of other victims might…
There’s a thread on this board that provides an extremely in depth summary of the evidence the Grand Jury saw, and that evidence is all public. Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with it before making statements that the Grand Jury made the wrong decision.
This particular shooting has, quite frankly, been investigated in far greater depth than it warranted. There’s nothing about this that could possibly suggest that shooting a black person isn’t being taken extremely seriously.
I’m acquainted with it. I have no idea why you just said this.
ETA: I actually haven’t claimed the grand jury made the wrong decision, if you read me carefully. They did an acceptable job under the circumstances, IMO.
“Pour encourager les autres,” in other words. He may not have committed a crime, but what the hell, let’s put him through the wringer – months of his life, enormous expense, emotional distress – anyway, just so others of his type know to keep in line, and the viewing public feels confident in the system.
Not a rationale one expects to hear voiced in liberal democracy perhaps, but such are the times.
Just out of curiousity: Which groups do you expect to suffer the most from this new policy of encouraging prosecutors to go after criminals they don’t actually think are guilty of a crime? Whom will the DAs of America decide most needs some real strong “signalling?”
Well, as Hamlet says, the prosecutors could have left off all the exculpatory evidence, and presented a purely one-sided, pro-indictment case, and then maybe got an indictment.
So then it goes to trial, and all the exculpatory stuff is brought out, and the defense blows the case out of the water. What signal is that going to send - that if the looters make enough trouble, we will prosecute a police officer even when we know we don’t have probable cause to believe he committed a crime, let alone overcome the presumption of innocence?
“If you shoot a black thug, we will waste millions on a show trial even if we think you didn’t do anything wrong”. That’s not a signal I care to send. YMMV.
What do you mean by intentionally botching? If the evidence to proceed doesn’t exist, it’s impossible to botch. The Grand Jury could have sent this case to trial with no repercussions, and no questions asked of them. It would be irresponsible of the prosecutor to try to get an indictment if he doesn’t believe the evidence supports that.