Subject says it all. Could it be that the prosecutor with political motivations wanted to charge Zimmerman for fear that Al Sharpton would torch the community when members of the community wouldn’t, left to their own good judgment, see a crime?
Maybe 15 people in Sanford, FL would have not bowed to the national pressure and not charged. Maybe they would have charged him with murder one?
In any event, shouldn’t citizens of the community view the evidence and see what is there before a man is jailed without bail and forced to defend his life?
You deny that national figures brought pressure on the prosecutor to bring charges and threats of violence were made? To any extent that I insulted the black community, I apologize as it was not my intent. In any event, my OP is a hybrid GQ/GD.
Is this why agents of the state (at the federal level) have to let the citizens of the community bring these charges?
Eh, its not like Grand Juries are immune from public pressure.
Historically they were seen as a measure against political corruption, but they’ve largely been replaced in that function by independent prosecutors.
As to why they’re in the Constitution and were common in earlier US history, I think that’s mainly just a codification of the status-quo. The colonies had a low population density so it didn’t make sense for a lot of places to pay for a professional prosecutor, so they took the Grand Jury system from England (note this is in the same period when state circuit court judges had to literally circulate from place to place, presumably for similar reasons). When the federal and state constitutions were being written, they just stuck to the system that already existed.
This is a stupidly obvious “gotcha” question. It’s correct, but only if you break it into two separate sentences.
“national figures brought pressure on the prosecutor”: There was plenty of pressure on Florida to re-examine the initial findings of the local police department, sure.
“threats of violence were made”: And yes, threats of violence against Zimmerman were made.
But there were no threats of violence made by national figures. Sharpton repeatedly called for peaceful protests.
I have no idea what you’re even complaining about here. That Sharpton and others were allowed to exercise free speech? That people were allowed to peacefully assemble in protest of the decision of the local government? Are you asking why the Federal government has to let Florida have it’s own justice system?
I understand that. I was just wondering if the decision of 15 citizens in the community would be different from one prosecutor who must answer to political pressure. And if it could be different, is this not the important distinction that our founding fathers thought was important.
There’s no reason to reignite the debate over this. It’s being done in other threads and none of the posters here know all of the evidence. It’s possible, for example, that there is evidence that Zimmerman premeditated the murder and a grand jury would have charged murder one, but the prosecutor took a middle road.
A grand jury would have (theoretically) looked at the evidence without political pressure in mind.
As Allen Dershowitz commented, the US is the only major democracy to have elected judges and prosecutors. I’m sure that some of those officials pay no heed to the wishes of the electorate in their deliberations. I’m equally sure, especially in such highly charged cases as this, that many of them do. It’s difficult to believe that impartial justice is best served by such a system.
I would suggest that you back off on this favorite adjective of yours. Too often it comes across as placing your toes on the line of the rules, strongly implying the personal insult while maintaining the appearance of attacking the argument rather than the poster.
Noting that one’s opponent is wrong does not require one to indicate that they demonstrated a lack of intelligence in reaching their conclusions or expressing their opinions.
And yet I can see the opposite: judges that aren’t elected don’t have to worry about ever getting kicked out, so they can be as biased as they want without repercussion.
Well, I hate to nitpick, but Mikhail Muhammad is certainly a national figure of sorts, although I grant his group probably roughly analogous to the Westboro Baptist Church in terms of numbers and influence. But in fairness… a national figure.
Just because a judge is not elected doesn’t mean they’re immune from removal from office for misconduct. In Canada, for example, all judges are appointed and they are all subject to removal for misconduct in office. Appeals courts are available to review any allegations of bias by the trial judge. And once in office, they never have to worry whether a particular judgment will affect their chances of re-election, so they can do what they think is called for in a particular case, regardless of marches in the streets.
I think that’s stretching the national figure title nearly to the breaking point. The New Black Panther Party is considered a hate group by both the Anti-Defamation League and the US Commission on Civil Rights. Despite their claims to the contrary they’ve been denounced by the original Black Panther Party as being completely unrelated as well as being “xenophobic” and “absurd”. On a good day they might be able to scrape up about a thousand members.
I agree the WBC is probably the best comparison. Nobody outside his followers cares what Mikhail Muhammad has to say. He’s completely irrelevant, noted only because he plays the “scary black man role” for people already looking for one. Claiming there was increased violence or an increase in political pressure because of him is like saying Phelps is behind every hate crime against gays or the Defense of Marriage Act. It’s giving him far more credit than he deserves. If that’s the best example of a national figure trying to incite violence then it’s pretty much the same as saying there were no national figures trying to incite violence.
(emhasis added)
That’s also my understanding of why the Grand Jury was established in the federal constitution, rather than some sort of grand (hah) philosophical principle. In any case back in the mother country there eventually evolved the Crorn Prosecutor’s office, itself independent and theoretically apolitical.
As I understand it, for practical purposes at the state level Grand Juries are merely an alternate tool the State has for bringing charges, and hardly represent any safeguard vs. the DA.
All a grand jury does is decide if there is probable cause that a crime was committed. The target ‘Zimmerman’ would have had no right to present evidence nor are targets allowed to even have council in the room. The State attorney would have presented all of the information although each of the 23 members could have asked questions.
I am betting the only reason thy did not call one is because Murder 1 was just not possible but they would have returned a true bill for second degree.
Yea, my understanding is that Grand Jury’s have pretty much been abandoned in all non-US common law jurisdictions and are largely vestigial in the US, as they pretty much follow the lead of the State Attorneys anyways.
So whatever their theoretical advantages might be, they don’t seem to have held up very well over time.
Well assuming all the jury shows up you have to convince a simple majority that a prudent and cautious person would be think that certain facts are probably true.