Re: Garner. No indictment.
 

has anyone checked local convenience store videotape to see if he stole the cigarettes? Apparently that is important.

Yeah.
 

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borow...nd-juries-eyes

TM

Re: Yeah.
 

I know I am like a broken fucking record on this but the issue is not with the grand juries. The issue is with the process in cases where a prosecutor is "indicting" a cop. In circumstances where an unarmed person is killed by a cop, a special prosecutor should be a fucking automatic.

When you hear of the cop's lawyer, I mean prosecutor, taking 4 months to give the grand jury ALLLL OF THE EVIDENCE, wink, wink, you know he is doing everything he can to tank the case and get the cop off.

Re: Garner. No indictment.
 

Yeah, it may be that the jurors are strongly biased toward the cops too, but there is actually a lot a motivated prosecutor can do to combat that (i.e., not present the defense's evidence).

From what I've heard, yeah.

Re: Yeah.
 

See above.

TM

Re: Yeah.
 

am I on ignore or did i post that thing only on FB?

Re: Yeah.
 

Could be both, no?

Re: Yeah.
 

Where any person is killed by a cop, this should be the rule. If there's enough evidence to get to the GJ on whether a cop wrongly killed an armed individual, a special prosecutor should be involved.

The GJ secrecy thing should end. Anytime, anywhere, a panel meets to determine whether an individual should be deprived of his liberty (or in this instance, a criminal be shielded from prosecution), the public should have a right to hear its proceedings. And fuck the rule that defense counsel cannot be present. It should work like a mini trial.

Re: Garner. No indictment.
 

You know its fucked up when even the pundits on Fox News are calling the non-indictment outrageous.

Re: Yeah.
 

Hm. Not sure people should have accusations against them made fully public if there is no probable cause.

If that's what we're doing, why have a grand jury in the first place?

Re: Garner. No indictment.
 

Are they really?

Re: Yeah.
 

The entire purpose of the Grand Jury, as I understand it, is to see whether there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. Not to see whether any of the evidence can be explained or contradicted, but just whether there is enough to proceed.

I support having defense counsel present so they can hear the evidence that's being used, and so they can object to evidence that truly should not be used. But it makes no sense -- and unindicted defendants should not have this burden -- to have defense try to refute the evidence.

This -- that the purpose is just to see if there is enough evidence to proceed -- is what makes me so suspicious of these two grand juries, where it seems certain that the so-called prosecutors put in defense evidence, and tanked their own cases.

As for secrecy -- I've never fully understood it but I think part of the purpose is to protect the defendant from having a jury hear the evidence that was used to indict him, which came in without the protections a defendant would have at trial. I'm not sure that's a good enough reason, but baby, bathwater, etc.

Re: Yeah.
 

In other words -- "Sidd, STP."


I agree on a mini-trial but why shouldn't counsel for the defendant be put on notice of the evidence used to indict?

Re: Yeah.
 

That's already pretty much the case when it's a cop doing the killing. The DA is as much defense lawyer as prosecutor. And in one our local shooting-of-unarmed-civilian cases, the cop (or maybe the cop union, but anyway) actually presented expert testimony to the GJ about how much time the cop had to react to a potential weapon situation.

Re: Yeah.
 

I read something written by a dad whose son was killed in Wisconsin where they got a state law passed taking police killing out of the local prosecutors hands. I believe it sets up a special prosecutor automatically.