Just for the record, Article 1, section 6 of the New York State Constitution says, in relevant part:
§ 6. No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime . . . , unless on indictment of a grand jury, except that a person held for the action of a grand jury upon a charge for such an offense, other than one punishable by death or life imprisonment, with the consent of the district attorney, may waive indictment by a grand jury and consent to be prosecuted on an information filed by the district attorney.
I’ve never served on a grand jury, but several friends who have that have said that for the two or four week term they’ve sat on, they’ve returned a “No True Bill” (i.e. not indicted) about one or so of the multiple cases that have come before them. That’s consistent fairly consistent with the statistics provided in the page linked by tomndebb, which said that Brooklyn (Kings County) grand juries dismiss about 7% of indictments.
This makes me wonder if the prosecutor was grossly inadequate. The trith is that innately biased juries which refuse to indict or convict based on the evidence are extremely rare. Almost everyone is willing to follow the law in these matters even if they don’t agree with it.
Can’t get in that he was drunk at trial. Might not even be able to get in that he was drinking.
But you sure can get in enough to get the cop a self-defense claim and enough reasonable doubt to get you away from first-degree murder, and maybe even all the way out of homicide to begin with.
Sometimes a GJ with enough evidence to indict recognizes that it’s got nowhere near enough to make it through trial, and decides that it’s best to spend the court’s money elsewhere, especially when the evidence they’ve got is all the evidence they’re likely to get.
Shit, I was going to say how Greensboro a few months back had 4 deaths by police, 3 unarmed, all in separate incidents, along with atleast 100 rowzers on “administrative leave” for their part in either being racists or a sex offender, but I think Portland wins. For now.
That’s also possible. Generally Grand Juries would indict anyway, even if the evidence isn’t much to go on, as long as it meets Grand Jury requirements. Ultimately, we can’t say why it happened, but the whole situation is somehow ridiculous, and Garbage In Garbage Out.
Yeah, it’s pretty nutso here on the po-po front–it gets even nastier when you compare the number of police shootings of ethnic persons compared to the overall percentages of said ethnic persons in the general population. The term “racial profiling” gets thrown around a LOT. There’s also a long standing skirmish between the homeless on one side, with the regular police and the one-step-up-from-mall-cops PPI goons on the other. Add in a sit-lie ordinance that’s just skirts the borders of constitutionality and it gets interesting to say the least.
I really love my city, but sometimes the police issues can be awfully harrowing.
Carol’s recent infatuation with SDMB law and order reminds me a lot of an episode of “COPS”—except in this case, the ignorant shirtless redneck is the one trying to enforce the law.
