When I sat on a grand jury umpteen years ago, we were the preliminary hearing to determine if there was enough evidence to warrant a trial. Personally, I felt it was a waste of time. I’ve heard a saying that a DA could indict a ham sandwich if he or she wanted, and my month-long experience showed why some people say that. Note that we did not examine the evidence, there was little to no questioning or cross-examination of subjects, and often the only one brought forth was the arresting officer. I don’t know how it might be different in other states, but I view NY grand jury indictments as meaningless.
Yeah, that darned Grand Jury schedule. I’m sure if it were two black guys who shot a white guy who looked suspicious to them while he was jogging, they too would be hanging down at the gun club waiting to see if they were going to be in trouble or not.
You’re probably right about the hanging part.
Is this the general status of murder cases now? (And presumably other crimes.) Are there hundreds, or even thousands, of people who are suspected of major crimes walking around free because grand juries aren’t meeting?
Or have DA’s developed alternative procedures to indict people and this particular case happens to be an exception?
They didn’t just stop him; they hunted him down and blocked his path. Arbery turned away and began jogging a different direction. The knuckleheads then intercepted him a second time and killed him. The video clearly shows one of the assholes unloading on him from the truck. This was vigilantism, plain and simple, and no different from a lynch mob. Why these murderers aren’t in jail is a mystery.
It isn’t a mystery to me.
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The killers have been arrested. This happened in February, and it took the video being released publicly for an arrest to be made.
Now imagine all the dead black folks who weren’t lucky enough to have a video made of their murders. Maybe there’s a slim chance the family of Arbery gets justice… but what about all those other folks over the years, killed with no video?
“Pics or it didn’t happen” is our new legal standard.
One thing that I just read in an NPR story was that the now-arrested father was a former investigator with the local DA’s office. That’s probably why two local DA’s recused themselves from the case so that it had to wait for a grand jury for an indictment.
At first blush that recusal sounds like integrity, but that would only be if they didn’t like the guy or had had conflict or something. If they recused themselves because he was their friend, then that act makes no sense except as a benefit to the suspect. There’s no suspicion of wrongdoing of a DA who indicts his friend. Anyway, that’s how it strikes me.
So now the case is being handled by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is why arrests are being made, and presumably indictments. This happened after a request from an Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney, Tom Durden, that they take over the investigation, which happened after the video was made public. They’re still investigating others (I thought there was a third person involved in the shooting?) including the person who shot the video (good!).
Final note is a stupid thing said by the family attorney of the victim, one Benjamin Crump:
No, sir, I don’t think there’s any sense in which they took the law into their own hands. They claim they thought the guy was a burglar. I don’t believe there is anything in Georgia law that makes it legal for a citizen to shoot a burglary suspect running away on the street. You are an attorney, you should know better, and should be able to think before you tweet. What they did was commit willful murder.
You can also just recuse yourself because it is the right thing to do when you know the person. Before even thinking about whether you like them or not. Impartiality should be beyond doubt.
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I’d have thought recusing oneself would be the smart thing to do regardless of whether one is friends with the suspect. It’s not enough to avoid conflicts of interest. One also needs must avoid the bc appearance of a conflict of interest. So, if a DA knows a suspect, they should recuse themselves because they don’t want to find themselves in a situation where they have to prove they aren’t friends, because that would be both difficult and time consuming, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth. The smart thing to do is step aside and give the job to someone else.
They just wanted to talk to him. That’s why they brought the guns, see? I’ve read somewhere that at first it was argued this was a citizen’s arrest, and then that it was self-defense. By people who should know better. Because that is not how either of those work in any way.
I don’t think it was premeditated murder, but god damn these fucking redneck gun laws that allow insecure, low-testosterone, shrunken-testicle, dickless, middle-aged white men to legally brandish firearms every time they get scared shitless by a black man with muscles.
Oh please, they weren’t afraid of him except possibly in an existential sense – meaning that they might find his very existence a threat to their sense of privilege. This is gut-level, knee-jerk hatred in action.
So, the DA first refused to have the suspects arrested, then a few days later recused herself so that they couldn’t be indicted any time soon. Why am I not surprised?
And these county commissioners who are now throwing her under the bus, where have they been since this crime happened? It sounds like they knew what the DA did, and took no action.
I think the appropriate thing is for the state to take over the county government until new elections can be held, which the state will supervise for fairness and impartiality. Then the state should institute an ongoing watchdog committee over the police and DA’s office. Meanwhile, the DA and anyone else who colluded in this travesty should be fired, stripped of their pension and indicted if at all possible.
Have you ever seen Conspiracy of Silence? It’s about the racially-motivated murder of Betty Osborne in Manitoba. The killers did that because they believed they could get away with it. And, for quite some time, they actually did. How did that happen? The society in which they lived protected them, because in general that society was prejudiced against the victim’s race. I’m sure you see the relevance.
What makes you think the government of the State of Georgia will be motivated to take your suggested action?
The bidness: A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States | Nature Human Behaviour
I’ve yet to dig into the methodology, so offer no opinion on the quality of the work.
Honestly, the Arbery situation needs it’s own thread. These megathreads serve to normalize this behavior as just another one of those things, and lots of people just avoid them.
But you need to look at the pattern to see the racism. That’s where you can see that black people get treated one way while white people get treated a different way.
Let’s consider incarceration as an example. You can find individual cases of black people being sent to prison for crimes and white people being convicted for crimes. It’s hard to tell if racism is a factor by just looking at the individual cases.
But if you look at the overall pattern and see that black people are three times more likely to be sentenced to prison than white people are when they are convicted of the same crimes, the racism jumps out at you.
Megathreads like this aren’t seeking to normalize this pattern. They’re seeking to point out that this pattern exists.
But the original reason for them is that it made people uncomfortable to have multiple cases “clutturing up” the forum.
I don’t object to the existence of the megathreads to talk about the broader issue, but I dislike the idea that we can only talk about these issues in the megathreads.
But the GD thread got moved here as well, so as long as people don’t want it closed, I am satisfied.