The district attorney is taking the case to the grand jury:
Any lawyers have any experience with this? My guess is that this wouldn’t happen unless there is some evidence indicating Tony’s guilt.
Well we know Tony Stewart killed ward, which would be evidence of guilt if other factors were present. The fact that the prosecutor is taking it to a grand jury doesn’t necessarily indicate much, though, because prosecutors often will use a grand jury as a way to remove themselves from fallout in a case that has a lot of attention or involves a prominent person.
Prosecutors have broad discretion about whom they prosecute, but when they make the decisions on their own to not prosecute it can raise various political and perception issues. I had read a few articles a few weeks ago that speculated Stewart’s case would probably be brought in front of a grand jury regardless, so that the prosecutor won’t be on the hook for all the decision making.
Even in States that do not require a grand jury to start felony proceedings, the ones that allow for an optional grand jury you see prosecutors go down that path in particularly tough cases because it affords them some degree of protection from whatever happens. A lot of people thought the prosecutors should have done this in the George Zimmerman case, but they instead chose to exercise their authority under Florida law that allowed them to go forward without a grand jury.
If you’re a prosecutor and you have a supremely weak case against a guy, but you know there could be flak if you just are honest about that (when the public wants someone to be charged, they simply do not care about evidence or probability of victory at trial, see the Ferguson situation or the George Zimmerman situation as an example of this) instead of executing your prosecutorial discretion and declining to proceed you may just go to the grand jury fully expecting they don’t give you an indictment. When it happens, you then have a lot stronger leg to stand on when you explain the case just wasn’t prosecutable.
On the flipside if for some political reason (this influenced Angela Corey in the Zimmerman case) you absolutely must see a prosecution, even one almost certain to fail, you will see prosecutors bypass grand juries in states that do not require them in order to satisfy political concerns. Generally grand juries are to add a layer of protection to defendants, and that is why they are required by the Constitution for Federal cases (but not State ones.)
Martin, you said “we all know Tony killed Ward”, but it seems to me after viewing the video that the gentleman killed himself by walking out onto a track where race cars were racing. The courts may find something different by looking at “enhanced” video, but I personally do not believe “Tony killed Ward”.
I think he did, no different than if I run over a kid who runs out into the street in front of me and I have no time to stop. That’s called an accident, and one in which I would most likely have no criminal negligence. You can kill someone without it being a crime, and even without it being immoral–accidents happen.
Grand Jury’s back: Tony Stewart won’t face charges.
Interesting to note:
How does someone high on pot get so angry?
The bitter irony here is that some studies have shown marijuana doesn’t impair your ability to drive nearly as much as other substances, and in fact, with heavy users, can actually improve your ability. But I strongly doubt the sprint car sanctioning body would look kindly upon that.
Reefer madness, obviously.
Cite, please? I don’t care if you want to hit the shit, but it’s an intoxicant, and as such you have a long way to go to make any claims on enhanced performance while using it. Not even NORML claims that.
Anyone one who:
Gets out of their race car on the track while the race is on, is wearing a black driving suit at night and approaches a moving sprint car from the right side where driver visibility is almost nonexistent
Is an idiot
The pot use confirms this.
Anyone who uses any mind altering drug before a race is dumber than a bag of hair.
Yeah, but I still don’t understand how his pot use has anything do to with the investigation on if Stewart should be charged.
Doesn’t matter if he made a stupid decision because he was high, or because he was just angry. The question is did Tony Stewart make the situation worse by intentionally making an aggressive move, probably to scare him a bit, that got out of hand and resulted in Ward’s death?
If the Grand Jury decided that there is not sufficient evidence to bring this accusation to trial, fine, but Ward’s state of mind has nothing to do with Tony’s actions.
The Grand Jury is trying to sort through imperfect information. If there was just a magical button they could push and a loudspeaker comes on with an omniscient voice that says “Ward ran into Stewart’s path and Stewart could do nothing to avoid him” or “Stewart was trying to intimidate Ward and inadvertently hit and killed him”, that’d be great. But there isn’t. In trying to sort through imperfect information, where you believe multiple possibilities exist as to what might happen, it’s absolutely important to know the state of mind of Ward, and Stewart for that matter.
If you know Ward was under the influence of a drug, it makes it more likely he acted irrationally, and that he was approaching the car in a way that would make it hard for anyone to avoid hitting him. But grand juries hear a lot of evidence, this bit of evidence almost certainly was not key to its decision not to indict Stewart. The prosecutor has said as much in the articles written that quote him, he believes the grand jury was largely swayed by the video evidence and expert testimony and the simple fact that you had a man approaching another race car on a “hot” track (meaning an active race was going on.) Most people are willing to assign the majority of blame to that person unless there’s some egregious evidence otherwise, which didn’t exist here.
Frankly Stewart shouldn’t even be down on those tracks racing against those guys. That’s the same as NFL players driving around town to see if there are pickup games at the park they can get into or NBA players going to the playground to see if they can shoot some hoops.
The racers at that level aren’t paid the same as him, they’ll never be in NASCAR and if he won, how would they feel? While I don’t think that he meant to hit the guy and I feel sorry for the family of the driver who died, this could have been avoided had Stewart simply stuck with only racing NASCAR.
he’d still be dead regardless of who he ran in front of on the race track at night in a dark suit.
He got himself killed as the result of a childish temper tantrum.
That comparison doesn’t work, an NFL athlete would probably kill the average person in a football game due to the size, strength, and speed difference. Tony Stewart on the other hand is competing in motorsports, where those issues are much less compelling (in fact there’s a moderate disadvantage in many of them to being over a certain size.)
In terms of competitiveness, being a really, really good race car driver definitely gives you some level of leg up across most motor sports, which is why we do see guys who have done decent in types of racing not their main sport (NASCAR guys doing IndyCar etc.) But it’s not as extreme as say, Michael Jordan playing against high school kids in a pickup game. Sprint car is very, very different from stock car racing, and just because you’re awesome at stock car racing doesn’t mean you’re amazing at Spring car racing. As evidence of this, Stewart has been doing Sprint car racing as a hobby for a long time, and he frequently finishes lower that first, often times not even in the top 3-5. These Sprint car drivers aren’t afraid of Tony Stewart’s skills as many of them beat him, and they probably appreciate the increased interest as NASCAR star being at their races brings.
In addition, Stewart’s presence grants a lot of prestige to a sport that hardly gets any attention normally. And the drivers who win get to say, “I beat Tony Stewart, yo!”
In the absence of a “like” button (not that I particularly think the board needs one), just wanted to say I think your posts in this thread, especially the one I have quoted, have been absolutely spot on - kudos.
Everyone agrees Ward was acting irrationally. Most of us thought he was acting irrationally because he was angry. I still believe this as I don’t believe any who was intoxicated can drive as well as Ward did. Conversely it is well known that THC remains in the blood stream for quite some time after usage.
It just clicked that the victim’s name was Ward while reading the new posts tonight and I could only read them in Ward Burton’s voice. It… it did not help clarity.
In this day & age, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone: [Ward’s family has filed a wrongful death suit against Tony Stewart.
Frankly, I think they’re going to have a, um, tough time with this if it comes to trial, but maybe I’m wrong; maybe I’m in the minority on that.